When you’re from California and pondering of shifting to Utah, suppose once more. You might not be welcomed within the Beehive State.
Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah stated Friday that Californians ought to “keep in California,” partially as a result of his state is beset by issues together with housing and water shortages.
Cox, a Republican, delivered his remarks in entrance of the White Home final week alongside Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat, because the pair have been in Washington for the Nationwide Governors Assn. annual winter assembly.
Murphy and Cox, who lead the NGA, spoke to reporters about their assembly with President Biden, the place they mentioned border safety, immigration, water rights and the debt restrict.
In response to a query about inhabitants motion and what Utah is doing to usher in extra residents, Cox stated “it’s not working to draw extra folks.”
“This final census confirmed that Utah was the fastest-growing state over the previous 10 years,” Cox stated. “Our greatest issues are extra growth-related. We might love for folks to remain in California as a substitute of coming as refugees to Utah.”
In accordance with the U.S. Census, Utah’s inhabitants grew from 2,763,885 folks in 2010 to three,271,616 in 2020, a rise of 18.3%, the best within the nation.
A June 2021 report by the Kem C. Gardner Coverage Institute on the College of Utah discovered that California accounts for the most important inflow of individuals to Utah from throughout the nation. In 2018, 18,000 folks arrived in Utah from California, in comparison with the greater than 50,000 Californians that headed to different states within the union, corresponding to like Arizona or Washington.
The research additionally discovered that Utah’s largest share of outbound home transplants went to California.
However Cox stated the state “has grown so rapidly” whereas it’s concurrently confronting ongoing water and housing provide dilemmas.
A majority of the state’s residents are affected by the West’s historic drought, and the entire state’s 29 counties have catastrophe designations by the USA Division of Agricultural, in accordance with the U.S. Drought Monitor.
And whereas Utah skilled a report home-building yr in 2021, it nonetheless is brief about 31,000 items, in accordance with latest estimates. In October, Dejan Eskic, a senior analysis fellow on the Kem C. Gardner Coverage Institute, estimated that the median month-to-month cost for a house in Utah was as excessive as $2,600, pricing out about ¾ of the state’s residents.
