Why so many citizens are fleeing the Golden State

By Corrin Rankin

It was recently reported that over half of California’s voters have considered leaving the Golden State. While this may be good news for neighboring states who will gladly take the workers we paid to educate, this brain drain is horrible news for the future of California.

There are many issues and circumstances that have contributed to citizens fleeing California for states like Texas. California’s unaffordable housing has certainly played a leading role in this migration. A recent survey asked California millennials what would cause them to leave the state, and 63 percent of those surveyed pointed to “housing costs and availability” as the main cause.

To make matters worse, California is falling behind when it comes to fixing our states housing problem. Based on data provided by California’s own housing department, the state needs to build 180,000 new housing units per year to keep costs level. Unfortunately, over the last decade, California has averaged less than half of that.

What’s even more alarming is that California policymakers have failed to address one of the root causes of our housing crisis - the myriad of rules and regulations that make it exceedingly difficult to build new housing structures that are needed to keep housing costs low. This includes multiple layers of bureaucratic government approval required to construct new housing. Unfortunately, many of the policies that our lawmakers have put in place to improve housing costs have backfired, with California’s latest rent control law serving as a clear example of this.

In addition to housing costs driving citizens out of our state, burdensome regulations and other failed policies implemented by lawmakers have led to many business’s leaving for states with “better business climates.”

Instead of promoting policies that drive people and business’s away from California, one would presume that lawmakers in our state would work to promote a friendly environment for people and business’s to excel. Instead, policymakers in California have implemented an astonishing number of anti-business and anti-worker pieces of legislation.

One example of this can be seen in a bill recently introduced by State Representative Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, which made national headlines for marking California as the first state to reclassify Uber and Lyft drivers. While the goal of ensuring workers are treated right by their employers is noble, the results of this policy will certainly be a lose-lose for the working people of California.

Rideshare workers spoke out before the bill became law to highlight how this change would reduce opportunities for them, meaning less take-home pay for rideshare drivers across the state. This is not to mention the millions of Californians who will see longer wait times and higher prices for their rideshares. And an estimated 6,461 rideshare drivers will be out of work in Lorena Gonzalez’s own district. Increasing the price of transportation in our state and introducing a policy that slash’s jobs is a far cry from the best recruiting tool for encouraging people and businesses to relocate to California.

If you are struggling to understand why Fletcher would introduce this legislation in the first place, we should point out that this is the same Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher who just a few years ago backed the United Farm Workers union bosses’ efforts to silence farmworkers and take 3% of their income. Thankfully, the courts intervened and allowed the farmworkers votes, which decertified the union, to be counted. However, the mere fact that Fletcher, who should be on the side of these farmworkers, would work instead to silence their voices is puzzling to say the least.

And it wasn’t just Fletcher who played a role in this effort. Former state lawmaker Darrell Steinberg, who currently serves as the Mayor of Sacramento, introduced SB-25 while in the California State Senate, a bill that would have pushed these farmworkers into mandatory contracts with the UFW, regardless if these contracts reduced these farmworkers take-home pay. Fortunately, SB-25 did not become law.

California’s minimum wage is another example of California lawmakers supporting a policy that has left businesses struggling to make ends meet. At the start of the year, California’s $12 minimum wage went into effect, and it is scheduled to rise to $15 per hour by 2022. A study by UC Riverside School of Business shows that our minimum wage hikes have already slowed job growth in our once booming restaurant industry.

Whether it’s housing costs and availability, or policies put in place by our lawmakers that are bad for workers and businesses, according to the data our state is clearly heading in the wrong direction. Unless we change course, we can expect to continue to lose some of our best and brightest to other states, and the responsibility for this should be laid at the feet of our elected officials.

Corrin Rankin is the President of Legacy Republican Alliance.