CA: The talk in Los Angeles is the talk of getting out (33% want to leave)

The talk in Los Angeles is the talk of getting out In fact, a third of the residents surveyed said they want to move away, up more than 20 percent from 2003. The mood here in the South Bay, however, is slightly rosier.

Fed up with traffic, crime and skyrocketing housing prices, a growing number of Los Angeles County residents say they plan to move away within five years, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Although the mood in the South Bay area was slightly rosier, the report by the Public Policy Institute of California calls the county's 10 million residents "stunningly unhappy with some key indicators of quality of life and paints a picture of growing concern for any chance of long-term recovery."

"I spend all my money on rent," said San Pedro resident Janelle Anderson. "And now with gas prices going up, I'd love to find a cheaper place to live. But it's not that easy to leave your job and family."

The number of residents who plan to leave the county almost doubled in two years. A similar survey in 2003 found that 17 percent of residents did not see themselves staying in the county. The number is now 33 percent.

In fact, more people in the city of Los Angeles say they plan to leave than the 26 percent who voted in the recent mayoral election, said Mark Baldassare, the survey's director.

For Torrance resident Gary Webb, it's the unrelenting traffic that makes him ponder leaving.

"It seems like I'm always in my car," he said. "And it keeps getting worse. I can't go anywhere without getting stuck in traffic."

The third annual survey found traffic, lack of affordable housing and low-performing public schools as reasons for the bleak outlook -- 74 percent of the 2,000 participants said congestion on freeways and main roads was a major problem. Another 64 percent said a lack of affordable housing was a big problem in the county. Both those figures have significantly increased from two years ago, when 67 percent cited traffic woes and 54 percent mentioned housing.

"So many dimensions of people are more negative today," Baldassare said. "The way they rate housing problems, the way they view race relations, and increasing negativity were certainly important things we noted."

In all, 58 percent believe race relations were not so good, compared to 53 percent in 2003. Different races also had varied outlooks. Only 21 percent of blacks -- compared to 50 percent of all residents -- say police in their community treat all racial and ethnic groups fairly most of the time.

But there were some silver linings in the survey. For instance, most residents expect race relations to improve.

"There are areas that have optimism," Baldassare said. "Most people believe race and ethnic relations will improve. And we're seeing improvements in the economy and the general belief that the quality of life is still good."

Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demographics at USC, suggested that the survey include a question about whether people planned to move. He said he was a little surprised at the results, but he also cautioned about reading too much into them.

"It's a little higher than I would expect," he said. "It's not clear people are going to act different. People complain about traffic, but don't leave."

But if people do follow up on their plans to move, it could spell trouble in the future.

"The danger is people will still keep coming, but the ones you want to keep might go away because they've got other choices," he said. "You might be keeping the wrong kinds of people. Middle-class taxpayers might get up and go. That's the key. Who are the ones leaving?"

The survey divided the county into four parts. The area that includes the South Bay -- which stretches from Long Beach to Malibu -- was more optimistic about many trends. While generally unhappy with traffic, two-thirds of the area's residents said things were going well. They also gave the highest rating to the economy (40 percent) and expressed strong approval of local parks (68 percent).

"Some of the optimism in the region reflects the fact that people have good air quality, good job opportunities," Baldassare said. "Many people are in good economic shape compared to other parts of the county."

Well, to be honest, I think we're running out of horses for the year, and we're just about of horses. We're getting a lot of conservatives who are tired of living in Liberalia, so the supply is getting drawn down fast.

That said, yes, here you can purchase all the guns the thumb suckers banned in CA. We don't even have mandatory registration or a state waiting period.

By the way, the horse and gun thing is kind of a joke. It refers to an archaic Texas law that states that a released prisoner, having served his time, at his request must be given a horse, specified provisions, specified clothes, a rifle or shotgun, and 40 rounds for same. The idea was to give the released prisoner a fresh start in life, since he had paid his dues. Few ex-cons chose to become repeat offenders - at least in Texas. (We used to have the two-strikes-and-you're-out idea; first time you go to jail, second time we hang you from the nearest convenient tall object.)

It depends on how you set up and score the surveys. try this one:

The number of Starbucks per square mile. Higher is better.
The amount of rain per year. Higher is better.
Distance to ocean. Smaller is better.
Pachouli oil sales per year. Higher is better.

Versus this one:

The number of pick-up trucks sold. Higher is better.
Number of days of sunshine per year. Higher is better.
Cost of a house per square foot. Smaller is better.
Distance to nearest livestock market. Smaller is better.

The first survey will bias towards Washington and Oregon and against Texas and Arizona. The second one will go the opposite way. Most surveys will be set up to favor the bias of the writers, which since they chose to live where they are based on what they think is "best", will favor their local areas.

Allen and places like it used to be perfectly good small towns. Now, thanks to white flight, Allen is on its way to being just another paved-over stripmall.

What the hell, let's just pave it all over. Who needs grass, trees, and bluebonnets anyway? More donut shops, oil-change places, and Wal-Marts -- that's the secret to happiness, isn't it?

You'd think so. Maybe when the sprawl reaches the Red River, the former residents of Dallas will finally figure out that we should have stayed and fought for our cities. By then it will be too late.

I don't blame you personally. I underatand why you moved to Allen. Real people don't move to Dallas anymore if they can help it. Only druggies, immigrants, preverts, gangbangers, and losers who can't escape still live "in town". To the average American, the cities don't exist anymore. Instead, they move to one of the paved-over prairie "cities" out on the fringes. That's mainstream America. To most people, living in a fringe city on the edge of a decaying metropolis is normal. To most people, exurban living is the only way real people live. Exurbia is Reality.

But it's not. It's a fantasy -- an illusion based upon cheap land, cheap construction, and cheap gas, and made possible only by the existence of immensely-expensive taxpayer-supported freeways. But the cheap gas is gone, and someday the cheap land will all be gone too, and the nice, new freeways will be traffic-clogged and decaying, and the open countryside of exurbia will be covered with the same ugly parking lots, dry cleaners, and dollar stores that the residents left behind in the Old Place. When that fantasy finally evaporates, maybe Americans will realize that you can't escape social problems by moving away from them, because they follow you wherever you go.

I did my time in L.A.: five years. I wouldn't move back there for anything. Texas is my home, and I will by God stay here and fight for it, because I like it the way it was. Unfortunately, the way it was is disappearing. Houston and Dallas are miniature versions of L.A. now, complete with gang warfare, SigAlerts, and corrupt government. And why? One big reason is because people who move here from out of state to "escape" don't really want to escape at all, because to escape means to change your way of life and live some other way. Instead, they come here for our low taxes and cost of living and bring their politics, lifestyle habits, and way of life with them -- and with these, the taxes, congestion, overcdevelopment, and other problems that turned their original homes into hellholes to begin with. And soon the cities and towns of Texas become miniature duplicates of wherever they came from.

I'm not putting you down personally. I know you came here looking for a better life and with the best of intentions. But as a native Texan I beg you to forget the way they do things in California. We don't care how they do it in California. America doesn't need another L.A.; we already have two San Franciscos (Austin being the second one) and we don't need any more sprawl. As a nation we need to quit running, move back into our g.d. cities and take them back from the g.d. idiots who ruined them. The alternative: more freeways, more strip malls, more suburbs left to rot and ghettoize as the white flight juggernaut rolls on.

It's too late to save Dallas, Plano, or Allen, but there's still some prairie left; there's still some Texas left. So when the brown folks start moving in and the traffic gets as bad in Allen as it was back home, please resist the urge to move out to Farmersville or Sherman or Krum wherever the sprawl goes next. Please stay and fight for your city.

Welcome to Texas.

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