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Californians aren’t leaving the state en masse but are leaving San Francisco
- Izikiel43 6y agoI haven't been to SF, but if it's the same as Downtown east side in Vancouver, it's understandable, it's been taken over by the homeless. I'm from a 3rd world country and the situation is even below my standards.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoSF needs to get the message fast that there are serious issues there that need to be fixed. Money is not going to fix a lot of these issues, policy changes will. Coming from someone who left for Colorado.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI actually want SF city to meet its fate and be an example for other cities what not to do.
- jinushaun 6y agoI think that plan will backfire. Look at Detroit. Secondly, everyone will draw different conclusions when looking at the same data.
- bpodgursky 6y agoFor better or for worse, accurate or inaccurate, there were two lessons pretty universally drawn from Detroit: (1) White flight is very, very bad news, and (2) Heavy unionization makes factories uncompetitive. Especially (2) -- again, I'm not saying whether this is the right or wrong conclusion -- weighs heavily on the states that picked up auto manufacturing that fled Detroit. Obviously there are contrarian takes, but these have very wide mindshare, and I don't think it's true that "everyone will draw different conclusions".
- ghaff 6y agoI'm not sure factories closing down in the Bay Area is a big issue as there aren't a lot. The bigger issue is upper middle class and upper class people and their taxes leaving. On the other hand, the area generally (if not necessarily just SF proper) has a lot of attractions that Detroit never had. So it's reasonable to assume that housing prices could drop to a more sustainable level. Of course, one implication is that municipalities would probably have to operate on lower budgets than they do today. In general, SF and Bay Area are not necessarily the same story. Plenty may choose to live in South Bay especially if prices drop but not in the city.
- creato 6y agoI don't think San Francisco will ever be Detroit. The geography constrained SF from physically expanding to the point where it can't sustain itself, unlike Detroit. I think more likely is hitting some low point, and then a crackdown/reversal of the politics. I think a more apt analogy is SF now is like NYC in the 80s, and the 90s cleanup is coming sooner or later.
- almost_usual 6y agoIf strip clubs and peep shows replace all these empty retail fronts we’ll get there. Sounds like open liquor laws will be a go post covid. Party time.
- dmix 6y agoIsn’t SF zoning and city laws much more NIMBY and less objectively progressive than the cities reputation? I thought that’s why it’s so dirty and full of obvious problems like petty crime and homelessness. A local political system disconnected from solving the IRL problems. You’re right though. The solution to SF is actual liberalism of laws around the fun stuff and help for those in need to get them out of the cycle of criminality by being more reasonable with them (shelters and safe injection sites with opiate programs so they don’t have to steal and destroy i property in order to live). I could see the latter happening like it is here in Canada (there’s always that homeless/career criminal niche everywhere) although it seems like 10x higher out on the west coast and given the tax rate as it is already super high idk if they have the appetite to do the right thing and cut other useless stuff to offset it.
- mdgrech23 6y agoAs a Detroiter I'm curios to hear why you think Detroit went the way it did.
- seppin 6y agoIt lost all it's industry
- Kalium 6y agoOver-dependency on a single industry, unwillingness to diversify, and an arrogant assumption that the same work could never be done elsewhere. Add in highways, commuting, and an infrastructure maintenance death spiral as domestic car production lost its major advantages. Rising crime added to the death spiral, as people who could moved out and the general deprivation of Detroit grew. Many of the suburbs developed their own economies, which further encouraged people to move there instead of Detroit proper. Lots of racism played its part in various ways. Lots of room to debate the precise degree, though the debate is probably not helpful at this point. These days the high taxes (property and income) and auto insurance rates are big problems. Only a few of these really apply to SF. Though the arrogance of assuming the good times will roll on forever seems accurate.
- mcguire 6y ago"Over-dependency on a single industry, unwillingness to diversify, and an arrogant assumption that the same work could never be done elsewhere." Like San Francisco?
- Kalium 6y agoOnly to the extent that San Francisco is over-dependent on tourism. "Tech" is both not really a single industry in the way that auto mfg is and far less dominant than one might guess. Though if you can convince me that Salesforce and Autodesk are meaningfully in the same industry as Spring and LendingClub, I'm all ears.
- 6y ago
- chr1 6y agoThat's a very optimistic point of view on the ability of people to learn from examples. No matter how hard SF fails, there will be lots of people going around and telling how it have failed because of not building enough social housing for the poor, not having high enough taxes, and allowing rich to escape after robbing the city dry. Just like there are people saying that communist countries fail because of US sanctions.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThere is no chance SF will change in time. It's just not how the city works. I can imagine it gets lucky, and things fix themselves.
- dicomdan 6y agoThey just got a huge influx of cash from Congress so the message is lost in irrelevance.
- sriram_sun 6y agoAnecdata - San Diego prices are going way up - folks moving from Bay Area.
- cobraetor 6y agoTexas too. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2018/11/02/say-it-ain-t-so-is-texas-turning-into-california/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2018/11/02/s...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- selimthegrim 6y agohttps://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2021/03/04/d-fw-is-one-of-the-markets-seeing-the-biggest-declines-in-homes-for-sale/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2021/03/04/d...
- zeroonetwothree 6y agoIf you’ve lived in both you’d know there’s not much to worry about lol
- moneywoes 6y agoFor someone who has not lived in either can you elaborate
- derek1800 6y agoMy realtor told me the last handful of houses she sold were to tech employees moving from Bay Area (Twitter, FB, etc)
- aidenn0 6y agoSanta Barbara as well. Never thought Santa Barbara would be a place people moved to save money...
- 6y ago
- Moodles 6y agoI'm leaving San Francisco next month also. I just see no reason to continue living here. The weather is nice in California, but the city is so mismanaged it's a joke. The homelessness has been an issue for decades now and local politicians always talk about it, but what do they actually do to help? I genuinely have no clue where the high taxes go. I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet in Tenderloin every day for decades tech bros have stepped over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year. Why didn't they build more houses here? Oh, the views would be spoiled! Right. People can continue shitting in the street then. We don't mind that view.
- isoskeles 6y agoThese days, tents. https://sfist.com/2021/03/04/insanely-it-is-costing-san-francisco/ https://sfist.com/2021/03/04/insanely-it-is-costing-san-fran...
- khuey 6y agoWorth noting that the actual tents are cheap and what's expensive is the security, social services, meals, etc that come along with it. For comparison, the cost to incarcerate someone in California is around $7k/mo and what that money is spent on is broken down at https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost https://lao.ca.gov/PolicyAreas/CJ/6_cj_inmatecost
- xyzzyz 6y agoLast I checked, California cost per inmate was more than double the national average. Interestingly, from what I remember, 20 years ago the same cost in California was about national average. California should investigate contracting the prison service to Oklahoma: Oklahoma spends per prisoner something like a quarter of California spends, so California could save lots of money this way, and Oklahoma would make a lot of money, a great example of positive sum trade. Of course, that’s not going to happen, because California rulers don’t want to incarcerate all these people, and from this perspective, high cost is a feature, not a bug: it helps in arguing against incarceration.
- fortran77 6y agoThe die-hard San Franciscan is probably saying "Good!" They don't want anyone living there that's above average, is able to earn a living, or doesn't want to poop on the sidewalk. But good luck running a city when 100% of your population is incapable of contributing more than they take.
- ganoushoreilly 6y agoIt's ok, they're going to relocate and keep pushing the same culture with their votes, slowly destroying the next place. I left 8 years ago, couldn't have been happier. SF is beautiful, but the lack of political diversity (ironic for a city so outspoken on diversity) is what pushes these crazy ideas and policies that will ultimately end up with this outcome.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwawaymanbot 6y agoSo It was just a far right wing talk loop. Oh I’m so surprised.
- RedComet 6y agoI'm sure those living in the rest of the state can't wait for them to move there and recreate the same problems they were fleeing.
- ubertoop 6y agoYou have got to be kidding. SF, and California generally, has had systemic problems that have virtually nothing to do with the recent tech boom.
- almost_usual 6y agoThat’s true, the State of Jefferson folks probably won’t listen though.
- taylorlapeyre 6y agoI may as well represent a different perspective here. I am not leaving San Francisco. It's beautiful here. I'm excited to see it get weirder. I will always choose to live somewhere that is exciting over somewhere that will be the same forever. Everything about San Francisco has always been "temporary." This city is boom/bust, constantly changing. It's interesting, having a front-row seat to the ways that people and culture change over time. Some of the most interesting, most cherished times for native San Franciscans was the 60s/70s, when crime was way higher than today, there was no real tech presence, and the art scene here was booming. It was expensive then, too. It's probably always going to be expensive to live here. If you're here, you can probably already feel the city starting to get into the bust times, the times when the culture really starts to get shaken up and things start evolving into something new. It's not for everyone, but for a certain kind of person — it's better than anywhere else. You probably won't agree with me, and that's okay. I don't expect, or want, everyone to. But the changes I've seen in SF recently — personally, I like them. There's so much potential. EDIT: The level of hostility in the comments here is a little staggering. Please, readers, consider that others may have a different perspective than you. Obviously, I am not condoning any further human suffering. If that's all that you can see in my comment, consider if the cynicism in your comment may effect others.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> I'm excited to see it get weirder ... personally, I like [it] I think the problem is that the 'weirdness' is more like 'human suffering'. People treat it like a charming part of the experience for their benefit... but like it's real people suffering.
- taylorlapeyre 6y agoIf you’re imagining crime and homelessness, that’s not exactly what I mean by “weirdness” – those are problems that San Francisco needs to fix... and will probably always need to fix.
- setpatchaddress 6y ago
- tppiotrowski 6y agoI never understood why companies paid the living costs of SF instead of locating in the Midwest or smaller cities. Someone told me it’s because SF is where all the talent goes so it would be unwise to locate elsewhere. Maybe COVID has revealed that geography is not as important to success as people believed.
- sn41 6y ago1. Closeness to the Stanford university ecosystem which promoted tech. Berkeley isn't too far away physically, though it may not be very near ideologically. Talent helps. 2. Matthew Effect: The (talent-)rich (cities) get richer. 3. Weather. I have lived at some point in the midwest. Shovelling snow in a morning storm so that you can get in the car to go to office is not something I'd want to do again. Maybe Denver has mild enough weather to be considered a replacement. On the other hand, Colorado is a beautiful place and it'd be sad to see it overrun by large crowds of morning commuters. Austin is a viable alternative, Texas school boards notwithstanding. 4. Covid is not a long-term trend. Nothing beats the bandwidth of a physical meeting, or a discussion over coffee.
- ghaff 6y agoWhile I think all that's true, tons of people manage to deal with states with snow including metros with major university systems. It's not a deal-breaker for most. Furthermore, there are lots of ways people can get together and collaborate. I even live near a local office that I rarely go into. I mostly meet people when traveling.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nerfhammer 6y ago5. Because in 1956 William Shockley moved there, for somewhat arbitrary reasons
- mannerheim 6y agoI believe it was to take care of his ailing mother. Maybe if she had decided to retire to Florida, Silicon Valley would be in the Sunshine State.
- excerionsforte 6y agoArea is priced highly, jobs can be done from anywhere else in the world, so it is natural regardless of politics and all the other crap that people migrate to cheaper areas where they feel they can live out of. The SF/SV bubble is leaking out and pressure is being let out to the rest of the world mostly US. Obviously, SF isn't the only high priced area in the world that is leaking out. With lowered rent prices, this should help alleviate economics on lower paid people. Who's to say these areas won't go sky high again though.
- Xcelerate 6y agoWe left the Bay Area to be closer to family. It was going to happen at some point, but the pandemic just accelerated the move. The Bay Area is still my favorite place though, so ironically I’m able to save up faster to buy a house there (for retirement) by not living there currently, assuming remote incomes don’t drop drastically after the pandemic. Anecdotally, at our apartment complex in Asheville, there are three cars with California license plates right next to mine, so at least some people had the same idea as us with regard to where to move.
- Proven 6y agoThey don't have to leave en massse, it's enough for a few richest individuals to leave and next fiscal year things start going even more downhill. Check how many individuals pay 80% of Cali's income tax. But also: why does the paper assume anyone needs to be persuaded about this? Everyone knows the progressives have destroyed the state. You can argue about it forever but that doesn't change the fact that Cali is going down, especially now that it's been proven at scale that WFH works okay for 50% of employers.
- williesleg 6y agoLos Angeles population is probably the same because everybody moved out and the homeless moved in. Venice beach is a homeless encampment now. And yet the rich elites say everything is ok.
- ridaj 6y agoTl;dr: not the usual Californians-leave-in-droves-for-redder-pastures story. Exodus from SF city has drastically increased, but is mostly still within California, or even within the Bay Area economic area. It has also increased relatively more towards the Sierra Nevada area.
- waheoo 6y agoThat's an interesting way to frame it. You sure a bunch of blue staters are moving to redder pastures? The way I see it is a bunch of blue staters are fleeing totalitarian extremists.
- ra7 6y agoThose who left SF Bay Area, do you regret it? Why or why not? I'm currently thinking about moving to a different state as it makes sense financially, but I have an attachment with the Bay Area and what it offers (especially as an immigrant), so I'm hesitant to move. I'm interested to hear experiences of people who recently left.
- Ganz7 6y agoSan Francisco, the city itself is a very different beast from the rest of the Bay Area.
- leet_thow 6y agoI moved to Reno short term once covid hit and have zero regrets. Saving 1k a month in taxes alone. One thing I really appreciate is not having to wait in line for everything e.g. lunch, gas at Costco, post office, car service etc.
- Redoubts 6y ago> Those who left SF Bay Area, do you regret it? Fuck no. > Why or why not? Even during the pandemic, NYC is an infinitely better city. Cheaper, too.
- joshuaengler 6y agoMore people are leaving California currently than coming to it. Perhaps that isn't a biblical level exodus quite yet, but it's coming with time. Just be patient. Rome didn't fall in a day.
- seppin 6y agoCalifornia has 40 million people, losing 10k a month isn't a big deal.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoCalifornia still was at positive population increase before the pandemic because of foreign immigration. Also, Texas had more people than California just back in 1940, it isn’t weird that it’s huge growth over the last 80 years has come to an end.
- rsj_hn 6y agoI would say a population decline for any big state is a bit unusual, no?
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoNope. Look at New York. Anyways, if you want to see the reality, do a Google for “California population”, it will include Florida and Texas in a graph that goes back to 1920.
- rsj_hn 6y agoThe exodus from NY was pretty remarkable and widely commented on. It was devastating for the state and led to the bankruptcy of NYC.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoAnd...where is NYC today? Definitely not a desolate bankrupt city with falling property values. Also, San Francisco and the Bay Area are definitely not immune to the boom-bust cycle, there have been busts before and there will be busts again, just like any other boom towns.
- mbgerring 6y agoI’ve lived in San Francisco for about ten years and I’ve never been more excited about the future of this city. We have an incredible opportunity to build a city that works for everyone and not just a glorified dorm room complex for young tech workers. The next few years are looking very good!
- refurb 6y agoHats off to your optimism, but having lived in SF it looks the govt has only gotten more dysfunctional. It was never about “building a city that works for everyone” and good luck on changing that.
- mbgerring 6y agoCivic participation is a long, hard slog that rewards the people who stay with it. Best of luck to you wherever you landed.
- refurb 6y agoThere is no lack of civic participation in SF. That’s why it’s the way it is today. It’s community organizations like Calle 24 who don’t want tech folks and don’t want new housing. They run the city.
- _-david-_ 6y agoWhat makes you think that things are going to change? I don't live in SF, but things look like they are getting worse.
- pugetsounds 6y agoThere are more people leaving California each year than being born in it. The study in the article focuses on movement between 2019-20. I’m not sure if they’re addressing the question the right way, as 2020 was a pretty unusual year and this has been going on for quite some time.
- rayiner 6y agoI’ve thought about this quite carefully, and I’m convinced we need to kick California out of the union. There is too big of an impedance mismatch with the rest of the country, and it creates and exports too much economic inequality. The usual retort to this is “what will you do without California’s economic engine?” And that’s a fair point—America without California will be less wealthy. But that will be fine; and in fact probably better. Think about it. People reminisce about the 1950s and 1960s as the good times. What did America look like back then? It looked a lot more like Iowa. Poorer than California on average, but economically flat with a low ceiling (few high income people) and a high floor (few really poor people). There are few upper middle class people (very little knowledge industry jobs) and consequently very little of the ecosystem that upper middle class people bring with them (housing, retail, restaurants, etc., that are unaffordable to normal people). Upper middle class people are what drive malaise among the rest of the population. People in places like San Francisco, Portland, etc., complain about the tech industry people moving in. And the response of tech industry people is “hey, we’re not billionaire, we’re working stiffs like everyone else.” Jeff Bezos might have oodles of money, but it’s just on paper. He’s not buying enough houses to move the market prices. It’s Amazon engineers that are buying houses with their high salaries in sufficient numbers to drive up property prices. And as a result, people can’t afford to live and raise kids where they grew up. And that imposes devastating costs on middle class people. For middle class people for whom child care is a major expense, being able to drop the kids off at their grandparents regularly is a huge boon economically and socially. (Remember, the median American adult lives less than 18 miles from their mom.) Then comes all the other stuff. The corner burger joint is replaced by a fancy one that charges $18 for a cheeseburger. The diner where you can get a $1.00 coffee is replaced by a fancy coffee that charges $5.00 for a coffee. Conveniences and frivolities become far more expensive. The local gymnastics studio where you can send your kid twice a week to get her out of your hair doubles it’s prices. Etc. Jeff Bezos, by contrast, has no impact on any of that. I think the natives complaining about the influx of high income professionals actually perceive the reality correctly. Most of them aren’t qualified for high paying jobs at Google and Facebook anyway. These industries moving in won’t help them in that regard. It will simply create a large contingent of people who can now outbid them on access to fixed resources, which will make their lives worse.
- 6y ago
- spiritplumber 6y agoI like SF where it is. Close enough that I can take the bus there but far enough that I don't have to have a conversation about UFOs with a bum unless I choose to.
- dccoolgai 6y agoAs someone it tech who has spent the last two decades or so thumbing my nose at SF/bay from the East Coast, making bold predictions that the entire house of cards paying 400k for talent you could get for half that or less on the East Coast... Now that it's happened/happening I am not happy about it at all. Having wages collapse there is going to put a drag on the rest of the market across the country. I've spent a lot of time sneering at SF tech-scene from across the country, but I'm cheering for it now.
- subpixel 6y agoI think you’re right to be worried. The piercing of the Bay Area reality distortion zone, combined with the unprecedented embrace of remote teams, may well mean that for the vast majority of tech workers their value will be judged against someone also very good who is willing to work for considerably less money.
- azinman2 6y agoI think the bigger issue in this scenario is that they now can’t move to the Bay Area themselves and both make great money.
- TeeMassive 6y agoI don't understand the framing of the article when they say > The number of people leaving California typically tracks with the amount entering the state. But the findings show that wasn’t the case in the fourth quarter of 2020, when 267,000 people left the state and only 128,000 entered. So that's 130k people leaving for one year (not a quarter like the way it's phrased, I've looked up the statistics and 130k a year makes more sense). And the negative growth of the state's population began before the pandemic. I'm failing to see how losing 0.3% of your population is not the beginning of an exodus? https://www.macrotrends.net/states/california/population https://www.macrotrends.net/states/california/population
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago> I'm failing to see how losing 0.3% of your population is not the beginning of an exodus? It could be the beginning of an exodus, but it is not strong evidence that an exodus will follow. If done for affordability reasons, it reduces demand a bit to create a new equilibrium with supply. Anyways, I’m not clear why anyone with a background in tech would be confident that a 0.3% drop was evidence that a huge drop was just right around the corner.
- TeeMassive 6y agoYou would not be wrong if that was the first year. But it follows a multiple years long trend. The only reason the population of California kept increasing was because births were offsetting the net lost of migration until 2018.
- hnhousingthrow 6y agoI left SF 8 months ago after renting a small room for 5 years at ~$2k/month with housemates. By moving ~150 miles away I was able to buy my first house, ~2100 sqft on 4 acres (!) for ~$600,000. Any thoughts on what to do when the pandemic ends and employers make us come back to the Bay Area office? I really do love San Francisco, it's so naturally beautiful, the hills give perspectives of communities, so many neighborhoods and main streets, so much stimulation, I learned about deep learning from housemates there in 2015 and was able to make a living out of it that I probably wouldn't have been able to elsewhere. Wish I listened to my other housemates espousing bitcoin and the original ethereum ico... I made $200k salary last year and yet have no prospect for ownership of a nice home anywhere in the Bay Area, let alone San Francisco, and I'm one of the lucky ones. Even the shitty houses where I grew up near Compton, CA are asking more than half a mil now. Not sure how this all ends...
- Izikiel43 6y ago> Any thoughts on what to do when the pandemic ends and employers make us come back to the Bay Area office? Get an employer which allows remote work.
- renewiltord 6y agoI love SF but they stole shit from my car, ran over my motorcycle, and then stole my motorcycle when I fixed it. Like, dude, I'll be back eventually because it has great geography and I have lots of friends I adore there. But Jesus, man, I need a break. This is too much for so little time.
- cjsplat 6y agoFirst, the underlying report is at : https://www.capolicylab.org/calexodus-are-people-leaving-california/ https://www.capolicylab.org/calexodus-are-people-leaving-cal... Interesting to notice the title for the report vs. the title the LA Times headline writers selected. Second, much of the data is being reported as Year over year deltas and ratios of %, which is mathematically accurate but hard to interpret. A increase of over 900% in people leaving S.F. sounds pretty spectacular, but the same metric has Alameda at over 400%, and LA is over 130% I got estimates of the populations from https://www.california-demographics.com/counties_by_population https://www.california-demographics.com/counties_by_populati..., and used that to normalize the exit rate by percent of population. S.F definitely leads, with 2.3% net leaving, but only 19 of 57 California Counties in the report actually grew. L.A., San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Orange Counties all shrunk, but the "Everyone hate on S.F." bandwagon gets more clicks.
- junon 6y agoIve left SF before as well. Homelessness issue is a joke to the city. Transportation was horrible. The non-tourist parts of town were a toilet for people (way more than you'd even think, without seeing it). I am a younger white guy who doesn't necessarily look timid, and even then I've been threatened in the BART by drunk dudes on multiple occasions. It's expensive. It's politics 24/7. It's crowded (not just bustling, but more as though you took a large city and squeezed it into a small city). The local governments have failed everyone there.
- imtringued 6y agoI would like to mention that according to existing residents in San Francisco this is a good thing. They want you to leave.