26 ms·

California’s population shrinks for third straight year

203 points by theduder99 4y ago

theduder99 4y ago
Births outnumber deaths in California, and yet the U.S. Census Bureau says the population shrank again as more than 300,000 people moved out of the Golden State. The federal agency released these new numbers Thursday showing a third consecutive year of decline. In 2020, California’s population contracted for the first time in state history, a drop that contributed to the state losing a seat in the House of Representatives.
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  Source?
  - shitpostbot 4y ago
    [dead]
  - jfghi 4y ago
    The link
    - Kaibeezy 4y ago
      Aye, I was aware. It should have been in quotes or attributed.
version_five 4y ago
California also has the highest population. I'd be interested the see the "churn %" for each state - the raw numbers are basically meaningless
- trickjarrett 4y ago
  Agreed. It turns out the data they report from actually has that exact thing in it: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-2022/state/totals/NST-EST2022-CHG.xlsx https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-... -- I believe this change rate appears calculated against their 2020 census data and not the estimates from 2022. States with most negative change rate: California (-0.9%), Illinois (-0.8%), Louisiana (-0.8%), West Virginia (-0.6%), Hawaii (-0.5%) Five most positive change rate: South Dakota (1.5%), Texas (1.6%), South Carolina (1.7%), Idaho (1.8%), Florida (1.9%) Interestingly three states did not have enough change to register: Kansas, Michigan and Vermont.
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    It would also be interesting to see churn rates. A place could be stable count wise, but actually turning over people fast and running out of suckers (kinda like Amazon warehouse employee base)
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  It’s worse than meaningless, it’s misleading. Also, that’s not the title I’m seeing when I click the link, it’s — California’s population shrinks for third straight year as high costs stress households — which is a lot less editorial.
  - fundad 4y ago
    It’s almost like price influences demand. How does the home price growth rates compare between CA and the states Californians move to?
- deleted 4y ago
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- mch82 4y ago
  This chart summarizes % change by state. CA population change is in the middle band and doesn’t seem particularly notable. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/percent-change-state-population.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/perc...
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    The second lowest of five bands is not “the middle band”. I would agree that it is not particularly notable; a lot of the headlines are “look at the big numerator and ignore the big denominator, because narrative agenda”.
    - mch82 4y ago
      My comment about CA being in the middle band assumes the states were divided into 5 quantiles, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile, and that the upper (>=1.10%) and lower (<=-0.50%) quantiles are the extremes.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
California is a great state in many ways, but it'd be a stretch to say it's even half assed a solution to its housing problem: they've quarter assed it at most. And it does someone no good for a state to be great in many ways if they can't afford to live there. The situation has been dire for some time, but all they do are small incremental steps towards building more housing, it's nowhere close to what's necessary. Unfortunately, the NIMBY, anti-housing sentiment is very strong.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  California has not even ¼-assed it. The governor stated in 2018 that we were short 3.5 million homes, which might be approximately correct or at least in the ballpark, and as a state we were going to build them by 2025. That pace should have been 2 million homes by now, but only about 350k units were actually built.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    So that's... 1/10... Deciassed?
    - verst 4y ago
      More like deciassed :)
      - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
        I didn't try to 1984 you there, I just caught it independently :)
  - jmspring 4y ago
    Where does one build 3.5 million houses? The housing needs to be where jobs / etc, are. It should also be where resources are. A good deal of the state has water issues regularly; additional part of the state can't keep the power on due to - heat waves, fires, over use, winds, cats farting. The rural county I live in has open jobs, but a sizeable chunk of the work force is either seasonal (logging, etc) then coast on unemployment for the off season or don't actually want to work. Those that do, are flaky as all get go. (My partner and I own a small business in the county). What does this have to do with housing? Covid and growth of a near by metro area (about an hour away) have pushed people to buying up what was previously cheap (yet affordable) housing. Small cabins that would be going for ~75k or a bit more 7 years ago are pushing over $200k now. The local community college as well as natural disasters further puts pressure on the housing situation. How about building more? Well, insuring housing when large fires have come through? Hard to come by. Building costs have also gone through the roof. Housing is needed in this particular county (and surrounding) but isn't being built. Where does housing for 3.5 million get built?
deleted 4y ago
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kindatrue 4y ago
Not surprising when you look at California's home prices. The median home sold from Marin County to Santa Clara County is $1M+. That's the same land mass as from Times Square to the Maryland border. https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1440035534693232640 https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1440035534693232640 California is NIMBYism at its worst: the far left opposes more housing, the far right opposes more housing, and the center is sick of traffic from more housing.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Also explains why Texas is growing the quickest. It turns out that population is basically the integral of new home starts. Who could have predicted this, except every YIMBY I know who has been screaming about this for 25+ years?
  - ryanSrich 4y ago
    Yeah crazy to think that people like cheap houses and no income tax /s. But in all seriousness. The ROI on California taxes has to be one of the worst deals in the country. I can’t think of another state (maybe NY) that does so little with so much.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      California sits right at the national average for state and local revenue per capita. The real high-tax states are places like NY, NJ, CT, and MA.
      - ryanSrich 4y ago
        I’m not talking about tax burden, I’m talking about tax ROI. Essentially what you get in return for your taxes. You could argue that Texas is objectively a worse state to live in tax-wise because you essentially get nothing in return for your taxes. Not even a fully functioning power grid (that you still have to pay usage rates for). So tax rates are low, but return on what you do pay is even lower. But I’m talking about California. They have high tax rates across the board, certainly not the highest as you’ve pointed out. However, even with high rates, the citizenry gets almost nothing in return.
deleted 4y ago
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ww520 4y ago
Unpopular opinion. It’s ok to have outbound migration. California has close to 40 millions people. That’s more than lots of countries out there.
- brutusborn 4y ago
  I agree. I’m confused when I hear about calls to “address” the issue. People leaving isn’t a problem, the real problems are the reasons people move away.
  - baeaz 4y ago
    They don't mean someone should put a fence to stop people from leaving obviously.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      "Relax," said the night man "We are programmed to receive, you can check out any time you like but you can never leave"
      - bombcar 4y ago
        We had this same thing before and Seattle residents used to call the people moving in from down south Californicators.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Nothing wrong with decreasing population, but when your richest citizens are leaving, and poor migrants are coming in, then you start having fiscal problems, particularly for a state that has decided to fund itself with income and sales taxes rather than property taxes. Another reason why property tax is a more stable funding source -- unlike income, you can't take it with you. There is a whole list of reforms that California needs to undertake to recognize the new reality it's in, and shifting itself to being funded primarily by property taxes is one of the biggest necessary changes. The second biggest change is significantly scaling back spending and decreasing its vast administrative bureaucracies.
deleted 4y ago
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rectang 4y ago
The title has been editorialized in contravention of HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
NHQ 4y ago
You might think this translates to less population congestion, but the reality is they want to raise rents and pack 4-8 immigrants or migrant laborers where previously one or two people lived. The wealth of California is dependent on cheap labor to obtain. They would have to sell if even the leaf blower guy was paid real wages. Rich and poor only, no mids.
friedman23 4y ago
People are doing the math. If you make enough money in California you pay 10% of your income in taxes. First of all, what do you get from that 10% you pay that don't get in other states with lower or no income taxes? For the people paying the taxes the answer is not much. People also fail to account for the fact that the 10% they are paying is 10% of their GROSS income, not net after federal taxes. So if you are already paying 30% of your income in taxes that 10% can be a material increase in the quality of your life. It's the equivalent of receiving 16% more net income. Also subtract what you pay in increased food prices and increased housing costs you will be saving much much more by leaving CA. People in California seem to believe that other parts of the country with lower taxes are hell on earth, they aren't. When I moved to San Francisco, I had many conversations with people denigrating my home state of Florida. In retrospect I can see this for what it was, a coping mechanism for having to live in such a terrible place and pay an absurd amount of money for the privilege of doing so. The reason California has seen such economic success can be attributed to proximity to the fastest growing economies and largest manufacturing hubs in the past 30 years and a little luck. If you really need to live on the west coast, Washington state is a much better option.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  People inflate the amount of state income tax they have to pay in California. Yes the rates are high but so are the deductions. Some years ago I had to deal with California income tax for various reasons. I think at that time you had to earn over 50K to hit 9% marginal. In my state you hit that at about 16K. And this is after deductions where California had a ton more. I believe one needed an income of over 100K before the amount they paid in taxes exceeded that of my state.
  - friedman23 4y ago
    I think overall taxes are undercounted in California because the state taxes absolutely everything. California has the highest income tax and highest sales tax in the US. Throw in the grocery bag taxes, and all the other random taxes in that state you are just paying an absurd amount for nothing.
hellisothers 4y ago
This is “gross” decline, the backing data has a “net” migration of -113k. NY actually had a much higher net decline at -180k which translates to a 3x higher decline as a percentage (0.9% vs 0.3%). This isn’t necessarily a CA thing as people keep positioning it, it’s a high taxes among other things (like housing, and high mobility)
- TheBlight 4y ago
  cough covid response cough
  - irrational 4y ago
    Not sure why you are being downvoted. I live in Oregon and know of at least 15 families that moved to Idaho, Arizona, Texas, etc. because they didn’t like Oregon’s approach to Covid.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  California has had a net decline to domestic (intra-US) migration for quite some time; pre-COVID, it was more than compensated by international immigration.
- screye 4y ago
  NY is harder to measure, since families move to CT and NJ all the time. Jersey city has massively ramped up development and is filling demand generated by families who want to move out of their NYC shoebox. The entire NJ-PATH route has been expanding rapidly the last decade or so. Actually, 8/10 of NY state's biggest cities (barring Syracuse, Rochester) are within a commute distance from neighboring states/countries. Although the bottom 9 combined, add up to 10% of NYC's population. So they don't really matter.
- danielscrubs 4y ago
  Well CA might have the best jobs in the world & great weather , for people to move away from there speaks mountains about the issues plaguing the city.
- 4y ago
wysewun 4y ago
Moved from the bay to Texas because of everything i heard. It was such a horrible experience. The heat, the bugs, the lack of density. So few days of good weather. Maybe worth it to some, but a bigger house was not worth it to me at all. We moved back in 6 months. So many people want to live in California which causes more issues
- e10jc 4y ago
  Sounds like me! I'm moving back to CA after ~2 years in Dallas. I didn't hate Dallas, but my fiancee does. But yeah the weather is awful: 115 degree summers, below-freezing winters.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmugan 4y ago
    It's hot, but 115-degree summers is an exaggeration. The high is usually around 100 degrees (still too hot, of course). I do much prefer the weather in California.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      The heat index in South Texas is regularly pushing the one-teens. It's why I'll probably move away one day despite having lived here my whole life.
      - nonethewiser 4y ago
        Ok, but the heat index is not the temperature
  - lightedman 4y ago
    Here in SoCal the other year we were almost hitting 118 in August (killed almost all of my potted succulents, baked the roots) and that's BEFORE including the concrete factor. I'm a Texas native. The temps in Texas are nothing like what California gets. On the other hand, the rockhounding is far, FAR better out here in Cali. But you aren't doing that in the summer. You could do that in Texas in the summer out in the Llano uplift region.
dang 4y ago
Please don't editorialize titles. The submitted title ("340k people moved out of CA in 2022, most of any state") was misleading, as hellisothers pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119430). "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
zjp 4y ago
My big hope for WFH was that it would allow all the people who don't even like the Bay Area to finally leave and bring rents down (reducing demand being the only other way besides building to reduce rents).
mensetmanusman 4y ago
The CA government has a budget the size of Finland’s GDP ($250B), if they wanted to fix the housing issue, they could. But not enough people do want it fixed because they are trapped with their real estate investment which they can’t adored to have decrease in value.
- 10x_contrarian 4y ago
  San Francisco's budget for homelessness is over 500 million per year. If that isn't enough money to address the problem in one city we clearly need radically different solutions.
- dmix 4y ago
  The housing problem isn't a money problem, it's almost entirely laws/policy issues. There's already a mountain of private capital ready and consumer demand that the moment laws let them build they will, regardless of gov $ investment.
  - danny_codes 4y ago
    100%. Land use policy in CA (and the US more generally) is insane. Suburbia/car-dependency is a terrifically bad policy decision that CA _heavily_ bought into. We may need to wait for the boomers to die out a bit more before we can fix it.
strangattractor 4y ago
Obviously click bait title - comes out once per month - usually FoxNews. But I whole heartedly encourage people to leave. Housing is expensive - earthquakes - liberals ick. Much better in Texas. You can own whatever gun you want. Want to shoot animals - Texas has hogs galore - you can hire a helicopter and shoot the from the air. Life couldn't get much better:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ir6LDRH7J0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ir6LDRH7J0
mgraczyk 4y ago
I moved to Texas during the pandemic, primarily because I didn't want to live in a city with heavy lockdowns or with most people risk averse. I think it's great that different cities had different responses, but my preference was to live somewhere that chose normal life over preventing the spread. I moved back at the beginning of 2022 though, primarily because SF had reopened enough. I suspect that there are many people like me, although I also suspect that this change is not going to reverse any time soon.
renlo 4y ago
How smug are Californians that those who always disagree with them always “must be Republicans”? They really said people are leaving the state because of “political reasons” (ie, “they’re Republicans, aka, ‘non-regrettable attrition’”)? Couldn’t be all of the other reasons could it. I say this as a California native who left for a litany of reasons, last of them being the politics.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  What are you on about? What is this in response to? Please comment on the article, not your personal biases.
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    The quotation marks are misleading, as they do not appear in the story or comments.
- foreverCarlos 4y ago
  The only people I know personally who left California in the last 2-3 years were pretty apolitical but definitely left-leaning socially. Around a dozen of them. All left due to the cost of living, none were ever "accused" of being republican. To me it sounds like you are mostly regurgitating some toxic Twitter-talk.
  - usednet 4y ago
    I've lived in the Bay Area for my entire life and am considering leaving only because it's not progressive enough. The Bay and most of California is only progressive on inconsequential social issues. Housing? Homelessness? Fucking Houston Texas is more progressive than us. Frankly, I blame the venture capitalists. They have turned what was once a vibrant region I loved into a soulless husk of itself though money. Our local politics have become unbearaable. Anything that would slightly impact a VC donor is immediately shot down.
    - tvaughan 4y ago
plussed_reader 4y ago
What was the name of the group that out purchased the SacBee?
SecurityMinded 4y ago
I am glad to be a part of this trend in 2022. Good bye Californian suckers. Hello Texas. No more mooching off of my money, handing it to illegal aliens.
- mempko 4y ago
  Global warming is going to mess up your fun. Texas will eventually become unlivable. Not that California will fair much better...
- fundad 4y ago
  Thanks for narrowing the gap between income tax contributions from CA and TX by bringing your earning power to TX.
Animats 4y ago
So when do rents and house prices go down?
- fundad 4y ago
  Decades ago because this panic is old.
- ProAm 4y ago
  You're focusing on the wrong thing. If you focus on your salary going up it fixes both problems.
diogenescynic 4y ago
Quality of life goes down every year here and it becomes more lawless feeling. There are rampant homeless camps in most big cities--Oakland looks worse than a third world country. I can't even imagine running a small business here and what a nightmare it would be.
mch82 4y ago
Here’s a US Census chart of population change across all 50 states (shown as percent of population). It sounds like a lot of people, but as a percentage of total population it doesn’t seem like California is particularly notable. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/percent-change-state-population.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/perc...
_8j50 4y ago
I hope less people live there, too crowded. Making western nevada and much of the mojave habitable would go a long way. Artificial rivers and lakes, importing sand and desalination (at scale to develop more sustainable water systems not on its own) and bullet trains would be ideal. The money and tech is there just not the collective will. Places like Parhump NV, Bishop CA and Reno,NV have huge potentia as population centers. It's so nice there from the mojave to the eastern sierra range and tahoe. Bullet train connecting these areas to PNW and coastal CA plus more water is needed. Why wouldn't you live the towns I mentioned above if LA and SF are 1-2 hours away at most and Seattle is half a day away at most even from LA?
- danny_codes 4y ago
  This seems like a bad idea. Cali is not very dense, most of it is suburban sprawl. The bay would be much more livable if it was 5x as dense.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    The bay is the most expensive real estate in the US, coastal CA in general is already impossible to develop new grand things because if NIMBYism and the coastal commission. Let's say that wasn't a problem, how much would it cost to replace a few acres of single family housing in the bay area with high-rise apartment? Now imagine doing that a lot more. Now take that money and imagine how much you could do in the places I mentioned. To solve housing for millions, there simply is no realistic way anytime in the next few decades in coastal CA that is both profitable, can get past local law and scales enough to actually solve any problem and of course a ton of money would need to be available all while risking bad decisions by anti-development parties. It's simply easier to build where there is a small number of people and wide undeveloped land.
nikolay 4y ago
It should and will continue to! Paying $3,200+ for a 2-bedroom is insane!
- ProAm 4y ago
  Ocean front property
- fragmede 4y ago
  It is, but yesterday's high in SF was 55° with a low of 48°. LA's high was 83 and a low of 54. Global climate change will probably turn our summers super toasty, but this past week's bomb cyclone makes me grateful I'm living here. Not sure it's worth $3.2k for a 2 bed, but I'll take the good things I can get.
  - nikolay 4y ago
    How about the poor air quality?
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Like I said, I'll take whatever upsides exist. Wildfire season this year was mercifully light, so that's good. Thanks to other goings on in the world I have a stockpile of N95 filtration masks, but California takes emissions so seriously that auto manufacturers make special versions of their cars to sell here, which has alleviated the LA smog problems from the 90's. But I don't know that air quality is something that most Californian's live in fear of. I was the outlier 3 years ago for wearing an N95 during wildfire season.
deleted 4y ago
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rmk 4y ago
Hardly surprising, considering that the state has failed massively to tackle homelessness and is perpetually on the edge of ecological ruin. Massive, long-lasting drought that may turn the most fertile soil in perhaps the entire world into a dustbowl, and failure to bury power lines + casual arson causing massive wildfires that regularly burn down lots of property. Of course, this doesn't even account for the major problem that will ruin the entire west, which is the rapidly shrinking Colorado river and its watersheds. The law and order situation in the cities is also poor, and open drug use has turned LA, SF and Oakland into urban hellscapes that are an eyesore. The entire country is in a phase of migration to the south. Westward migration continues but the main trend is migration to the South which is relatively unencumbered by wacko environmental regulation prone to abuse and a lower tolerance toward crime. Also has a better water situation I suppose and overall courteous and friendly people also.
- jayd16 4y ago
  So are you saying the homeless are leaving or the homed are leaving because of the homeless? I mean, it sounds like you're throwing a lot at the wall but I can't piece together a narrative other than you think California sucks?
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
I just had a massive realization and I want to start sharing it around. It's funny that this happened to be on the front page at the same time I think we're at a major inflection point in society and need to make some MASSIVE intentional changes to how we live https://kemendo.com/blog/TEOTWAWKI.html https://kemendo.com/blog/TEOTWAWKI.html
ggm 4y ago
At 300k to 400k, how many could be accounted for by lockdown/student effects? Australia where I live is 26m down by similar order of magnitude that many due to insufficient in migration, and drops on tertiary students from overseas. (Queensland, my home state which is very like California according to some, is a net inwards growing population. People like Sunshine and beaches) How much is net decline by excess deaths? Probably a low 20k-30k figure (based on AU excess mortality. Web says 28k), but perhaps CA population had excess older demographic Sunbird type people and they relocated? It would also cut across all classes. I wonder how much is work forced translocation, by the company more than the individual. If Boeing (bad example I know given its Seattle not Los Vegas, so ignore the out of state issue please) stopped an entire line but jobs open up on the east coast for other production lines then internal relocate is cheaper than hire local sometimes. The Californian economy is huge. Is it maybe moving to fintech and IPR with labour cost out of state?
janalsncm 4y ago
I like California a lot but with the cost of housing what it is I know I’ll probably never put down roots. We can talk policy this and that until our heads are spinning but at the end of the day I need to live my life. I have my eye on Chicago. There’s always something going on, it’s very multicultural, and housing is extremely affordable.
- TedShiller 4y ago
  > I have my eye on Chicago. There’s always something going on You're right about that part
- Blammar 4y ago
  You'll have your frozen balls in Chicago, too. I remember a Sun-Times cover when I was in grad school saying: WIND CHILL TODAY -89F!!
  - fundad 4y ago
    Pleasant weather has become a luxury good
nonethewiser 4y ago
California is great. It's a shame about the people though.
- givemeethekeys 4y ago
  Same great state, now with fewer people! :)
vt85 4y ago
[dead]
gala8y 4y ago
Very interesting interview packed with demographics' science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg
SergeAx 4y ago
My friends from IT sector left California exactly two years ago (just saw their memories on Facebook). There were a group of six. They did it on a private jet. There was no comment about housing prices, only about, I quote, "crazy commies took over the beautiful state". I don't know a lot about California politics, but maybe housing crisis is just a symptom of something more?
- fundad 4y ago
  That’s the most 2020 thing
ianai 4y ago
My suspicion is the housing market sorely needs investment forcefully pushed out of single family housing and (maybe/less convinced) cooperative apartment complexes forcefully pushed into market. There’s a single cooperative in my entire state and they’ve stopped taking applications due to the wait list. In any event, it’ll be interesting to see what the end of this decade and beginning of the next looks like as the Boomer held homes start to open up. Will the population demographics change to need fewer or more homes? (Btw, that is altogether way too long to wait.) I tried to bootstrap the rent/mortgage trade off discussion to some older gen-Zers and millennials at work recently. Couldn’t get far at all until I got talked over about the financial superiority of owning. Frustrating times.
egberts1 4y ago
By the next decade, at this rate, California will lose 5 more of those representative seats to the U.S. House. Furthermore, California rural areas will be even more severely, disproportionately UNDER-represented.
b20000 4y ago
California is a beautiful place and I love living there. My experience as an immigrant has highlighted a number of problems though that nobody talks about. It is an extremely expensive place to have a normal quality lifestyle. People endlessly ghost you, waste your time, burn you out and burn your money, trick you with their fake friendlyness. Everyone has a game plan that you only find out later. It is much less open to immigrants and diversity than you think. It is much less likely you will be funded than you think. It is much less certain someone will take a chance with you than you think. In silicon valley people have a very narrow mindset about building businesses and are clueless about what is happening elsewhere and what is worth funding and what not. California mostly seems to run on marketing. Living in an expensive place is no problem IF companies are willing to give you business or a high paying job. Unfortunately because of the endless ghosting and fakeness all your savings might be gone before you start making money. I think this is the real problem of California. I have had very few people hand me opportunities here, so the “taking chances” and “risk taking” seems to be long gone or maybe that’s done only when they already know you for many years which basically means that nepotism is a major factor in success. I still love California and I’m thankful I’m here. But the cost combined with slow speed of doing business and making decisions resulting in real income are a problem. It basically means you already need to be semi rich which is really not what the spirit of silicon valley should be.

203 points by theduder99 4y ago

Births outnumber deaths in California, and yet the U.S. Census Bureau says the population shrank again as more than 300,000 people moved out of the Golden State. The federal agency released these new numbers Thursday showing a third consecutive year of decline. In 2020, California’s population contracted for the first time in state history, a drop that contributed to the state losing a seat in the House of Representatives.

Kaibeezy 4y ago
Source?
- shitpostbot 4y ago
  [dead]
- jfghi 4y ago
  The link
  - Kaibeezy 4y ago
    Aye, I was aware. It should have been in quotes or attributed.

version_five 4y ago

California also has the highest population. I'd be interested the see the "churn %" for each state - the raw numbers are basically meaningless

trickjarrett 4y ago
Agreed. It turns out the data they report from actually has that exact thing in it: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-2022/state/totals/NST-EST2022-CHG.xlsx https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/tables/2020-... -- I believe this change rate appears calculated against their 2020 census data and not the estimates from 2022. States with most negative change rate: California (-0.9%), Illinois (-0.8%), Louisiana (-0.8%), West Virginia (-0.6%), Hawaii (-0.5%) Five most positive change rate: South Dakota (1.5%), Texas (1.6%), South Carolina (1.7%), Idaho (1.8%), Florida (1.9%) Interestingly three states did not have enough change to register: Kansas, Michigan and Vermont.
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  It would also be interesting to see churn rates. A place could be stable count wise, but actually turning over people fast and running out of suckers (kinda like Amazon warehouse employee base)
Kaibeezy 4y ago
It’s worse than meaningless, it’s misleading. Also, that’s not the title I’m seeing when I click the link, it’s — California’s population shrinks for third straight year as high costs stress households — which is a lot less editorial.
- fundad 4y ago
  It’s almost like price influences demand. How does the home price growth rates compare between CA and the states Californians move to?
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mch82 4y ago
This chart summarizes % change by state. CA population change is in the middle band and doesn’t seem particularly notable. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/percent-change-state-population.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/perc...
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  The second lowest of five bands is not “the middle band”. I would agree that it is not particularly notable; a lot of the headlines are “look at the big numerator and ignore the big denominator, because narrative agenda”.
  - mch82 4y ago
    My comment about CA being in the middle band assumes the states were divided into 5 quantiles, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantile, and that the upper (>=1.10%) and lower (<=-0.50%) quantiles are the extremes.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

California is a great state in many ways, but it'd be a stretch to say it's even half assed a solution to its housing problem: they've quarter assed it at most. And it does someone no good for a state to be great in many ways if they can't afford to live there. The situation has been dire for some time, but all they do are small incremental steps towards building more housing, it's nowhere close to what's necessary. Unfortunately, the NIMBY, anti-housing sentiment is very strong.

jeffbee 4y ago
California has not even ¼-assed it. The governor stated in 2018 that we were short 3.5 million homes, which might be approximately correct or at least in the ballpark, and as a state we were going to build them by 2025. That pace should have been 2 million homes by now, but only about 350k units were actually built.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  So that's... 1/10... Deciassed?
  - verst 4y ago
    More like deciassed :)
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      I didn't try to 1984 you there, I just caught it independently :)
- jmspring 4y ago
  Where does one build 3.5 million houses? The housing needs to be where jobs / etc, are. It should also be where resources are. A good deal of the state has water issues regularly; additional part of the state can't keep the power on due to - heat waves, fires, over use, winds, cats farting. The rural county I live in has open jobs, but a sizeable chunk of the work force is either seasonal (logging, etc) then coast on unemployment for the off season or don't actually want to work. Those that do, are flaky as all get go. (My partner and I own a small business in the county). What does this have to do with housing? Covid and growth of a near by metro area (about an hour away) have pushed people to buying up what was previously cheap (yet affordable) housing. Small cabins that would be going for ~75k or a bit more 7 years ago are pushing over $200k now. The local community college as well as natural disasters further puts pressure on the housing situation. How about building more? Well, insuring housing when large fires have come through? Hard to come by. Building costs have also gone through the roof. Housing is needed in this particular county (and surrounding) but isn't being built. Where does housing for 3.5 million get built?

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kindatrue 4y ago

Not surprising when you look at California's home prices. The median home sold from Marin County to Santa Clara County is $1M+. That's the same land mass as from Times Square to the Maryland border. https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1440035534693232640 https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1440035534693232640 California is NIMBYism at its worst: the far left opposes more housing, the far right opposes more housing, and the center is sick of traffic from more housing.

jeffbee 4y ago
Also explains why Texas is growing the quickest. It turns out that population is basically the integral of new home starts. Who could have predicted this, except every YIMBY I know who has been screaming about this for 25+ years?
- ryanSrich 4y ago
  Yeah crazy to think that people like cheap houses and no income tax /s. But in all seriousness. The ROI on California taxes has to be one of the worst deals in the country. I can’t think of another state (maybe NY) that does so little with so much.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    California sits right at the national average for state and local revenue per capita. The real high-tax states are places like NY, NJ, CT, and MA.
    - ryanSrich 4y ago
      I’m not talking about tax burden, I’m talking about tax ROI. Essentially what you get in return for your taxes. You could argue that Texas is objectively a worse state to live in tax-wise because you essentially get nothing in return for your taxes. Not even a fully functioning power grid (that you still have to pay usage rates for). So tax rates are low, but return on what you do pay is even lower. But I’m talking about California. They have high tax rates across the board, certainly not the highest as you’ve pointed out. However, even with high rates, the citizenry gets almost nothing in return.

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ww520 4y ago

Unpopular opinion. It’s ok to have outbound migration. California has close to 40 millions people. That’s more than lots of countries out there.

brutusborn 4y ago
I agree. I’m confused when I hear about calls to “address” the issue. People leaving isn’t a problem, the real problems are the reasons people move away.
- baeaz 4y ago
  They don't mean someone should put a fence to stop people from leaving obviously.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    "Relax," said the night man "We are programmed to receive, you can check out any time you like but you can never leave"
    - bombcar 4y ago
      We had this same thing before and Seattle residents used to call the people moving in from down south Californicators.
rsj_hn 4y ago
Nothing wrong with decreasing population, but when your richest citizens are leaving, and poor migrants are coming in, then you start having fiscal problems, particularly for a state that has decided to fund itself with income and sales taxes rather than property taxes. Another reason why property tax is a more stable funding source -- unlike income, you can't take it with you. There is a whole list of reforms that California needs to undertake to recognize the new reality it's in, and shifting itself to being funded primarily by property taxes is one of the biggest necessary changes. The second biggest change is significantly scaling back spending and decreasing its vast administrative bureaucracies.

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rectang 4y ago

The title has been editorialized in contravention of HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

NHQ 4y ago

You might think this translates to less population congestion, but the reality is they want to raise rents and pack 4-8 immigrants or migrant laborers where previously one or two people lived. The wealth of California is dependent on cheap labor to obtain. They would have to sell if even the leaf blower guy was paid real wages. Rich and poor only, no mids.

friedman23 4y ago

People are doing the math. If you make enough money in California you pay 10% of your income in taxes. First of all, what do you get from that 10% you pay that don't get in other states with lower or no income taxes? For the people paying the taxes the answer is not much. People also fail to account for the fact that the 10% they are paying is 10% of their GROSS income, not net after federal taxes. So if you are already paying 30% of your income in taxes that 10% can be a material increase in the quality of your life. It's the equivalent of receiving 16% more net income. Also subtract what you pay in increased food prices and increased housing costs you will be saving much much more by leaving CA. People in California seem to believe that other parts of the country with lower taxes are hell on earth, they aren't. When I moved to San Francisco, I had many conversations with people denigrating my home state of Florida. In retrospect I can see this for what it was, a coping mechanism for having to live in such a terrible place and pay an absurd amount of money for the privilege of doing so. The reason California has seen such economic success can be attributed to proximity to the fastest growing economies and largest manufacturing hubs in the past 30 years and a little luck. If you really need to live on the west coast, Washington state is a much better option.

BeetleB 4y ago
People inflate the amount of state income tax they have to pay in California. Yes the rates are high but so are the deductions. Some years ago I had to deal with California income tax for various reasons. I think at that time you had to earn over 50K to hit 9% marginal. In my state you hit that at about 16K. And this is after deductions where California had a ton more. I believe one needed an income of over 100K before the amount they paid in taxes exceeded that of my state.
- friedman23 4y ago
  I think overall taxes are undercounted in California because the state taxes absolutely everything. California has the highest income tax and highest sales tax in the US. Throw in the grocery bag taxes, and all the other random taxes in that state you are just paying an absurd amount for nothing.

hellisothers 4y ago

This is “gross” decline, the backing data has a “net” migration of -113k. NY actually had a much higher net decline at -180k which translates to a 3x higher decline as a percentage (0.9% vs 0.3%). This isn’t necessarily a CA thing as people keep positioning it, it’s a high taxes among other things (like housing, and high mobility)

TheBlight 4y ago
cough covid response cough
- irrational 4y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted. I live in Oregon and know of at least 15 families that moved to Idaho, Arizona, Texas, etc. because they didn’t like Oregon’s approach to Covid.
dragonwriter 4y ago
California has had a net decline to domestic (intra-US) migration for quite some time; pre-COVID, it was more than compensated by international immigration.
screye 4y ago
NY is harder to measure, since families move to CT and NJ all the time. Jersey city has massively ramped up development and is filling demand generated by families who want to move out of their NYC shoebox. The entire NJ-PATH route has been expanding rapidly the last decade or so. Actually, 8/10 of NY state's biggest cities (barring Syracuse, Rochester) are within a commute distance from neighboring states/countries. Although the bottom 9 combined, add up to 10% of NYC's population. So they don't really matter.
danielscrubs 4y ago
Well CA might have the best jobs in the world & great weather , for people to move away from there speaks mountains about the issues plaguing the city.
4y ago

wysewun 4y ago

Moved from the bay to Texas because of everything i heard. It was such a horrible experience. The heat, the bugs, the lack of density. So few days of good weather. Maybe worth it to some, but a bigger house was not worth it to me at all. We moved back in 6 months. So many people want to live in California which causes more issues

e10jc 4y ago
Sounds like me! I'm moving back to CA after ~2 years in Dallas. I didn't hate Dallas, but my fiancee does. But yeah the weather is awful: 115 degree summers, below-freezing winters.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jmugan 4y ago
  It's hot, but 115-degree summers is an exaggeration. The high is usually around 100 degrees (still too hot, of course). I do much prefer the weather in California.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    The heat index in South Texas is regularly pushing the one-teens. It's why I'll probably move away one day despite having lived here my whole life.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      Ok, but the heat index is not the temperature
- lightedman 4y ago
  Here in SoCal the other year we were almost hitting 118 in August (killed almost all of my potted succulents, baked the roots) and that's BEFORE including the concrete factor. I'm a Texas native. The temps in Texas are nothing like what California gets. On the other hand, the rockhounding is far, FAR better out here in Cali. But you aren't doing that in the summer. You could do that in Texas in the summer out in the Llano uplift region.

dang 4y ago

Please don't editorialize titles. The submitted title ("340k people moved out of CA in 2022, most of any state") was misleading, as hellisothers pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119430). "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

zjp 4y ago

My big hope for WFH was that it would allow all the people who don't even like the Bay Area to finally leave and bring rents down (reducing demand being the only other way besides building to reduce rents).

mensetmanusman 4y ago

The CA government has a budget the size of Finland’s GDP ($250B), if they wanted to fix the housing issue, they could. But not enough people do want it fixed because they are trapped with their real estate investment which they can’t adored to have decrease in value.

10x_contrarian 4y ago
San Francisco's budget for homelessness is over 500 million per year. If that isn't enough money to address the problem in one city we clearly need radically different solutions.
dmix 4y ago
The housing problem isn't a money problem, it's almost entirely laws/policy issues. There's already a mountain of private capital ready and consumer demand that the moment laws let them build they will, regardless of gov $ investment.
- danny_codes 4y ago
  100%. Land use policy in CA (and the US more generally) is insane. Suburbia/car-dependency is a terrifically bad policy decision that CA _heavily_ bought into. We may need to wait for the boomers to die out a bit more before we can fix it.

strangattractor 4y ago

Obviously click bait title - comes out once per month - usually FoxNews. But I whole heartedly encourage people to leave. Housing is expensive - earthquakes - liberals ick. Much better in Texas. You can own whatever gun you want. Want to shoot animals - Texas has hogs galore - you can hire a helicopter and shoot the from the air. Life couldn't get much better:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ir6LDRH7J0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ir6LDRH7J0

mgraczyk 4y ago

I moved to Texas during the pandemic, primarily because I didn't want to live in a city with heavy lockdowns or with most people risk averse. I think it's great that different cities had different responses, but my preference was to live somewhere that chose normal life over preventing the spread. I moved back at the beginning of 2022 though, primarily because SF had reopened enough. I suspect that there are many people like me, although I also suspect that this change is not going to reverse any time soon.

renlo 4y ago

How smug are Californians that those who always disagree with them always “must be Republicans”? They really said people are leaving the state because of “political reasons” (ie, “they’re Republicans, aka, ‘non-regrettable attrition’”)? Couldn’t be all of the other reasons could it. I say this as a California native who left for a litany of reasons, last of them being the politics.

RC_ITR 4y ago
What are you on about? What is this in response to? Please comment on the article, not your personal biases.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  The quotation marks are misleading, as they do not appear in the story or comments.
foreverCarlos 4y ago
The only people I know personally who left California in the last 2-3 years were pretty apolitical but definitely left-leaning socially. Around a dozen of them. All left due to the cost of living, none were ever "accused" of being republican. To me it sounds like you are mostly regurgitating some toxic Twitter-talk.
- usednet 4y ago
  I've lived in the Bay Area for my entire life and am considering leaving only because it's not progressive enough. The Bay and most of California is only progressive on inconsequential social issues. Housing? Homelessness? Fucking Houston Texas is more progressive than us. Frankly, I blame the venture capitalists. They have turned what was once a vibrant region I loved into a soulless husk of itself though money. Our local politics have become unbearaable. Anything that would slightly impact a VC donor is immediately shot down.
  - tvaughan 4y ago

plussed_reader 4y ago

What was the name of the group that out purchased the SacBee?

SecurityMinded 4y ago

I am glad to be a part of this trend in 2022. Good bye Californian suckers. Hello Texas. No more mooching off of my money, handing it to illegal aliens.

mempko 4y ago
Global warming is going to mess up your fun. Texas will eventually become unlivable. Not that California will fair much better...
fundad 4y ago
Thanks for narrowing the gap between income tax contributions from CA and TX by bringing your earning power to TX.

Animats 4y ago

So when do rents and house prices go down?

fundad 4y ago
Decades ago because this panic is old.
ProAm 4y ago
You're focusing on the wrong thing. If you focus on your salary going up it fixes both problems.

diogenescynic 4y ago

Quality of life goes down every year here and it becomes more lawless feeling. There are rampant homeless camps in most big cities--Oakland looks worse than a third world country. I can't even imagine running a small business here and what a nightmare it would be.

mch82 4y ago

Here’s a US Census chart of population change across all 50 states (shown as percent of population). It sounds like a lot of people, but as a percentage of total population it doesn’t seem like California is particularly notable. https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/percent-change-state-population.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2022/comm/perc...

_8j50 4y ago

I hope less people live there, too crowded. Making western nevada and much of the mojave habitable would go a long way. Artificial rivers and lakes, importing sand and desalination (at scale to develop more sustainable water systems not on its own) and bullet trains would be ideal. The money and tech is there just not the collective will. Places like Parhump NV, Bishop CA and Reno,NV have huge potentia as population centers. It's so nice there from the mojave to the eastern sierra range and tahoe. Bullet train connecting these areas to PNW and coastal CA plus more water is needed. Why wouldn't you live the towns I mentioned above if LA and SF are 1-2 hours away at most and Seattle is half a day away at most even from LA?

danny_codes 4y ago
This seems like a bad idea. Cali is not very dense, most of it is suburban sprawl. The bay would be much more livable if it was 5x as dense.
- _8j50 4y ago
  The bay is the most expensive real estate in the US, coastal CA in general is already impossible to develop new grand things because if NIMBYism and the coastal commission. Let's say that wasn't a problem, how much would it cost to replace a few acres of single family housing in the bay area with high-rise apartment? Now imagine doing that a lot more. Now take that money and imagine how much you could do in the places I mentioned. To solve housing for millions, there simply is no realistic way anytime in the next few decades in coastal CA that is both profitable, can get past local law and scales enough to actually solve any problem and of course a ton of money would need to be available all while risking bad decisions by anti-development parties. It's simply easier to build where there is a small number of people and wide undeveloped land.

nikolay 4y ago

It should and will continue to! Paying $3,200+ for a 2-bedroom is insane!

ProAm 4y ago
Ocean front property
fragmede 4y ago
It is, but yesterday's high in SF was 55° with a low of 48°. LA's high was 83 and a low of 54. Global climate change will probably turn our summers super toasty, but this past week's bomb cyclone makes me grateful I'm living here. Not sure it's worth $3.2k for a 2 bed, but I'll take the good things I can get.
- nikolay 4y ago
  How about the poor air quality?
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Like I said, I'll take whatever upsides exist. Wildfire season this year was mercifully light, so that's good. Thanks to other goings on in the world I have a stockpile of N95 filtration masks, but California takes emissions so seriously that auto manufacturers make special versions of their cars to sell here, which has alleviated the LA smog problems from the 90's. But I don't know that air quality is something that most Californian's live in fear of. I was the outlier 3 years ago for wearing an N95 during wildfire season.

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rmk 4y ago

Hardly surprising, considering that the state has failed massively to tackle homelessness and is perpetually on the edge of ecological ruin. Massive, long-lasting drought that may turn the most fertile soil in perhaps the entire world into a dustbowl, and failure to bury power lines + casual arson causing massive wildfires that regularly burn down lots of property. Of course, this doesn't even account for the major problem that will ruin the entire west, which is the rapidly shrinking Colorado river and its watersheds. The law and order situation in the cities is also poor, and open drug use has turned LA, SF and Oakland into urban hellscapes that are an eyesore. The entire country is in a phase of migration to the south. Westward migration continues but the main trend is migration to the South which is relatively unencumbered by wacko environmental regulation prone to abuse and a lower tolerance toward crime. Also has a better water situation I suppose and overall courteous and friendly people also.

jayd16 4y ago
So are you saying the homeless are leaving or the homed are leaving because of the homeless? I mean, it sounds like you're throwing a lot at the wall but I can't piece together a narrative other than you think California sucks?

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

I just had a massive realization and I want to start sharing it around. It's funny that this happened to be on the front page at the same time I think we're at a major inflection point in society and need to make some MASSIVE intentional changes to how we live https://kemendo.com/blog/TEOTWAWKI.html https://kemendo.com/blog/TEOTWAWKI.html

ggm 4y ago

At 300k to 400k, how many could be accounted for by lockdown/student effects? Australia where I live is 26m down by similar order of magnitude that many due to insufficient in migration, and drops on tertiary students from overseas. (Queensland, my home state which is very like California according to some, is a net inwards growing population. People like Sunshine and beaches) How much is net decline by excess deaths? Probably a low 20k-30k figure (based on AU excess mortality. Web says 28k), but perhaps CA population had excess older demographic Sunbird type people and they relocated? It would also cut across all classes. I wonder how much is work forced translocation, by the company more than the individual. If Boeing (bad example I know given its Seattle not Los Vegas, so ignore the out of state issue please) stopped an entire line but jobs open up on the east coast for other production lines then internal relocate is cheaper than hire local sometimes. The Californian economy is huge. Is it maybe moving to fintech and IPR with labour cost out of state?

janalsncm 4y ago

I like California a lot but with the cost of housing what it is I know I’ll probably never put down roots. We can talk policy this and that until our heads are spinning but at the end of the day I need to live my life. I have my eye on Chicago. There’s always something going on, it’s very multicultural, and housing is extremely affordable.

TedShiller 4y ago
> I have my eye on Chicago. There’s always something going on You're right about that part
Blammar 4y ago
You'll have your frozen balls in Chicago, too. I remember a Sun-Times cover when I was in grad school saying: WIND CHILL TODAY -89F!!
- fundad 4y ago
  Pleasant weather has become a luxury good

nonethewiser 4y ago

California is great. It's a shame about the people though.

givemeethekeys 4y ago
Same great state, now with fewer people! :)

vt85 4y ago

[dead]

gala8y 4y ago

Very interesting interview packed with demographics' science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNdnlrkx-wg

SergeAx 4y ago

My friends from IT sector left California exactly two years ago (just saw their memories on Facebook). There were a group of six. They did it on a private jet. There was no comment about housing prices, only about, I quote, "crazy commies took over the beautiful state". I don't know a lot about California politics, but maybe housing crisis is just a symptom of something more?

fundad 4y ago
That’s the most 2020 thing

ianai 4y ago

My suspicion is the housing market sorely needs investment forcefully pushed out of single family housing and (maybe/less convinced) cooperative apartment complexes forcefully pushed into market. There’s a single cooperative in my entire state and they’ve stopped taking applications due to the wait list. In any event, it’ll be interesting to see what the end of this decade and beginning of the next looks like as the Boomer held homes start to open up. Will the population demographics change to need fewer or more homes? (Btw, that is altogether way too long to wait.) I tried to bootstrap the rent/mortgage trade off discussion to some older gen-Zers and millennials at work recently. Couldn’t get far at all until I got talked over about the financial superiority of owning. Frustrating times.

egberts1 4y ago

By the next decade, at this rate, California will lose 5 more of those representative seats to the U.S. House. Furthermore, California rural areas will be even more severely, disproportionately UNDER-represented.

b20000 4y ago

California is a beautiful place and I love living there. My experience as an immigrant has highlighted a number of problems though that nobody talks about. It is an extremely expensive place to have a normal quality lifestyle. People endlessly ghost you, waste your time, burn you out and burn your money, trick you with their fake friendlyness. Everyone has a game plan that you only find out later. It is much less open to immigrants and diversity than you think. It is much less likely you will be funded than you think. It is much less certain someone will take a chance with you than you think. In silicon valley people have a very narrow mindset about building businesses and are clueless about what is happening elsewhere and what is worth funding and what not. California mostly seems to run on marketing. Living in an expensive place is no problem IF companies are willing to give you business or a high paying job. Unfortunately because of the endless ghosting and fakeness all your savings might be gone before you start making money. I think this is the real problem of California. I have had very few people hand me opportunities here, so the “taking chances” and “risk taking” seems to be long gone or maybe that’s done only when they already know you for many years which basically means that nepotism is a major factor in success. I still love California and I’m thankful I’m here. But the cost combined with slow speed of doing business and making decisions resulting in real income are a problem. It basically means you already need to be semi rich which is really not what the spirit of silicon valley should be.