FED UP WITH REPEATED BREAK-INS AND CRIME, BAY AREA LAUNDROMAT OWNERS MOVE OUT OF CA:

Fed up, and moving out. After dealing with repeated break-ins, theft, vandalism, and more, one family of longtime Bay Area business owners have had enough. They’ve decided to move their entire family picked up, and moved to Alabama.

What plays out at Derek Drake’s Lake Merritt laundromat these days is so outrageous and frequent it almost feels like a heist movie.

“Three out of past four nights people have tried to get into my laundromat. Out of four nights… that’s crazy!” exclaims Derek via Zoom.

Derek and his family, have owned laundromats in the East Bay for decades. Derek explained how his father, Raiders legend Art Thoms said to him “my teammates laughed at me when I started buying laundromats 45 years ago.”

But it wasn’t until this past year when the frequency of break-ins and crime seems to have exploded.

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Derek’s family isn’t alone. California’s population fell by more than 180,000 in 2020 and has declined two years in a row. While the numbers of people who left the state are still a tiny percentage of the total population, Derek says many of his friends have plans to leave too, citing similar difficulties.

2020, you say? Not a National Model — A National Warning. “As Gavin Newsom runs absurd ads inviting Floridians and Texans to come to California for its ‘freedom,’ his bravado is undermined by an inconvenient fact: For the first time in state history, California has begun to shrink. People have been fleeing Newsom’s business lockdowns, school closures, high taxes, and other policies.”