California has seen a population decline of more than 1 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 500,000 people leaving the state between April 2020 and July 2022
California has seen a population decline of more than 1 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 500,000 people leaving between April 2020 and July 2022.
In a state where annual wildfires and treacherous mudslides threaten homes, the population has fallen by just over 508,000 since 2020.
San Francisco and Lassen counties saw the largest population declines, at 7.1 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively.
Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the California Department of Finance, told Sacramento P.I The Golden State’s shrinking population is a reflection of the ongoing housing affordability crisis.
If you talk to demographers, they will say that one factor is the cost of housing. This continued to be a difficult issue for the state.
California has seen a population decline of more than 1 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 500,000 people leaving the state between April 2020 and July 2022. San Francisco becomes a virtual ghost town, seen here in October 2022
Homeless tents are seen along Embarcadero Boulevard during heavy rain in San Francisco earlier this year.
According to the bee, in sacramento – where average household income In 2021 it was $71,047 – requires a house salary of about $145,000 to afford the median-priced home in the area.
There has been an exodus from the city known for its tech industry since the pandemic hit in 2020, and many office spaces have been abandoned.
This means that the city’s streets are becoming increasingly dangerous, with many locals avoiding the downtown sidewalks for fear of a violent confrontation with a bum and drug addict who has seized power.
Carlisle told San Francisco portal, adding, “It’s the high-tech people who are most likely to say, ‘Well, if I could work from anywhere, I’d move somewhere where the cost of housing is 90 percent less. ‘” ”
Since 2020, the city has slipped into a haven for crime, with slash-and-grab thieves breaking into stores and stealing items in broad daylight, homeless people seen doing drugs on the streets — and sometimes students walking home from school.
Homeless tents and homeless people look down on Polk Street near City Hall in San Francisco
The streets of San Francisco – some of the most expensive in the country for taxpayers – are still riddled with human feces and drug needles
This rampant increase in homelessness and crime, Carlyle said, has affected the “surrounding quality of life” that downtown once provided.
To make matters worse, he said, mass layoffs at tech companies have forced middle-class workers to relocate.
However, despite the exodus from the city by the Bay, 19 of California’s 58 counties experienced population growth over the same time period—primarily inland counties with lower housing costs.
The fastest growing county was San Benito County, which is located just south of the Bay Area.
Experts say San Francisco’s growing homelessness problem and open drug markets are driving potential buyers away from the area
In addition, six of the nine fastest-growing counties were in Northern California, in areas around Sacramento, with Amador, Calaveras, San Joaquin, Placer, Yolo, and Yuba County each growing more than 1.5 percent.
The information was drawn from recent US immigration data which shows that while 20 percent of the new residents to these northern inland counties came from nearby Sacramento County, about a third came from the Bay Area.
Outside of Sacramento County, Alameda, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa counties were the top three counties originally for this population at 11%, 6%, and 5%, respectively.
Cheaper housing prices are the main reason people move inland, and the flexibility of remote work has made it easier for them to keep their jobs in the Bay Area while living elsewhere.
“The thing that has changed a lot in California over the past few years is the really impressive cost of housing in California as a whole, but also in the Bay Area in particular,” said Eric McGee, a demographic researcher at the Public Policy Institute. ca to San Francisco Chronicle.
“That would make people want to try and find a cheaper arrangement somewhere, preferably not too far from where they’ve been before if they can help it.”
Last month, the Democratic Mayor of San Francisco, London-Dynasty He said It’s asking for nearly $30 million in additional funding for the city’s police force.
The San Francisco Police Department has faced rising overtime costs for existing officers as the force suffers from a shortage of workers.
Between 2021 and 2022, the department saw a 121 percent increase in total overtime work, according to KPIX.
SFPD officials have also made targeted attempts to tackle crime in some accident-prone pockets of the city.
“We’ve worked hard to address serious public safety challenges in San Francisco, but we need our officers out on the street,” the London Breed said in February.
The San Francisco Police Department is currently short of 541 officers.
“While we work on strategies to address our staffing shortages, we can’t wait to make sure that our officers can provide the basic services our residents deserve and that our prosecutors can hold drug dealers and repeat offenders to account,” Breed said.