Record numbers of residents have been leaving California in recent years, but in 2020 the growth of remote work, the lure of cheaper housing and a summer of unprecedented wildfires has accelerated the trend. As a result, the moving business in San Francisco’s Bay Area is booming, but the surge has come with its own set of problems.

Moving trucks are hard to find, prices to get out of the Bay are being pushed sky-high, and the supply side of the market – with high starting costs and because movers are required to obtain state licenses – has been slow to respond.

The shortage has created openings for an underground moving economy complete with scammers who take advantage of desperate California escapees, left without easy options.

Moving companies across the Bay have said they were booked up months in advance through the summer. It continued through the autumn – in typical years, the industry sees a lull after kids start school. A spokesperson at Gentle Giant moving company says it performed three times the number of moves out of San Francisco in September 2020 than a year earlier.

Even at U-Haul stores – the rental truck retailer with the largest fleet across the US – trucks are in short supply. With so many trucks departing the Bay Area, the exodus has left an imbalance of returning vehicles. The shortage has sharply driven up truck prices for one-way trips out of town. (Read more from “‘Customers Are Calling Us Crying’: Scams and Soaring Prices as Californians Move Out” HERE)

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Through a series of measures starting back in 2014, the state of California has made it increasingly easy for people to commit property theft and get away with it. This trend has only accelerated during the ongoing riots, as cops are instructed to “disperse” looters rather than trying to arrest them. Even in cases where they do manage to catch somebody stealing, it’s too often not worth the trouble of taking them down to the station because they’ll just be released immediately without bail anyway. And as we’ve seen in other places like New York City, store managers in California are telling their employees to not interfere with looters for fear of being branded as racists on social media or even run into lawsuits over alleged discrimination. As a result, businesses are shutting down for good. That happened again this week as yet another Walgreens has closed its doors permanently. . .

We’re not seeing something new here that’s a result of the riots and looting, though the trend has definitely ramped up this year. This all started with the passage of Proposition 47. The state decriminalized theft such that stealing less than $950 worth of goods was only a misdemeanor, leading to a small fine, frequently far less than the value of the merchandise that was stolen.

The result of that change was felt immediately. The state has recorded increased levels of retail theft every year since prop 47 was passed. The steepest rise has been seen in what’s referred to as “mass grab and dash” robberies, where crowds of people meet up and enter a business all at once and begin grabbing everything they can carry and running out. Most stores only have one or two security personnel on duty at most so they can’t stop them all. And even if a couple of the looters are caught, they know they’ll be back out on the streets in an hour or two at most. (Read more from “California Legalizes Shoplifting With Predictable Results” HERE)

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