Nothing would be better for California in general and the Bay Area in particular for people to move away for a while. The infrastructure of that region is swamped. Everything is overpriced and congested.

I was born in San Francisco a long time ago and it used to actually be a pretty cheap city to live in California once. A lot of LA based law firms would open up offices in San Francisco because it was cheaper to live there then lots of parts of Los Angeles and lots of people thought the city was charming. That's hard to imagine now. To me the charm was hollowed out by it becoming so expensive. So now SF is a boring like Manhattan and Oakland is the Brooklyn of the region.

The only reason anyone pays $2700 for an 500 sq ft apartment in San Jose is because they have a great job near by. I don't want to say anything bad about San Jose but IMO it has always been pretty far down the list of places you want to live in California. You shouldn't have to suffer that much for a job, and it seems like the way things are going you won't have to.

What areas don't have political and ideology homogeny anymore? There are two Americas. I would enjoy an area with better tolerance to the other side's ideals, but it seems that's in short supply everywhere. There's a real viciousness for the other side at the national level, but I can't understand it at the individual human being level or the community level. Your neighbor may not share your politics, but it also doesn't imply they embody all of your opposition's ideas. We pick sides because we have to in a first-past-the-post system.

I think the divide looks more bridgeable on a personal level - on a recent trip to a rural area of Oregon I got to speak with an anti-vax, huge pickup driving, hunting, Christian man. He seemed like a genuine, kind, thoughtful person, and I sincerely enjoyed talking with him. He acted respectful towards my pro-vax, Prius-driving, suburb-dwelling attitudes. Seemed like there was mutual respect there, and I don't think it's too unusual for people to appreciate learning about each other and to respect differences.

Guess I'm just hoping that controversy appears bigger than it is, and most people still do know how to get along and respect each other.

Every us state has liberal and conservative chunks within it - i feel like best bet is to find one of those in the opposite of whatever your state is. Those places I feel like are better balanced and don’t suffer from the excesses of extremism

> I would enjoy an area with better tolerance to the other side's ideals, but it seems that's in short supply everywhere.

There isn't better tolerance on either side. You're mistaking agreeing with group think for tolerance. What is tolerated is just a different set of behaviors, but intolerance is high regardless for behaviors outside that set. You just don't see the intolerance when you agree with the majority.

Not a California thing. I live in Dallas and am all for coming to Texas, but don't expect miracles. There are homeless people everywhere, vacant buildings, my catalytic converter has been sawed off twice, trash all over the place, major road out of my neighborhood has had a pothole big enough to knock a wheel off for 8 months and the city has done nothing about it.

These are just city problems.

On the other hand, my mortgage, insurance, and property taxes are $2,500 a month for a 3,000 square foot, 4-story townhome with a private rooftop deck with a downtown skyline view, so there's that.

Dallas has definitely worse roads than the Bay Area. There are some roads with crazy amount of pot holes.

In think crime and homeless depends a lot on the area in Dallas. A lot of new apartments and townhomes are in “transitional” neighborhoods.

you don't have to move that far to escape all that. Plenty of areas an hour away from San Jose that are nice and a lot cheaper (still more expensive than Texas or Florida, sure).

Depending on if you need to change jobs and the family situation sometimes it's just as much effort to move states than move a few hours away.

If you have the opportunity it's good to look at the entire country, sometimes even the world (though for tech the US is by far the best option) for the best value.

Even moving 2 miles away will result in better quality of life. Downtown San Jose has the some of the highest crime rates and largest homeless encampments in the city, and the rent in other parts of the city is not a lot higher.

But if I'm moving an hour away, why not move farther? I was born, raised and have lived 31 out of 34 years in California and I just can't fathom why anyone would choose to live here anymore. I bought a house in Southern Oregon 4 years ago and moved up here full time a year ago thanks to the pandemic. I really hope I never have to move back.

Southern Oregon is a far cry from Texas and Florida as the top comment mentions. I don't see how either of those states would factor in especially for my partner who champions women's and LGBTQ+ rights...

No need to drive even an hour. Downtown San Jose is certainly a hellhole (I worked downtown on Santa Clara St. for a while) but just a few minutes away there are very nice suburbs like Campbell, Willow Glen etc.

If you live downtown in SJ you could move a few miles and have a much more pleasant life.

Still expensive, though.

There is flight from major metropolitan cities right now. All the problems are the same across these cities. While I'm in the honeymoon phase of my recent move from the city I love and grew up in. I was tired of many of the things you listed.

> I’m paying a lot of money to live here, but for what?

The weather. The high cost of living in the bay area and California is largely about the weather. People come to California for the dream and stay for the sun.

Actually I found the constant sunny days quite boring after a while.

It's weird how subjective experience can be so different. I live in East San Jose a mile from downtown. I'm very happy with it. I love riding my electric bike around town and my only complaint is that for a supposedly high tech city the traffics lights are not even close to being syncrhonized. I can't related to most of your other complaints.

Your other complaints are complaints you often hear from conservatives about San Francisco. I took my bike on the train to SF not long ago and spotted no feces and smelled no urine as I rode around The City.

Homelessness is a problem in San Jose and SF, but no worse than in many other cities I've been in.

I am in CT and a local road near my house suffers from this light synchronization issue. I think it comes down to a city verse state road in my case.

I have often thought if lights were better optimized, we could save on gas usage in cars.

> for a supposedly high tech city the traffics lights are not even close to being syncrhonized

No, it's worse. Every time I have to drive in Santa Clara County, I get the impression that the traffic engineers they hired are sociopaths.

The traffic lights on El Camino are perfectly timed to force you to stop at every. single. damn. one. That is, unless you drive 20+mph over the speed limit. I initially thought this might be to encourage walking and cycling, but you run into the exact same problem on a bike. The infrastructure isn't very ped-friendly, either.

I just don't get it. The stoplights are timed to make travel excruciating no matter how you do it. The problem with El Camino light timing ends when you cross into San Mateo county, btw.

It's the polar opposite of LA, where you can drive 10's of miles (late at night) on surface streets with the cruise control set right at the speed limit, never touching the gas or breaks. Cycling in the valley or on LA's west side, you can usually hit 3-5 greens before needing to stop (and then only briefly).

Edit: formatting

I used to drive Uber and I agree that El Camino is the worst. It's so bad somebody should lose their job for incompentantly managing traffic. Santa Clara Ave through San Jose isn't any better. It's maddening and I agree, it doesn't matter if you bike or car. The irony is San Jose is near the top of the lists for IOT smart cities. Ok, but your traffic lights say different.

Florida is pretty terrible. Even if you are totally cool with never doing anything outside, never engaging in culture, and never talking to other people, there is literally no positive side to living in Florida other than the combined lack of winter and access to a beach. Sure, people are more right-wing, but I'd much rather live in Texas than Florida. Even a desert is more interesting than endless strip-malls, and big Texas cities are more cultured, and even more commercially diverse, than any part of Florida. Practically speaking, Florida is also always overpriced, and insurance and hurricanes are annoying (and going to get worse).

What parts of Florida have you lived in?

South Florida, Central Florida, East & West Coast. For about 15 years

This wasn't intended as a gotcha, or anything, I was just honestly curious what informed your experience. I lived in Tampa for ~10 years, and found it to be a pretty decent city in general, though with the usual southern caveats of public transit being non-existent and the sprawl being excessive.

Once you get past the angry drivers, random chickens, Ybor, rush hour, crime, etc, the main problem with cities like Tampa is they are just soulless. It's like someone paved over the entire world and installed palm trees and Jamba Juices and nothing else. Everyone is angry, everything is boring and expensive. But if all you want to do is sit inside and look at a screen, you'll almost never notice.

The two states mentioned are near the bottom of my list but I think your nod to ideological homogeny notes that you are on board. I personally find the policy decisions (and elected leadership) of both to be third world, backward, and dangerous if not outright fraudulent and refuse to entertain offers that would put me there or working for companies there.

Man Jose is an awful choice when it comes to CA/Bay Area options.

What are some better options in CA?

Depends what you're looking for, CA is a ginormous state with basically anything you fancy on the menu. Rural, urban, mountainous, coastal, desert, agricultural, it's all over the place.

It should simply be obvious that judging the state from a narrow sampling of life in San Jose is an extreme case of wearing the SV rat-race blinders and utterly failing to take advantage of what the region has to offer.

I’m convinced

I'm going to have to recommend against Florida. Remember, the last gubernatorial election there was decided by ~50k votes. And blue-staters have been migrating there en masse since last summer. I sold my house to one of them several months ago (home prices have been going up like a rocket, btw) and left.