Those cities are in the heart of Silicon Valley. They have been good places for engineers to raise families for several generations since their companies were headquartered nearby. The migration of tech headquarters to SF is relatively new.

In these discussions, I think a lot of people forget (or don't know) that most of these cities with rapidly increasing rents were losing population just 20 years ago and certainly 30 years ago. It's easy to be critical of infrastructure investment and zoning policies in some places but a lot of the demand is quite recent on the time scale that cities develop.

just an endless pursuit of materialism. you want something so you gravitate towards it. hence a lot of regular people are destroying their financial futures by staying in these super expensive areas.

Destroying their financial future? None of my friends living in SF or NYC make less than $160k a year working as engineers. In fact, they make that nearly right out of college. The more senior engineers (5+ yrs exp) bring in $300k-500k a year.

They save a significant amount of it, more than they would have saved in any other place. And they can leave at anytime to a low-COL place and buy a house in cash.

people earning 300-500K are very wealthy by any standard. these are not regular people im talking about.

160K salary in SF is probably equivalent to 75K in the middle of America? (considering food, rent/car/health expenses)