A total of 53,934 people left Los Angeles County between July 2024 and July 2025, according to the latest population data from the US Census. 

Former residents who spoke to the Daily Mail blamed high rents and crime-ridden streets for their decision to abandon the Democrat-run city, which is also in the grip of a joblessness crunch.

Last month a Daily Mail photographer found sidewalks in the city's famous Venice Beach neighborhood covered with makeshift homeless encampments. Residents say used needles and garbage strewn across the street is a daily occurrence. 

And in the dark hours, prostitutes linger on the corners hoping for business while police look the other way. 

Sherly Rivera Feher, 30, moved from Koreatown in LA to Overland Park, Kansas, in December. The native Angeleno had finally had enough. 

Feher told the Daily Mail that she and her husband were begrudgingly paying $3,800 a month for their two-bedroom apartment near Glendale that was steps away from a number of homeless people and prostitutes. 

'It started to get really pricey, and we also just didn't feel safe at all,' Feher said.

'Paying that much, we were hoping to at least get some safety as well... There are needles on the floor and everything [in Koreatown], and just a lot of the mental illness and drug addiction out there.' 

After visiting her sister in Kansas, the couple, who hope to one day have children, decided they liked the slower pace of life in the Midwest and found the area to be more suitable for raising a family. 

Her brother still lives in Koreatown and raises a son there. It hurts her to see her nephew living in a neighborhood surrounded by drug addiction and mental illness. 

'It just pains me to know that my nephew is exposed to all that. And when we have kids, we just don't want them to be exposed to any of those things,' Feher told the Daily Mail. 

Feher saw a huge change in Los Angeles after the pandemic, when the homeless population increased, rising to more than 72,000 people in 2025. 

As she drove to her grocery store job at 4am, Feher said she'd often see prostitutes lining the corners. Police often did nothing about it, she claimed, and it made her wary of driving through the area to get to work. 

'I would drive past that area every day, and you would see police officers just driving by, but nothing would be done about the prostitution,' she told the Daily Mail.