The rich and famous used to flock to beautiful beaches in, Malibu, Hollywood, and Los Angeles. Now, they are getting out, citing homelessness, overcrowding, violence, drug abuse, safety, and untenable politics.
Among the next to leave might be Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, who has already announced a $1 billion Tesla factory in Texas and sold his four-home compound in Bel Air for $62 million.
"When the real-life Iron Man moves out of Hollywood, you know it's all over," a major studio source told the U.K.'s Daily Mail.
Ask the movers like Watford Moving & Storage's Danny O'Brien, who told the paper his business is booming.
"There is a mass exodus from Hollywood, and a lot of it is to do with politics," O'Brien, 58, told the Mail. "August has already set records and we are only halfway through the month. People are getting out in droves. Last week, I moved a prominent person in the music industry from a $6.5 million mansion above Sunset Boulevard to Nashville."
Even the mover is planning to move.
"Liberal politics has destroyed this city," he added to the Mail. "The homeless encampments are legal and there's nothing the police can do. White, affluent middle-class folk are getting out. People don't feel safe any more."
And the global coronavirus pandemic has just made things worse, according to publicist Ed Lozzi.
"The city was changing before coronavirus brought us to our knees," Lozzi told the Mail. "The homeless problem has been escalating for years, exacerbated by weak politicians making bad decisions. Hollywood has always been the wokest of the woke, so politicians have done nothing to stop people sleeping on the streets. It's not illegal and the weather's nice, so they keep coming.
"There is insufficient housing, inadequate mental healthcare. Add in COVID, and it's a perfect storm."
The scent of Hollywood has changed from flowers to feces, he added.
"When I first arrived in LA 40 years ago, the town smelled of orange blossoms," he told the Mail. "Now the streets stink of urine. There is a beautiful park in Westwood, but you can't go there because there are people slumped on the ground and you step on a carpet of needles.
"White flight is real. The elites and middle classes are leaving. People are taking losses on the sales of their homes to get out."
And if that is not enough, toss in the rioting over social injustice led by antifa fighters and Black Lives Matter activists, actress Renee Taylor lamented.
"I feel so sad for my friends left in Beverly Hills who had to suffer through looting and rioting," she told the Mail. "I got out just in time."
Those left behind in Malibu are now pushing for local laws to prevent the squatting of mobile homes along the beach at night.
"They've kicked the homeless problem into other areas of the city like Westwood and Venice," Lozzi told the Mail. "It's a classic case of 'not in my back yard.'"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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