How is it terrible? While I'd love to move to a cheaper place (our work is all remote now), I can't think of anywhere better and I've been looking hard.

Being near the ocean is a hard requirement. And weather that isn't terrible (bay area weather isn't actually very good, but it's also never terrible). Where else could one go?

Florida could be nice but it is low land being taken over by rising oceans so not a great strategy. Washington state coast sounds promising but there is snow up there, so a hard no. Oregon coast is pretty inhospitable for water sports. Southern California isn't particularly cheaper. Southern east coast (north of Florida) could work, but way too much racism so as a minority that's a pass.

SF Bay to Monterey Bay is a sweet spot in the USA that is hard to beat.

I mean sure, but eventually you come to a reckoning of what you truly get out of an area. Is it nice restaurants? Bars? Parks? You can have those elsewhere. Walkable neighborhoods with transit exist elsewhere too. Museums, art, plays, concerts, operas, orchestras, too.

At some point you have to square with the fact that your 2 million dollar home in the bay area is an order of magnitude more expensive than a comparable home in a dozen more or less comparable places, given that you'd be working from home at the same rate anyway (in this hypothetical). And then you'd have plenty of money left over to fly back to the bay whenever you'd like.

Can you give some examples of places that meet those criteria (good transit, walkable, major cultural venues, varied dining scene) with $200k houses?

I don’t think there are many places in America with good transit that are walkable so I think it’s going to be tough to find that for $200k. And if the solution is just to move somewhere so small you don’t need transit, then you lose out on the varied restaurants, cultural events, major airport, etc.

The better places for transit like NYC, SF, Chicago, and Denver are all major cities so you won’t find dirt cheap houses near the transit.

Chicago: the Red, Blue, Green, Orange, and Pink lines all run through neighborhoods with $200k houses. The Blue Line connects to O'Hare, the Orange line connects to Midway. The bus system has a line in a grid every mile, sometimes more often, with some diagonals.

Are the areas with the cheap houses walkable destinations in their own right or mainly residential communities with a subway stop that can get you to the action?

Chicago was the example that most came to mind as something with cheaper houses and transit, but without knowing it very well my sense from talking to people is that there is a lot of cheap housing in Chicago but living in the urban core isn't necessarily cheap.

Shaker Heights.

Ironically, people in "flyover country" have been hearing the same sorts of disses for decades

I used to cringe with the term “flyover country”. Now I embrace it. I even promote it. The less enticing I make my area seem to an outsider, the less likely they will try to move here and ruin it.

There's nothing to do here, you're isolated, there's no culture, it's completely boring, and the people are so intolerant. Stay on the coasts!

And don’t come to Louisiana either, WWOZ is on the Internet for a reason!

(just kidding, we need all of you we can get)

Absolutely, and I won't pretend that's something I've never been guilty of. But it's a very toxic habit and we need to do our best to fight against it.

I would consider it a personal problem if a bay area native dislikes hearing that some people don't like the bay area. Is it unreasonable to expect adults to have the emotional maturity to handle such things?