North’s Magnetic Pull Has San Diegans Leaving by the Thousands : Migration: More promising job markets, a cleaner environment and a less hurried lifestyle make Oregon, Washington and Idaho top destinations.

Alena McElroy had lived in San Diego for 15 years and thought she had it made. Until a couple of months ago, that is. That’s when she visited Oregon for the first time, and ever since, the state has become her Promised Land.

“The first day I drove into Oregon, I asked myself why I ever lived in California. It’s dry, deserty, smoggy and it has too much traffic and crime,” the 35-year-old McElroy said, comparing Southern California to the pine forests and easygoing rural existence she has found to the north. “Why did I ever think I had to be living my life in California?”

Now McElroy and her husband, Tom, as well as her parents, two brothers and sister, plan early next year to do what thousands of San Diegans have done in recent years: pick up and move to Oregon, Washington and Idaho, to what they hope will be a better life in the Northwest.

Attracting the McElroys and others to these states is the lure of more promising job markets, a cleaner environment and a less hurried lifestyle. Lower housing prices, crime rates and stress levels are also powerful magnets.

Not surprisingly, a new breed of businesses has emerged over the past year and a half to capitalize on this growing exodus. One such firm is The Northwest Connection, a San Diego real estate brokerage firm that specializes in relocations. It sells San Diego property and finds investments or cheaper homes for people moving to other Western states.

John Martin, co-partner in The Northwest Connection, said many of his clients have been entrepreneurs who want to move themselves and their small businesses out of state. Some are real estate investors and companies with as many as 300 employees. Others are retirees or baby boomers looking for towns with a higher quality of life.

“Our business is just going nuts,” Martin said, adding that a relocation and investment seminar last month at the La Jolla Marriott drew more than 900 people.

Early next year, the McElroys will move to Oregon, splitting their time between a Portland-area home and a 160-acre ranch in Medford. Over the past few years, Tom McElroy has sold 19 of his rental properties in San Diego and purchased 25 homes and a homeless shelters in Oregon, where $50,000 or less can buy a new house.

The McElroys aren’t alone. The 12 months from July, 1991, to June, 1992, was the first year since statistics have been kept in which more people left California than moved into the Golden State.

State Department of Motor Vehicles statistics indicate an increase in the number of San Diegans who have moved outside the state and were then issued licenses elsewhere.

In all, DMV records show, 42,968 San Diegans left the county between July, 1991, and June, 1992, compared with 39,878 for the same period the previous year. By contrast, those records show that 46,792 people moved to San Diego from elsewhere in the United States from July, 1991, to June, 1992, compared with 50,362 the year before.

The California Department of Finance, which draws on the DMV numbers, reports that during that same period, 2,540 San Diegans who have driver’s licenses moved to Oregon; 3,141 went to Washington; 954 went to Idaho; 2,413 moved to Nevada, and 3,674 went to Arizona. Those numbers varied only slightly from the previous two years, a department spokeswoman said.

Moving companies can testify that droves of San Diegans are leaving the state.

“Not long ago, 85% of our business was people moving from one point to another in the state,” said Robert Wood, president of U-Haul Co. of San Diego County. “But now we’re seeing 40% to 45% of the people going out of state. Our big (destinations) are Washington, Arizona and Texas.”

He said business is up about 15% now compared to November and December of last year, meaning that, even in winter, when children are in school, unusually high numbers of San Diegans are moving out.

This summer, San Diego U-Haul dealers ran out of trucks because of the high numbers of people leaving the county. Other moving truck rental companies in the area reported similarly high demand.

“A number of people have told us that they have just had it, that (San Diego) is just not a pleasant place for them anymore,” Wood said. “I think a majority of them are leaving because they have to, real estate prices and rents being what they are. For others, the work isn’t here anymore.”

Many business experts here say San Diego’s economy will get worse before it gets better, with more job loss and a continued slide in housing values through at least the first half of 1993. San Diegans are still reeling from a succession of bad news in the form of large-scale defense and aerospace layoffs at employers such as Hughes Aircraft, General Dynamics and Rohr.

Martin breaks down the bulk of his business into three categories: baby boomers age 28 to early 40s, those age 55 or over and who are either “empty nesters” or who simply want to start a new life elsewhere, and those of any age who own one to several income properties in San Diego and want to get more for their money.

What they all have in common, he said, is that they believe better deals and more robust appreciation of real estate values can be had outside of California.

“The people we’re working with have lived in San Diego for five or 10 years or more and they’ve seen major changes here (such as crime, pollution, traffic). They just can’t justify staying for the weather anymore,” Martin said.

Many of his investor clients are interested in Portland. One of his recent clients sold a four-bedroom, single-family house in Chula Vista that the client rented out for $850 a month. The sale price was $166,500 in a depreciating market. The client then purchased three single-family homes in Portland for combined sales price of $120,000 in an appreciating market, Martin said. Combined rent on those Portland houses was $1,800 a month, Martin said.

But McElroy and his wife insist that quality of life is the main attraction to Oregon. The couple falls into the category of baby boomers who are looking for a better place to raise their children. Others are following relocated employers that have set up new plants in cities such as Carson City, Nev.; Portland, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

People who are 55 and older and looking to leave San Diego tend to own their property here free and clear or have very low mortgage debt, Martin said. They can use their home equity to buy a nicer home in a cheaper real estate market elsewhere.

“This (55 and older) crowd is the least tolerant in terms of what’s happening with the quality of life in Southern California--crime, pollution, overcrowding and taxes,” Martin said. “Some of them have told me to just dump their properties here because they want out--right now.”

But not all those who get out of San Diego live happily in their new out-of-state towns.

“I just went back to Salem, Oregon, where I was raised as a teen-ager,” said Marjorie McLaughlin, a Century 21 Realtor and the 1990 president of the San Diego Assn. of Realtors. “And even there, now, they now have the drugs, gangs and graffiti. I was surprised.”

There will always be people who will leave San Diego because they believe they can get something better somewhere else, McLaughlin said.

“People go to places (such as Oregon) on vacation and think they want to live there, and they move out there and then find the place is not so wonderful,” McLaughlin said. “Many decide they want to live somewhere new when they’re visiting the place on vacation during the summer. The winter is a whole different story. The people turn back around and move back to San Diego. We’ve seen a lot of that, too.”