Los Angeles Private School Forced to Close Due to Homelessness and Drug Use

Academy of Media Arts

A private school in Los Angeles was forced to close due to rising safety concerns as a result of the homeless and drug-abusing population in the vicinity.

As Fox News reports, the circumstances of the closure are detailed in a lawsuit filed by Dana Hammond, the founder of the Academy of Media Arts. Hammond claims that the city’s failure to adequately protect the school from vagrants constituted a breach of contract with the building that hosted the school.

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Mayors of Five Major Cities Demand Meeting with Biden over Mass Migration Crisis

The mayors of five of the biggest cities in the United States are demanding a meeting with Joe Biden to discuss the mass migration crisis, as theirs and other major cities continue to be overrun with hordes of third-world illegal aliens.

Politico reports that the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Denver have been pressing for a meeting in order to address the lack of support from the federal government, which has led to a strain on city resources. The five mayors, who are all Democrats, sent a letter to the Biden Administration which was obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday.

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Anti-Gun Celebrity Says Moving to Tennessee Saved Her Life

A famous country singer who has been a driving force behind the gun control movement in Tennessee says that fleeing New York and Los Angeles and moving to the Volunteer State saved her life. 

“I completely relate to Nashville because I have a lot of friends there who are also in the music business,” Sheryl Crow told Rolling Stone in 2003. “But not only that, I just relate to the people. I relate to the friendliness and down-homeness. I feel a relaxation that comes over my body that I usually don’t feel when I’m in New York or L.A.”

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Governments Across America Spend Millions to Put Homeless in Hotels

In states like California, Colorado, Washington and Arizona, cities this summer are spending millions buying hotels and converting them to shelters for the homeless.

In Los Angeles, there is a ballot initiative in 2024 to require hotels to use vacant rooms to house homeless people besides paying customers. The American Hotel & Lodging Association has objected to the proposal.

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More than a Quarter of Homeowners in U.S. Are ‘House Poor’

Nationwide 27.4 percent of homeowners are considered “house poor,” meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.

However, in some U.S. cities, far more Americans are living beyond their means, according to research from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In Hialeah, Florida, 59.3 percent of homeowners are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. While Hialeah has the highest percentage of homeowners spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, it was not alone.

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‘Democratic Socialists of America’ Building Ranks, Pushing Local Democrats to the Left

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is gaining steam in recent years and has been pushing the Democratic Party to the left, particularly in deep blue cities, advocating for policies that even moderate Democrats disagree with.

Democratic Socialists make up the left flank of the Democratic Party, supporting abolishing prisons, aggressive climate policies, rent controls and radical racial equity policies, according to the Democratic Socialist website. They’ve been aggressively adding to their membership over the past few years, as well as gaining ground in key deep blue cities such as New York City, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, calling for radical policy changes and opposing mainstream Democrats.

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Environmental Activists Push to Cancel July 4th Fireworks Shows

Multiple fireworks shows slated for July 4th along Los Angeles’ coastline have been canceled in the wake of a county mandate that was initially spurred by environmental activists, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board implemented a firework permit rule in an effort to clamp down on pollutants from firework displays, which reportedly affect nearby water sources, the LA Times reported. The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation (CERF) brought a lawsuit against Long Beach’s Big Bang on the Bay, alleging that a firework show in 2022 violated the Clean Water Act.

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Texas Sends First Bus of Illegal Border Crossers to Los Angeles

A bus of foreign nationals who illegally entered Texas and were apprehended and released by the Biden administration were taken to Los Angeles for the first time, Gov. Greg Abbott said. They were dropped off at the Los Angeles Union Station Wednesday evening.

“Texas’ small border towns remain overwhelmed and overrun by the thousands of people illegally crossing into Texas from Mexico because of President Biden’s refusal to secure the border,” Abbott said. “Los Angeles is a major city that migrants seek to go to, particularly now that its city leaders approved its self-declared sanctuary city status. Our border communities are on the frontlines of President Biden’s border crisis, and Texas will continue providing this much-needed relief until he steps up to do his job and secure the border.”

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Commentary: What to Do About American’s Decline

Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline — until it began to implode.

Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?

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Bank Records Show Millions in Transaction Between Hunter Biden, China Firms: Sen. Johnson

Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson says the Chinese-American financial institution Cathay Bank has given Senate Republicans records showing millions of dollars going from Chinese companies to President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

Republicans and others started raising concerns during President Biden’s successful 2020 White House campaign, if not earlier, that Hunter Biden used the family name and influence while his father was vice president to make millions in overseas business deals, which also could have compromised U.S. national security.

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Americans Continue to Flee Crime-Ridden Blue Cities for the Burbs and Red States, New Census Data Shows

Americans once again fled large cities for suburbs and Republican-led states in massive numbers from June 2021 to June 2022, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of U.S. Census data.

More than 800,000 people in total left the country’s large metropolitan areas, compared to 1.2 million the year before, in an ongoing trend sparked by the pandemic, according to the WSJ. Ten of the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas saw population loss, and most of the top cities that saw population gains were located in red states.

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Group Names Chicago, New Orleans as U.S. Murder Capitals

Chicago recorded 697 total homicides in 2022, far more than any other city in the United States, but New Orleans had the highest murder rate per capita, according to a new report from a nonprofit research group. 

Chicago had more total homicides in 2022 than Philadelphia (516), New York City (438), Houston (435) and Los Angeles (382), which rounded out the top five, according to a report from Wirepoints, an Illinois-based research and news organization that surveyed 2022 crime data from 75 of the largest U.S. cities.

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The Country’s Biggest School Districts Are Explicitly Hiding Kids’ Gender Transitions from Parents

The nation’s largest school districts are implementing policies that require educators to keep students’ gender transitions a secret from their parents.

Los Angeles Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools and New York Public Schools are promoting practices and policies that hide a student’s transgender status from their parents. The policies have become a cultural flashpoint amid a battle over the role parents should play in their child’s education, and the extent to which gender ideology has infiltrated K-12 classrooms.

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Democrats Pivot on Law and Order as Soft-on-Crime Liberals Assaulted, Burglarized

Democrats’ virtual 180 on the issue of crime — a journey from supporting the “defund the police” movement to espousing tougher law enforcement — has been accentuated by a striking pattern in recent months: prominent liberals being mugged, sometimes quite literally, by the harsh reality of rising crime as victims themselves.

The latest liberal to embody this shift is Bill Walton, the 69-year-old basketball legend-turned-garrulous broadcaster, who has a history of stirring controversy and advocating a range of progressive causes over the years.

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Los Angeles Homeless Population Jumps to over 69,000

The total number of homeless people in Los Angeles County has skyrocketed over the last few years, reaching a staggering new total of over 69,000.

Fox News reports that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which released its updated report on Thursday, found an increase of 4.1 percent since 2020. In the entirety of the county, approximately 69,144 people are now homeless; in just the city of Los Angeles alone, there are 41,980 homeless people.

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Before Minneapolis, Los Angeles Schools Tried Race-Based Policies

Following national coverage of the Minneapolis school district’s race-based employment policies, Liz Collin Reports hosted a retired Los Angeles teacher who saw the same thing happen in his district over 15 years ago.

Phil Pearson worked as a special-ed teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest district in California and second largest in the country, when a similar rule to move teachers based on race was put into place.

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Dozens of Firearms Stolen from Trains in Los Angeles

handgun with ammo

In the latest train robbery in the city of Los Angeles, dozens of firearms, including handguns and shotguns, were stolen from a cargo train in a massive raid.

As reported by ABC News, three suspects arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) last summer were found to be in possession of some of the new .22-caliber handguns from the stolen cache. The guns were found to match the larger batch of 36 handguns stolen from the train that had been bound for Tennessee, according to police.

One of the suspects admitted that the guns were stolen while the train was in the Lincoln Heights rail yard, which has become a prime target for train robberies in recent months. Later, two more suspects were arrested with shotguns that were found to have come from a larger batch of 46 shotguns that had also been stolen from the train.

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Thieves Reportedly Targeting Trains, Delivery Trucks in Atlanta, Los Angeles

Criminals have reportedly opened up a new lucrative front in the ongoing package-theft epidemic throughout the U.S., targeting shipping infrastructure to steal goods before they even get to consumers’ porches.

UPS Chief Executive Carol Tome told CNBC this week that one of the company’s 18-wheeler shipping trucks was robbed several weeks ago in December. “[The driver] was stopped at gunpoint,” she said. “He was zip-tied, thrown into the back of his feeder car, and they took the packages.”

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Homeless Encampments Begin Forming Near Schools in Los Angeles

Homeless encampments have begun cropping up near schools throughout the city of Los Angeles, even despite a citywide ban on any such encampments near public areas, as reported by the Epoch Times.

The Los Angeles City Council had previously passed a new resolution, Ordinance 41.18, which was signed into law by Mayor Eric Garcetti (D-Calif.), forbidding any such homeless camps from being set up within 500 feet of “sensitive-use” areas, including schools, daycares, libraries, and parks. The ordinance also banned such camps from forming near freeway overpasses and underpasses, ramps, tunnels, and bridges.

But in order for the ordinance to be enforced, each individual district’s councilmember must introduce a motion to do so, which then must be approved by the council. As such, homeless encampments have begun sprouting up near schools in the Venice Beach neighborhood, which falls under District 11; that district is represented by Councilman Mike Bonin (D-Calif.), who has a history of refusing to enforce anti-homeless measures for other districts, and has not yet introduced any such measures to protect his own district.

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Los Angeles Students Lost over 90,000 School Days in Compliance with Quarantine Protocol

A California activist group calculated that students in Los Angeles County missed over 90,000 school days in the span of a month, Fox News reported.

In about a month a total of 92,455 in-person school days in Los Angeles County were lost, which Jonathan Zachreson, the founder of Reopen California Schools called “astounding,” Fox News reported Monday. Quarantine measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic kept kids home from school, which led to the learning loss that Zachreson said “could have been avoided” if school officials hadn’t intervened in public health matters.

Many students were able to stay in school because of “Test to Stay” programs, which allow unvaccinated students who are exposed to the virus to stay in school as long as they are asymptomatic, wear a mask and take two COVID-19 tests a week, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

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Transgender Person Who Allegedly Exposed Himself at L.A. Spa Charged with Indecent Exposure

Close up of Wi Spa sign on building

The transgender individual who exposed himself in front of women and children at a California luxury spa earlier this year, has been charged with indecent exposure, the New York Post reported Thursday. Darren Agee Merager, 52, is a registered sex offender with two prior convictions of indecent exposure, according to the Post’s law-enforcement sources. Merager is also facing “six felony counts of indecent exposure over a separate locker room incident in December 2018,” according to the Post.

As American Greatness previously reported, several women complained last June, when the biological male allegedly exposed his penis at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles.

Viral video footage of the incident showed a woman angrily confronting a staff member of the spa about a naked man who had apparently exposed himself in an area reserved for females.

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Commentary: Welcome to Weimar Los Angeles

When I saw a video online of Antifa attacking demonstrators in front of the Wi Spa in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, I realized why, in the immortal words of Thomas Wolfe, “You Can’t Go Home Again.”

But unlike Wolfe, who, in his famous novel, was loath to return to his native Asheville, North Carolina, I am in the south, resistant to returning to California where I lived most of my adult life.

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Viral Video Shows Customer Blasting LA Spa After She Says Biological Male Was Allowed to Parade Around Naked in Front of Women and Children

A Los Angeles luxury spa is facing intense criticism after a biological male was allegedly allowed to parade around in the nude in front of women and children. Video footage that went viral over the weekend, shows a woman angrily confronting a staff member of the Wi Spa about a naked man who had apparently exposed himself in an area reserved for females.

“It’s okay for a man to go into the women’s section [and] show his penis around other women—young little girls—underage?!” the incensed woman can be heard saying in the video. “Your spa—Wi Spa condones that?!”

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Rising Crime Forces Liberals to Reckon with Their Stance on the Police

by Ailan Evans   As rates of violent crime continue to rise across the country and once-safe neighborhoods face increased dangers, many liberal communities are having to confront their complicated relationship with the police. Following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, the defund the police movement attracted attention and support among liberals, earning endorsements from celebrities and lawmakers alike. Roughly 50% of Democrats supported defunding the police in June 2020, according to a June 2020 poll from FiveThirtyEight. The movement, defined by Brookings Institute Fellow Rashawn Ray as support for “reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality,” arose in response to systemic police brutality and racism. The movement achieved some success, with over 20 cities cutting or diverting police department budgets, The Guardian reported. However, as police departments endured budget cuts, crime has skyrocketed. Faced with increasing violence in their communities, some residents of liberal cities have begun looking to the police for help. Liberal Communities Fear For Their Safety The Greenwich Village neighborhood around Washington Square Park in New York City has a strong liberal base, with around 90% of voters selecting President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, according to data from The New York Times. Last week, residents…

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Data Shows Increased Homicides in Six Major Cities Across the Country

Police line do not cross tape

The number of homicides in six major cities across the country has increased compared to last year, disproportionately affecting black people, according to crime data.

Black people have represented a massive share of murder victims in six major cities through the first six months of 2021 compared to last year, which itself saw a large crime surge, according to data analyzed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The DCNF analyzed both police department data and homicide reports compiled by local news outlets to determine how black people have been victimized in the wake of the 2020 crime spike.

“We are seeing an uptick in violent crime across the country, specifically gun violence,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told The New York Times earlier this month.

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Teamsters Officials Forced out of LA Trucking Company After 80 Percent of Workers Sign Petition to Remove Them

The union for a Los Angeles trucking company, Teamsters Local 986, was forced out after nearly 80% of workers signed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to remove it.

The National Labor Relations Act governs private sector workers, unionization and how workers can remove a union from their workplace. In 27 right-to-work states, union payments are voluntary. In California and other non right-to-work states, union payments are mandatory for all unionized and non-union employees.

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LA Teachers Union Agrees to Reopen Second Largest School District

United Teachers Los Angeles and Los Angeles city officials have come to a tentative agreement, creating a path for the nation’s second-largest school district to reopen.

Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District would return to in-person classes in mid-April under the tentative agreement struck Tuesday evening, according to city and union officials, The New York Times reported. The Los Angeles school board and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) members still need to ratify the agreement.

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Commentary: America’s Cities as Bastions of Progressive Politics

by Edward Ring   In 2016 the American presidential election was not so much blue state versus red state as blue urban centers versus everywhere else. That pattern repeated itself this year, as voting results in the deep blue cities of Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta spelled the difference between a Trump victory and a win for Biden. Leave it to others to question the legitimacy of votes in these deep blue cities. Suffice to say it would insult the intelligence of any honest observer of politics to suggest no irregularities occurred, when, for example, you have a state with mail-in ballots, accepting them without postmarks or signature verification, and continuing to collect them until November 6 by a court order in Pennsylvania. And within the sphere of media influencers and social media sleuths, for all those thousands who question such results, there are millions who do not. As one wag put it on Twitter, “there is no evidence of widespread journalism.” Four years ago, the New York Times published a revealing graphic, reproduced below. It shows, in shades ranging from deep blue (Clinton) to deep red (Trump), how every county in the United States voted. The quantity of votes in each county corresponds to the height…

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California Fire That Killed Three Threatens Thousands of Homes

A Northern California wildfire threatened thousands of homes Thursday after winds whipped it into a monster that incinerated houses in a small mountain community and killed at least three people.

Several other people have been critically burned and hundreds, if not thousands, of homes and other buildings are believed to have been damaged or destroyed by the fire in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada, authorities said.

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Riots in Oakland Leave a Trail of Fires, Smashed Windows

  OAKLAND, California (AP) — A protest in Oakland, California, in support of racial justice and police reform turned violent when a small group of rioters wearing helmets and goggles and carrying large signs that doubled as shields set fire to a courthouse, vandalized a police station and shot fireworks at officers, authorities said. About 700 demonstrators participated in what started as a peaceful march Saturday night but then some broke from the larger group and smashed windows, spray-painted graffiti and pointed lasers at officers, said Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland Police Department spokesperson. Several fires were set in the downtown area, including one at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse that was quickly contained. Demonstrators hurled rocks, ceramic paint-filled balls and frozen water bottles through windows at the courthouse, federal building and police building in a raucous night that was unlike peaceful marches that have taken place in the city in recent weeks, Watson said. “This was different,” Watson said. “This group of protesters had specific intentions to participate in one way or another — whether that’s carrying backpacks in with clearly very heavy items, and the smaller group would actually be engaged in doing the damage — there is…

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Nashville Mayor John Cooper Fights for Paris Climate Agreement, Alongside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti

Nashville Mayor John Cooper joined hundreds of other U.S. mayors late last week, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and urged Congress to fight climate change and uphold the Paris Climate Agreement.

This, according to a press release that Metro Nashville officials published on the city’s website.

“As mayor, I see first-hand the urgent issues facing our communities today: the ever-present threat of climate change, the challenges to public health and prosperity caused by COVID-19, and racial and economic disparities,” Cooper said.

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Commentary: Why I’m Never Going Back to California

by George Rasley   Recently, Dr. Drew Pinsky spoke with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade about the horrific conditions on the streets of Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city, before making the frightening prediction, “There will be a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles.” Pinsky described to Kilmeade what he believes to be the almost medieval conditions in the City of Angels and compared local politicians to Nero, the infamous Roman Emperor who allegedly fiddled while his nation burned. “We have tens and tens of thousands of people living in tents. Horrible conditions. Sanitation. Rats have taken over the city. We’re the only city in the country, Los Angeles, without a rodent control program. We have multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus. We’re gonna have a louse-borne illness. If measles breaks into that population, we have tuberculosis exploding. Literally, our politicians are like Nero. It’s worse than Nero,” Pinsky said. Homelessness and trash are a growing problem for residents in Los Angeles and as the garbage piles up, so do the rats, fueling concerns about flea-borne typhus, according to a report this week. Pinsky said the city’s homeless situation and sanitation crisis are out of hand and politicians…

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Nearly 1-in-3 Los Angeles County Voters Will Be Purged from California Voter Rolls in Landmark Settlement Agreement

The State of California settled a lawsuit with the Election Integrity Project California (EIPCa) Friday and has agreed to remove as many as 1.5 million inactive registrants from the Los Angeles County voter rolls. EIPCa filed suit against the state in August 2017 and alleged that California was not “following the requirements of Section 8 of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA),” which requires states to reasonably maintain state and county voter registration rolls. According to EIPCa, the settlement means that Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan (pictured above) must immediately begin following federal mandates for “identifying and removing deceased, moved, and other ineligible registrants,” which is estimated to be as many as 1.5 million. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that Los Angeles County has a population of 10.1 million, and 5.2 million are registered voters, according to Logan’s office. That means up to 28.8 percent – nearly a third – of registered voters in Los Angeles County were ineligible registrants. “Because of the powerful and overwhelming evidence provided by EIPCa, this was an exceptionally strong case,” Linda Paine, president of EIPCa, said in a press release late Friday. “California’s voter rolls are unforgivably bloated, a situation that…

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Futuristic Fun House Transforms Traditional Games Into High Tech Wonders

by Elizabeth Lee   Imagine being on the bridge of a ship navigating through space with your crew’s survival at risk, then stepping onto a river raft to battle aliens in a swamp, and finally flying through the air, all in one night. All this and more are possible at a futuristic micro amusement park called Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles. “I think it takes a whole arcade game venue to the next level, and there’s a couple of games I played tonight where I was out of breath and actually sweating,” said visitor Kelly Bentall, who had just finished playing a game where she had to roll a plastic ball and watch a cartoon version of it on a screen, while trying to knock an opponent off a virtual arena. Many of the games at Two Bit Circus can be described as traditional carnival games on steroids where sensors, cameras or virtual reality goggles add to the experience. There is even a robot bartender that mixes drinks for customers. “I have not had a robot make my drink before. That was actually pretty cool. He even managed to shake it,” said customer John Duncan. Just like a movie…

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Why More Americans Are Moving to Smaller Cities

by Dora Mekouar   More Americans are moving to smaller cities in search of a better quality of life. They’re leaving places like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York for mid-sized cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A huge draw for these second-tier cities is that the cost of housing consumes a much smaller chunk of people’s salaries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of the people who move do so for housing-related reasons. They’re looking for a new or better home, cheaper housing, or to buy a home rather than rent. It costs about $4,100 a month to rent a place in Manhattan. That’s almost two-thirds of New York City’s median household income of $83,500. Buying a home is even more out of reach. The average cost of a home in the area is $1.1 million. More than half a million people left the New York boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens over a five-year period between 2012 and 2017. In Los Angeles, the metropolitan county with the largest outbound net domestic migration, rent costs about $2,100 a month — about 38…

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