LOS ANGELES – For the last decade, Evan Brown has called Marina Del Rey home.

“This is where I met my wife, this is where we have our daughter and [we’ve] gotten so used to being here,” says Brown.

He works in advertising as a creative director, his wife is an art director. They make six figures combined, and yet that is barely enough to get by.

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“I’m really conflicted, because I like it here,” says Brown.

He says crime, homelessness, and high taxes are some of the reasons he and his family are moving out of state by this summer.

“Then you combine that with the rising cost of rent and gas, and then all of a sudden, you’re a few years into living here and you don’t really recognize the place and you can’t really afford it either,” says Brown.

Affordability is one of the drivers that forced more than 200,000 people out of California between 2018 and 2019, according to the state’s Department of Finance. An increase in migration out, a decrease in immigration into the state, and a decline in birth rates, means California’s population growth is at its lowest since the 1900s.

For the first time in the Golden State’s history, it may lose a congressional seat from 53 to 52 following the 2020 Census count.

“The impacts of losing a congressional seat are quite significant for California,” says Mindy Romero, a faculty member at the Price School of Public Policy and Director of the California Civic Engagement Project at University of Southern California.

She says losing a congressional seat will have implications financially, politically and in every future election after 2020.

“We end up kind of seeing an often-compounding effect within the state itself, the reallocation of districts where we might see communities that are vulnerable have even less representation within the state in which they reside,” said Romero.

Romero says the same populations that will be disproportionally affected by the loss of congressional seat people of color and immigrants, are same ones that are historically at risk of being undercounted during the Census.

Brown says Texas is one of the places they are considering moving to. The Lone Star state is set to gain three congressional seats, it is a top destination for young families leaving the state.

“We can actually get a house with a yard, we can actually put our money away for retirement,” says Brown.

Quality of life he says, that should be available to anyone in the working class.

“The American dream, that something that’s not very attainable in California,” says Brown.

And so, as families like his leave, so does our congressional seat.