Latino families that have moved from California to other states agree that the cost of living, calm, security, and space for children are some of the factors that motivated them to relocate.
Among them are Norma Hernández and her husband Antonio Hernández, who after living in California for 30 years decided to move to the state of Ohio in 2021.
The couple originally from Mexico said they bought their first home in Corona, Riverside County 18 years ago. Because they couldn’t fully afford it, they got together with another family to buy it together.
However, the situation did not improve. Norma drove about an hour to get to her job in the city of Newport Beach. She was constantly looking for ways to avoid traffic including driving at 4:30 in the morning to enter at 6 in the morning.
After visiting relatives in Ohio, Antonio and Norma were encouraged to move permanently to the city of Tallmadge, which has a population of approximately 18,000.
“[En Corona] we refinanced the house and [la otra familia] they gave us what we had and that helped to put down the down payment on the house we bought in Ohio,” said Norma, 52.
The couple moved in with their 14-year-old son. The two oldest chose to stay in California. Norma appreciates the decision and can see the big difference. Now her job is 3 minutes from her home and Antonio works about 20 minutes away.
The mortgage on the house is half of the $1,800 they were paying in Corona.
“We don’t pay for water because we have a well at home and we get our water from there,” Norma said. “But the best thing is that we have our privacy, we can now do what we want without thinking about the other family.”
Best of all, he said, this is the place where they both see themselves spending their retirement years without worrying about the high cost of living.
Millennials adapted
Nancy Gutierrez, 32, moved to Washington state three years ago after marrying her husband Christopher Gutierrez, who already lived there but is also a Los Angeles native.
For this young Millennial, the most difficult thing was leaving the environment of the big metropolis. The Los Angeles native said she was used to going out often to restaurants, bars, hiking and other outdoor activities.
Once she moved and got her job in Washington, she found that there wasn’t much diversity and she was the only Latina. That was a culture shock but over time she got used to it.
She admitted that she has already adjusted to the calmer life in Washington and with a 2-year-old girl and her 9-year-old stepson, she believes that this is a calmer, safer and slower place for her children to grow up in a better environment. .
“I feel like this is the right place for my family,” Gutierrez said. “The neighborhood where we live now is very diverse and has a lot of people who also came from out of state.”
In the past, the couple considered moving back to California, where their relatives live, but house prices were too expensive. Washington has allowed them to own their own home in the city of Puyallup.
Now, Gutierrez said she doesn’t plan to move back to Los Angeles unless when her children grow up they want to attend a college in Los Angeles like USC, the university from which she graduated.
“I don’t miss the weather anymore. I got used to the Washington weather and any temperature above 72 degrees is too hot for me,” she stressed.
the change was worth it
Martha Moreno and her husband lived in Los Angeles and in 2013 they practically decided to “flee” from a city that was causing them more harm than help. They both worked but barely had enough to pay for their one-bedroom apartment and support their three children. The children also had no space to play as the owner lived in the adjacent apartment and did not allow them to go outside. Additionally, they noticed that crime was increasing more and more in the city.
So when they got an opportunity to leave Los Angeles to move to Indiana, they didn’t hesitate.
“My dad came [de Indiana] to visit Los Angeles one weekend and told us that what we paid for an apartment we could get a house there,” recalled Moreno, 35.
Thinking about the well-being of their children and how good the change would do them, the couple did not hesitate and left everything behind to start from scratch in the city of Indianapolis.
“After three months we bought our house in Indianapolis [Indiana]”, Moreno said, which cost them $28,000.
The native of El Salvador said that the most difficult thing was to adapt to the climate that can become too cold in the winter.
However, the family is very happy to have made the transition. Moreno said that two years ago they traveled to Los Angeles to visit relatives and noticed that they no longer miss the big city.
“It is very noisy, there are many people. It’s calmer there,” Moreno said.
He even assured that his 18, 14 and 13-year-old children, despite feeling comfortable with their relatives, did not feel the need to return to Los Angeles.
California loses residents
It’s just a matter of doing a little search on social media like Facebook to find a good number of groups that support people who want to move from California to other states.
This is a topic that has become more common in recent years. People identify the high cost of living and low job opportunities with well-paid wages and/or benefits as problematic.
Although California is considered the most populous state in the nation, it is also the one that is losing the most residents over the years, according to the latest Census data.
California had an estimated population of 39,538,245 on April 1, 2020 and by July 1, 2022 it decreased to 39,029,342.
This is a decline of more than half a million people in two years.
With these data, the predictions made by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) that by 2030 the population of California would reach 44.1 million people no longer seem to be viable.
PPIC demographer Hans Johnson noted in an analysis that the main reason for California’s population loss is that people are moving to other states as seen in previous cases.
Over the years it has been notable that low- and middle-income residents choose other states while the wealthiest continue to flock to the golden state, Johnson explained.
“Most people who move to another state do so for housing, work or family reasons,” the demographer said.
There is also talk that California’s relatively progressive and high personal income tax rates push out higher-income residents.
“The state’s high cost of living, driven almost exclusively by comparatively high housing costs, remains an ongoing public policy challenge, one that needs resolution if the state is to be a place of opportunity for all of its residents,” Johnson said.
California is home to large groups of immigrants from more than 60 countries, and no one race or ethnic group makes up the majority of the state’s population. Since the beginning of the 21st century, growth has slowed.
Growth rates have averaged less than 1% in each of the past 10 years, making this the slowest period of growth in state history.
A study by the Anthem Public Policy Institute indicated that the affordable housing crisis is an ongoing challenge for California, with Californians homeless accounting for more than a quarter of the national total.
The report stresses that California has been dealing with an acute housing crisis. The data indicates an overall shortage of available, affordable rental housing of more than 1.4 million units.
This represents a gap of more than 400,000 units needed for very low-income households and a gap of more than 1 million units for households considered extremely poor.
One of the driving forces behind the lack of affordable housing units is rising rents and the conversion of affordable housing units to market rate units.
Overall, the data indicates that California residents have the highest housing cost burden in the United States, with nearly 42% of households spending more than one-third of their income on housing.
The state also has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country, which has resulted in Californians making up 27% of the nation’s homeless population.
Population increases nationwide
With the slow recovery from the covid-19 pandemic, a Census report revealed that the population of the United States increased by 0.4%, or 1,256,003, in 2022 to 333,287,557.
This occurred after a minimal change between 2020 and 2021.
The 10 most populous states in the country are California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan.
Positive natural change (births minus deaths) increased the population by 245,080.
“There was a significant increase in population growth last year compared to the historically low increase the year before,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer with the Census Bureau’s population division. “Behind this increase is a rebound in net international migration, along with the largest year-on-year increase in total births since 2007.”