They left by the thousands, giving up life in Los Angeles for new lives in places with cheaper housing and a more affordable way of life.
Some were almost evangelistic about how the move to places such as Austin, Dallas and Nashville would improve their lives and benefited their pocketbooks.
But it turns out it’s harder than many thought to truly escape the affordability crisis that has long bedeviled the Golden State.
A Times analysis of the top 10 cities where Los Angeles residents moved between 2020 and 2025 shows that the cost of living in every one of those cities has risen more than it has in L.A. during that period.
Besides Nashville, Dallas and Austin, Texas, the cities surveyed are Las Vegas, Phoenix, Houston, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Ore., and Atlanta — all considered affordable alternatives to L.A.
In all cases, cost of living — in addition to median rent and home price — was lower than in L.A. in 2020 and was still lower in 2025.
But the affordability gap is narrowing in those five years, the data show.
In five of the 10 cities, median rent has risen faster than in L.A., where rents are up around 29% over the five-year span, The Times’ data analysis found.
In Dallas and Atlanta, rents are up by more than 39%, per Zillow’s Observed Rent Index.
In six of the 10 cities, median home prices are up more than Los Angeles’ 45% increase. In Phoenix and Nashville, home prices are up around 70%, according to Zillow’s Home Value Index.
The cost of living index developed by the Council for Community & Economic Research (C2ER) indicates that all 10 cities saw a bigger increase over the five years than Los Angeles did. In six of the 10 cases, cost of living increased at least twice as much as in Los Angeles, where it rose 3%.
Overall, those cities remain more affordable than L.A. — often by a significant margin — but the new residents are paying more now than when they arrived.
Demographic experts say this is to be expected, and in many cases, the trade-off for leaving L.A. still makes financial sense.
As places like Austin and Nashville became more desirable during the pandemic, demand for housing increased.
Austin, for example, saw an influx of both middle-income Californians as well as the very rich, including Tesla founder Elon Musk. Musk’s move coincided with a tech boom in the city that lured some from Silicon Valley.
Some 10,000 Californians moved to Austin annually during this period, according to an analysis of census data by StorageCafe.
Those Californians helped fuel a boom in the city, according to Chris Gannon, an architect and the chair of the housing affordability committee at AIA Austin who also sits on the city planning commission.
Many who came sought more affordable home prices, which are now hard to come by as home values have skyrocketed. Austin has had significant success in building rental housing and lowering rents, Gannon said, but home ownership remains too expensive for most.
“It’s a booming scene here, partly spurred by the massive wave of Californians and New Yorkers who popped in in 2022,” he said. “Like Lyle Lovett says, ‘That’s right, you’re not from Texas, but we want you anyways.”
Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and demography at USC, said the data show affordability issues have become national in scale.
“You can’t just blame California’s changes on current problems within the state,” he said.
Indeed, almost one-third of all American households were cost-burdened — spending more than 30% of monthly income on housing costs — in 2024, a study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found.
2024 marked the year with the highest number of cost-burdened households ever, beyond even during the 2008 financial crisis.
Generally, when leaving the state, “people were going to dramatically less expensive locations,” said Evan White, co-founder of the California Policy Lab. Now, the affordability gap is shrinking, creating less financial benefit for those who choose to leave the Golden State.
White’s research showed that those who leave California are much more likely to become homeowners in their new states. As homes in popular destinations for those fleeing California appreciate more quickly, selling a home in California to move elsewhere becomes less profitable.
Travel to any of the famed destinations for those leaving the state, and conversations abound about high costs.
Nevada — where its most populous city, Las Vegas, drew the most fleeing Angelenos of any city from 2020 to 2025 — is in the midst of a “severe housing affordability crisis,” according to the Nevada Institute for Children’s Research & Policy.
In Phoenix, the city which drew the second-most Angelenos, “The crisis isn’t coming; it’s here,” wrote the Arizona Housing Coalition. Ditto Dallas-Fort Worth, where the Texas Tribune reported that the third-largest target for those fleeing L.A. has been unable to build enough housing to match growing demand.
In the early days of the pandemic, other states offered an affordability haven for Californians under financial pressure.
The data suggest the “California exodus” discount is not as strong.
After seeing major population drops beginning with the pandemic in 2020 and continuing for years afterward, California’s population has stabilized.
L.A.’s population is still shrinking, though, and statewide the era of never-ending population growth appears to have ended.
And for Angelenos who choose to leave the state, destinations closer to home appear to be gaining ground on Texas, a Bank of America Institute analysis of account data found.
“Moves to places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Seattle made up a sizable chunk of outbound flow in 2025,” the report stated, “suggesting that many Angelenos aren’t abandoning the West — they’re simply finding versions of L.A. that are potentially cheaper, calmer or easier to navigate.”
For people in far-flung cities that were once hot spots for those fleeing the Golden State, this could be welcome news.
In Austin, city planners are trying to maintain affordability for people who are already there, Gannon said. Those coming from L.A. often have greater buying power than those already living in Austin, pushing home prices up.
“If there’s less Californians coming,” Gannon said, “that’s probably better for the folks here because that means less competition.”
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