05/29/2026
Thousands are leaving Los Angeles year after year. This is why we still have a housing crunch
By Jack Flemming
Staff Writer, LA Times
Los Angeles is shrinking — nearly 10,000 city residents and 62,000 countywide left last year — yet home prices and rents remain among the nation’s highest.
Experts say the paradox stems from smaller households, decades of underbuilding and owners reluctant to sell, so even population loss hasn’t eased L.A.’s longstanding housing shortage.
Lower-income renters are being priced out and replaced by wealthier newcomers, widening inequality and raising questions about who gets to stay — and what kind of city L.A. becomes.
The City of Angels lost nearly 10,000 residents last year. L.A. County lost 62,000.
It’s not exactly a mass exodus, but L.A.’s shrinking population is enough to leave a few economists shuddering at the long-term implications of so many people skipping town: less political influence, a smaller tax base, etc.
But amid the Southland’s sea of change, one thing seems to always stay the same: Housing is still expensive.
Typically, population declines and aging housing stock conjure visions of Rust Belt decay, where land loses value and abandoned homes sell for next to nothing. But in L.A. — despite vanishing Hollywood jobs and immigration crackdowns — housing costs remain sky-high.
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This year, the region has seen a slight dip in home values and a slight uptick in vacancy rates. But L.A. County’s population has been whittling down for the last decade, with 400,000 people leaving since 2016. During that stretch, home prices and rents have nearly doubled.
What gives?
Experts say a few factors are at play, but there’s one sneaky trend that’s often overlooked: household composition.
“People are moving out of L.A., but households are becoming smaller, so the number of households that require housing is actually rising,” said Stephanie Hawke, associate research director of land use and supply at the Terner Center.
Hawke said the number of one- to two-person households is rising while three-plus-person households are falling. A single-family home that once held a family of four now holds a couple with no kids. An apartment that once held a couple with no kids now holds a single person.
In 2010, the average household size in L.A. County was 2.98, according to U.S. Census Data. In 2024, it was 2.81. That might seem a marginal difference, but it actually represents hundreds of thousands of people.
“A growing housing stock is accommodating fewer people,” said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Johnson said the shifting demographics are coming from both the young and the old. Declining marriage rates among people in their 20s and 30s is leading to lower birth rates, while older people tend to live alone after their spouse dies. Both lead to smaller average households.
Another element keeping housing prices high is the classic law of supply and demand.
“We build less than we need,” Hawke said.
State housing goals say L.A. County needs to add more than 800,000 housing units by 2029 to keep up with demand, including more than 450,000 in L.A. But despite laws meant to boost housing production, including duplex-focused Senate Bill 9 and density-focused SB 79, the city appears well short of that goal.
“California has long had a housing shortage,” Johnson said. “So even though we’ve been building new housing over the last five years at a time of negative population growth, there’s an outstanding stock of undersupply that means markets are stressed, and prices remain higher in L.A. than the rest of the country.”
Real estate agent Bret Parsons said in many cases, it doesn’t make sense for homeowners to sell even if they want to, which exacerbates the supply shortage.
“People sit on homes because they don’t want to pay capital gains taxes or the ‘Mansion tax,’” he said. “They refuse to sell because they don’t want to give that money to the government, so there are few houses available.”
Another factor? The types of people leaving vs. the ones replacing them.
“Remember who’s moving out and moving in,” Hawke said. “Lower-income folks are being forced out, and higher-income folks who can afford higher rents are moving in.”
A report from the Public Policy Institute of California showed that housing costs have become the biggest reason people leave the state. Lower-income workers without college degrees are often moving out, and they’re generally replaced by higher-income workers who can pay more for housing. As a result, the market doesn’t adjust, and rents stay high.
Parsons said the dynamic is widening the wealth gap in L.A. Homeowners stay put, enjoying ever-rising property values, while renters are forced to leave the city and start over elsewhere with no equity built up.
The mini exodus also brings a more existential question: Is it such a bad thing if people leave? In Southern California — a car-jammed, smog-choked metropolis that serves as the face of suburban sprawl, where rush hour is actually four hours and the hip new bagel joint always has a line down the block — is it the worst thing in the world to get a little breathing room?
From a political perspective, perhaps. The American Redistricting Project forecasts California losing four congressional seats in the 2030 apportionment due to population loss, the most of any state by far.
But Hawke sees the issue through a different lens.
“You have to think about what, and who, makes L.A.” she said. “Are you forcing those folks out? And will it be the same city if everybody leaves?”
Johnson said historically, population growth is a reflection of how desirable a place is, but declines aren’t necessarily negative. He said L.A. County, and California as a whole, have embraced a slow-growth mindset for a few years now, and the state already lost a congressional seat as a result of the 2020 census.
“It’s about following the right examples,” he said. “The Northeast has embraced slow growth while still doing well economically, but there are other places in the world struggling with stagnant economies, poverty, and cheap-but-low-quality housing. That’s a model you won’t want to repeat.”
Should the departure continue, or even increase, experts say it’s still not likely L.A. will ever be overbuilt like some of its Rust Belt counterparts due to pent-up demand that has never quite been met. Johnson said there is market elasticity tied to migration; as we build more housing and it impacts prices and rents, then fewer people will leave, and the ones who were priced out could return.
“California is a desirable place to live. Weather, oceans, mountains,” he said. “It’s hard to envision it ever being overbuilt.”
