The last time I saw Crystal Chandler, in late December 2018, she was stressed out. So was her teenage daughter.

“I thought we were going to be homeless,” Chandler said recently. “I didn’t know what we were going to do. It was just so overwhelming.”

They’d been kicked out of the Concord apartment they had called home for almost eight years, and they were staying with Chandler’s friend before moving to Arizona. When we met for dinner in Pittsburg, Chandler was driving around with boxes of their belongings in the car.

Just a year later, she’s no longer stressed out by housing insecurity, a scourge that’s spread to every corner of the Bay Area. At the top of Chandler’s list of things to worry about is how to furnish the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house she bought in Phoenix.

Yes, you read that correctly. Chandler’s now a homeowner.

She closed on the house on Dec. 4, and she and her daughter, Nevaeh Chappell, spent Christmas in a home that they can’t be evicted from by an investment company.

“We had to move out of the state to make our lives better,” Chandler told me during a recent phone conversation.

A lot of Californians are figuring this out.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s state-to-state migration data, about 691,000 people left California for another state in 2018. In the same year, about 501,000 people moved from another state to California, a difference of 190,000.

California’s population is growing at the lowest rate in more than a century, according to data released in December by the California Department of Finance. Neighboring states such as Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and, yes, Arizona are attracting people because of a lower cost of living.

In Arizona, a single mother working as a full-time dental assistant can purchase a 1,656-square-foot home for $210,000, an unfathomable price in California, where the median price for a single-family home is $605,000, according to the California Association of Realtors.

“It was a difficult move, but definitely a blessing in disguise,” said Chandler, 34.

Here’s a brief recap of why Chandler, who was raised in Nebraska and came to California when she was 25, left: In August 2018, all of the tenants in Chandler’s 28-unit building on Parkside Drive in Concord were served 60-day eviction notices by new owners who wanted to renovate the apartments. The new owners planned to charge residents $2,000 for a two-bedroom.

Chandler, who paid $1,200 to rent a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment, knew she couldn’t afford an $800 increase while paying for everything else like food and gas. Residents were offered apartments at other properties owned by PTLA Real Estate, a Walnut Creek investment and management company, in addition to a $3,000 payout. Chandler negotiated for $5,000.

The mortgage for her house is $1,440 per month. Do the math: She’s paying less for almost twice the space. And she owns the property.

I wonder why more people aren’t leaving California, because it’s getting more difficult for middle- and lower-income workers to survive here when so much of our incomes go to rent.

As I talked by phone to Chandler about Nevaeh, who turns 14 this month, having to change schools for the third time in a year, her neighbor stopped by. Get this: The neighbor is an Oakland native who moved to Phoenix about three years ago.

“I came out here for the same reason,” said Pat Bonilla, referring to the lower cost of living.

Moving out of state is a luxury many people living on Bay Area streets can’t afford. Heck, without the settlement and donations from friends and Chronicle readers that helped cover moving costs, Chandler might still be stuck staying with friends in the East Bay. Or worse, she and Nevaeh could be homeless.

Being on the verge of homelessness is enough to stress anyone out.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr