It seems like it is the number of (potential) homeowners who are leaving, but I'd like to see data on how many want to come into the city and rent. That is, I think that it is still a much favoured city on other axes, and there is a net influx. I'd like to see the p-value on this assertion :)

Yup. Right now I’m renting. Not great but it’s ok. But in a year I plan to start house shopping and it’s not going to be in the Bay Area.

I can’t help but feel like the region would become more livable if they did. California has too many people for its own good, or at least more people than its 50s-era suburban infrastructure can comfortably support

As someone who has a lot of experience in the area, I can tell you the reason I have personally heard the most is that everything is just so expensive that even though you are making 3x what your brother in LA is making, you can only get slightly less of everything.

My favorite restaurant in the Bay Area is “cheap” at around 25$ per person.

My favorite restaurant where I line now (northern Arizona) is cheap at $8 a person, and tastes mostly the same. There’s also no reservations, and it doesn’t take 3 hours to get to because of traffic.

Making 60k a year in not-SF is like making 200k a year in SF. Except 60k is far more attainable basically everywhere.

It has nothing to do with San Francisco itself. If I was a millionaire, San Francisco would be the place to live (or at least tied with NYC or Seattle)

> Making 60k a year in not-SF is like making 200k a year in SF. Except 60k is far more attainable basically everywhere.

I hear this a lot. It sounds absurd to me, I do not think there is a $140k cost of living difference for a single person living in SF vs not SF.

> My favorite restaurant where I line now (northern Arizona) is cheap at $8 a person, and tastes mostly the same. There’s also no reservations, and it doesn’t take 3 hours to get to because of traffic.

You must have lived in the suburbs in the Bay, as nowhere takes 3 hours to get to because of traffic living in SF. I would expect in Arizona things would generally take longer to get to, on average. Definitely agreed on the price aspect there though.

Two points:

1) my uncle has a modest 2 bedroom 1 bath 800sq ft in Daly City (which is cheap compared to SF proper), and he is working on about $3200 a month for rent alone. My 3 bed 2 bath 1300sq ft in a good neighborhood in AZ is $900 a month.

2) I just disagree with this. My “town” is about 25 miles from end to end and it takes about 35 minutes to drive from on end to the other during the busiest time of day. Whenever I am in SF, going from Daly City to the Golden Gate is 11 miles, takes 55 minutes according to google at the time of writing and has a $9 toll. And that is mostly freeway. If you go during after work rush hour (say, trying to drive home from GGB to South Bay) you’re looking at over 3 hour commute.

I could be wrong about some of the estimates, but just trying to provide more context

I’d like to provide another data point for perspective. I rent a single family home with a 2 car garage and 3 bedrooms for under 3500. I am under 20 minutes from Palo Alto. 20 minutes to San Jose. Have access to the Bart which takes me under an hr to get to sf.

My cash comp is around 225k a year. Im not a staff engineer and My incone seems pretty average for swe engineers in the area.

We have a kid but I’m the single earner at the moment. Sure, buying a house wouldn’t be feasible on my income in the moment if I want to be close to work. The Bay Area is expensive but it feels like your experience is a bit more extreme than mine has been. I don’t think my situation is uncomfortable by any means.

Anecdotal, but I just yesterday took a combination of Amtrak and BART to fly out of SFO.

This one way trip, I nearly stepped in human feces transferring from the Richmond Amtrak Station to BART. Then while enroute to SFO, which took no less than 1.5 hours, encountered two people opening smoking crack on the BART, one of them went across the train ripping the seats on the BART.

Small encounters like this might have something to do with it.

Crazy that the bay area would rather force a mass exodus of middle and working class people than build small apartment buildings.

Don't they need larger apartment buildings and more inventory that isn't focused on luxury?

It doesn't matter if it's "luxury" or not - they need to build and they just don't.

If there is zero inventory added, that is a crisis.

I'm suggesting that the bracket of inventory also matters because "the rich person" won't live in low-end units no matter how abundant and the budget shopper doesn't want to or can't live in expensive units.

I'd suggest organizing to get initiatives passed but this might be difficult if prospective renters are forced outside of the voting jurisdiction.

> "the rich person" won't live in low-end units

Do you actually live in SF? This happens all the time there

I lived in the Bay Area for 30-some-odd years and never understood living in SF. Average workers spending 50-70%+ of income on rent and dealing with hipster-level prices of food and other costs of living. It seemed like a FOMO lifestyle of being "there".

I now live in ATX where it's essentially the same progression again: massive luxury apartment buildings being slapped together as fast as possible while there's thousands of homeless people. Don't even consider buying a home without throwing 40% over asking. It's insane. 30 miles away, enormous homes can be had for $400k, but of course, they're in the middle of nowhere.