Thread: CA Dreamin' Over? Record Number of Residents Moving

California Dreamin' Over? Record Number of Residents Moving

Tuesday , January 13, 2009

AP
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LOS ANGELES —
With a house purchase near Denver in the works, the 38-year-old engineering contractor plans to move his family 1,200 miles away from his home state's lemon groves, sunshine and beaches. For him, years of rising taxes, dead-end schools, unchecked illegal immigration and clogged traffic have robbed the Golden State of its allure.

Is there something left of the California dream?

"If you are a Hollywood actor," Reilly says, "but not for us."

Since the days of the Gold Rush, California has represented the Promised Land, an image celebrated in the songs of the Beach Boys and embodied by Silicon Valley's instant millionaires and the young men and women who achieve stardom in Hollywood.

But for many California families last year, tomorrow started somewhere else.

The number of people leaving California for another state outstripped the number moving in from another state during the year ending on July 1, 2008. California lost a net total of 144,000 people during that period — more than any other state, according to census estimates. That is about equal to the population of Syracuse, N.Y.

The state with the next-highest net loss through migration between states was New York, which lost just over 126,000 residents.

California's loss is extremely small in a state of 38 million. And, in fact, the state's population continues to increase overall because of births and immigration, legal and illegal. But it is the fourth consecutive year that more residents decamped from California for other states than arrived here from within the U.S.

A losing streak that long hasn't happened in California since the recession of the early 1990s, when departures outstripped arrivals from other states by 362,000 in 1994 alone.

In part because of the boom in population in other Western states, California could lose a congressional seat for the first time in its history.

Why are so many looking for an exit?

Among other things: California's unemployment rate hit 8.4 percent in November, the third-highest in the nation, and it is expected to get worse. A record 236,000 foreclosures are projected for 2008, more than the prior nine years combined, according to research firm MDA DataQuick. Personal income was about flat last year.

With state government facing a $41.6 billion budget hole over 18 months, residents are bracing for higher taxes, cuts in education and postponed tax rebates. A multibillion-dollar plan to remake downtown Los Angeles has stalled, and office vacancy rates there and in San Diego and San Jose surpass the 10.2 percent national average.

Median housing prices have nose-dived one-third from a 2006 peak, but many homes are still out of reach for middle-class families. Some small towns are on the brink of bankruptcy. Normally recession-proof Hollywood has been hit by layoffs.

"You see wages go down and the cost of living go up," Reilly says. His property taxes will be $1,300 in Colorado, down from $4,300 on his three-bedroom house in Nipomo, about 80 miles up the coast from Santa Barbara.

California's obituary has been written before — "California: The Endangered Dream" was the title of a 1991 Time magazine cover story. The Golden State and its huge economy — by itself, the eighth-largest in the world — have shown resilience, weathering the aerospace bust, the dot-com crash and an energy crunch in recent years.

But this time, the news just keeps getting worse.

A state board halted lending for about 2,000 public works projects in California worth more than $16 billion because the state could not afford them. A report by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., last month said the state lost 100,000 jobs in the last year and the erosion of home prices eliminated over $1 trillion in wealth. Gee Babs and you think amnesty and H-1B visas for foreign workers is the answer?

"I don't think the California dream, per se, is over. It has become and will continue to become grittier," says New America Foundation senior fellow Gregory Rodriguez. "Now, perhaps, we have to reassess the California of our imagination."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is among those who say the state needs to create itself anew, rebuilding roads, schools and transit.

"We've lived off the investments our parents made in the '50s and '60s for a long time," says Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at California State University, Sacramento. "We're somewhat in the position of a Rust Belt state in the 1970s."

Financial adviser Barry Hartz lived in California for 60 years and once ran for state Assembly before relocating with his wife last year to Colorado Springs, Colo., where his son's family had moved.

"The saddest thing I saw was the escalation of home prices to the point our kids, when they got married, could not live in the community where they lived and grew up," Hartz says. "Some people call that progress."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479704,00.html

I just wonder who our gov't will tax when we have all left the states ( that especially support the illegals) or even the country?

My concern is that our gov't is going to close the borders to us to make us stay here because so many Americans are dis-gruntled.

I am not sure what countries are better off economically these days. And the illegals problem seems to have crept into many nations.

Does anyone on the post know what countries offer safety, job oppotunities, and freedom ( like we used to have here?)

Let the rich elitists and CA governments take care of the undocumented immigrants. Give no federal dollars to them.

Lou Dobbs was discussing this last night on CNN. I wish they would just come out and say it - CALIFORNIA WAS RUINED BY ILLEGAL ALIENS. It is nothing but an extension of Mexico.

Originally Posted by butterbean

Lou Dobbs was discussing this last night on CNN. I wish they would just come out and say it - CALIFORNIA WAS RUINED BY ILLEGAL ALIENS. It is nothing but an extension of Mexico.

It was very clever. In the 1800s there were even proposals to partition the state of California so that Hispanics could have their own portion of the US, but this way the illegals have gotten much, much more in terms of welfare, medical care, schooling, government grants and jobs.

The last thing radical Mexican separatists want is for Southern California to revert to Mexico. They know they would lose so much money and influence. So they play the race card and the poor, oppressed "La Raza" card knowing that this is where the wealth is. There are alot of the "poor pitiful me, we are just poor Mexicans" in the university system who get tax-payer funded grants, and look at the Hollywood system. The last thing these new Left-wing millionaires want is for the scumbags in Mexico's failed government to come after their bank accounts.

If they give them legal status that will give them the right to take any job they want. Higher paying and paying taxes. So once again the American citizen and the legal immigrant (law-abiding people) get it in the back. I hope Chuck DeVore hits this and hits it big on the campaign trail.

I would love to get out of here too. Too expensive, too crowded, too liberal, etc.

That is why I left....and just in time...

Glad for those of you who are proud to state you have left and were able to.

Not all of us are able to.

Do look forward to someday leaving.

Was once so proud of this state but those days are gone and can't see them ever returning.

Originally Posted by jean

Glad for those of you who are proud to state you have left and were able to.

Not all of us are able to.

Do look forward to someday leaving.

Was once so proud of this state but those days are gone and can't see them ever returning.

And I will be right behind you Jean, as soon as I am able. It is not easy to leave since I have been here all my life. But it appears that the state that I grew up in ...just no longer exists.