California was once the land of promise, but after years of woke politicians and socialist policies, people are coming to their senses and abandoning the state, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Breitbart explains:

California lost 352,000 residents between April 2020 and January 2022, according to the state’s Department of Finance statistics. The departure of hundreds of thousands of California residents comes after the state lost a congressional seat for the first time in history due to its below-average population increase from 2010 to 2020.

The Democrat-run cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles rank first and second in the nation for outbound moves. California residents are fleeing the state in droves due to its extremely high cost of living, housing prices, crime rates, and homelessness rates.

The data shows that Los Angeles residents left the city for areas like Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Antonio, and Dallas. Roughly 41,000 Angelenos left the city in the second quarter of 2022, up from the 33,000 who left the city during the same period in 2021.

When asked why they are leaving—taxes and crime are often cited.

But there may be another we can add to the list.

According to Matthew Kahn, a University of Southern California economics professor, California’s extreme environmental regulations are hindering the building of new homes.

This in turn is making housing unaffordable for a middle-class family

He told the LA Times:

People want to live here, but an unintended consequence of the state’s environmentalism is we’re not building enough housing in desirable downtown areas. That prices out middle-class people to the suburbs [and creates] long commutes. We don’t have road pricing to help the traffic congestion, and these headaches add up. So when you create the possibility of work from home, many of these people … they say “enough” and they move to a cheaper metropolitan area.

READ: Wait, Why Are We Here Again?: California Ranks 2nd in Nation for Outbound Moves