This exodus is universally seen as a bad thing. For many stakeholders, it certainly is - restaurants, landlords, employers who need cheap labor, etc. For renter

This exodus is universally seen as a bad thing. For many stakeholders, it certainly is - restaurants, landlords, employers who need cheap labor, etc. For renters, it's a wonderful thing. For people commuting to SF on a daily basis, it's the best thing ever (either because they can move closer to work, or not commute at all and work from home, or simply deal with less traffic). I doubt that many people will disagree with these arguments. Here's the contrarian part: I think that early-stage startups might benefit as well. After the dot com boom, the only people applying to startups were the die-hards. To some extent, you also noticed a better signal to noise ratio right after the housing crisis. I have no doubt that fewer startups will be started now in SF, and that fewer local people will apply for jobs. But it was never about the quantity and instead always about finding the needle in the haystack. I think there's a chance that the size of the haystack will shrink much more quickly than the number of needles.