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I'm in this boat. Movers came yesterday and our flight out of state is tomorrow. To answer one other poster, in my case I'm a programmer with a CS degree who's

I'm in this boat. Movers came yesterday and our flight out of state is tomorrow. To answer one other poster, in my case I'm a programmer with a CS degree who's in the highest tax bracket. What I pay in taxes does not at all make up for the standard-/cost-of-living. We've been in SF for years and have a 3.5 year old daughter and a baby on the way. How anyone gets by with kids and without a lucrative job is beyond me. We pay $2,900/month just for preschool for my daughter. With two kids, it'd be $6,000/month (younger kids cost even more!). Where we're moving, it's $1,250/month and it even includes food. Everything is expensive here: food is expensive, rent is expensive, we have people literally smoking Fentanyl right out in front of our door. I'm not kidding, I actually need to get their attention so that I can even open the front gate. It's littered with trash and feces. Two days ago we were at a playground and there was a wide puddle of diarrhea in the play structure. I have to constantly tell my daughter not to touch ANYTHING. What kind of way is this to live, let alone raise a family? As I was siting outside guarding the open garage and moving truck, I literally got berated by a passing stranger for no reason and had to call the police for them to force him to move along since he was at it for almost 20 minutes and frequently coming into my garage. "But you can't beat the weather" only goes so far. It's a shame. It's a beautiful state and a beautiful city, but to say it's going through a rough patch would be an understatement. I'm so excited to get out of here, but I do hope California can turn it around.

floren 3y ago
But what will you do when you only have 2 good Thai restaurants to choose from in your immediate area, instead of 5??
- thrill 3y ago
  Do like most thinking adults and learn to cook?
  - beej71 3y ago
    Restaurant variety is actually important for people who like restaurants. If you're used to Big City fare, it might be a shocker to move to a town of 100,000 or fewer. Sometimes you want to go out for a nice evening, but literally every restaurant in town isn't what you're looking for.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
> "But you can't beat the weather" only goes so far. I dunno where you're going, but I hope its not Florida or the gulf coast. The realtors don't tell you about the the existential dread (and "hidden" living cost) of hurricane season. This is coming from a central Texas native accustomed to what I thought was bad weather.
ViktorRay 3y ago
I hope everything goes well for you! Even if you get paid less at your new location I’m sure the lower cost of living, lower taxes and less dangerous living conditions will make up for it. I guess many others in California must be thinking the same things considering all the people who are leaving
ChainOfFools 3y ago
My living situation and life circumstances are broadly similar to yours, and I'm also in California but not anywhere near downtown Metro. Instead I'm about an equal distance from the center of La and the center of San Diego, and the beach cities of orange county- each roughly an hour drive in their various directions (modulo traffic). Daycare here, at a fairly premium facility connected to the UC system, is 1700 a month for a toddler and would probably be about $2,200 for an infant (full day/5 days a week). Rent is probably not a consideration in a move someone like yourself or ourselves might make, but if it had to be, an entire three bedroom house with a swimming pool can be had month-to-month at about $3,500-4500. median home value is somewhere around 750 to 850 depending on what side of what street you live on. This doesn't really remedy the tax situation but it does look like a completely different universe in contrast to what you're going to deal with in the middle of San Francisco or LA, or even (to a much lesser extent) San Diego. The downside is that you had better really, really, really like the company of fake-aggressive midlife crisis bros in humongous lifted pickup trucks, because that's who you're largely going to be surrounded by.
_blz2 3y ago
Will you continue voting blue after your move and bring back same policies?
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  I'd also like to know. I'm always very interested in what people who move from blue -> red have to say about this, whether they notice any kind of connection between the fact that the blue state is undesirable and the red state is more desirable, and if they continue voting blue in the red state, how exactly they'll reconcile that and rest assured the same doom won't befall that state.
  - beej71 3y ago
    And yet the price of housing is higher in the "undesirable" part of the country?
    - phendrenad2 3y ago
      Seems like housing prices are always the last domino to fall.
- yipyipyipee 3y ago
  Good question. I think both parties are have their policies that work and don't work for me. I'm in favor of social programs to get people on their feet, instead of paying for the fallout ten times over by letting people slide into homelessness and crime. I'm all for prosecuting people who steal, including petty theft, which SF has completely gone off the rails with. We should be helping lift people up to a bare minimum so that we're all lifted up. People should also be held accountable for their actions. I'll be voting for whoever sees things the way I do.
beej71 3y ago
But I don't get is how it's so crap and at the same time so expensive. Maybe people leaving will finally bring some prices down. I left 10 years ago for no other reason other than I was getting kind of bored of the Bay Area. Seems like it's really gotten rougher since then, but prices don't reflect that.
yongjik 3y ago
I wish you well, but it sounds a bit like generalizing some SF-specific problems to the whole CA. I live in a boring suburb in the East Bay, where commute is horrible, but there's zero human feces on pavement, no homeless tents, and my high school kids have no problem taking a walk (or bike ride) around town at 11 pm. Of course, suburb being suburb, it's not good for the environment (you have to drive to get anywhere), and it's boring as hell. YMMV.
- yipyipyipee 3y ago
  Yea my problems in SF are more extreme, definitely. However, it just still doesn't make sense for us to stay. We pay so much in taxes, so much in child care, and so much for housing. We could be saving on all of these fronts and still have all the things we want.

floren 3y ago

But what will you do when you only have 2 good Thai restaurants to choose from in your immediate area, instead of 5??

thrill 3y ago
Do like most thinking adults and learn to cook?
- beej71 3y ago
  Restaurant variety is actually important for people who like restaurants. If you're used to Big City fare, it might be a shocker to move to a town of 100,000 or fewer. Sometimes you want to go out for a nice evening, but literally every restaurant in town isn't what you're looking for.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

> "But you can't beat the weather" only goes so far. I dunno where you're going, but I hope its not Florida or the gulf coast. The realtors don't tell you about the the existential dread (and "hidden" living cost) of hurricane season. This is coming from a central Texas native accustomed to what I thought was bad weather.

ViktorRay 3y ago

I hope everything goes well for you! Even if you get paid less at your new location I’m sure the lower cost of living, lower taxes and less dangerous living conditions will make up for it. I guess many others in California must be thinking the same things considering all the people who are leaving

ChainOfFools 3y ago

My living situation and life circumstances are broadly similar to yours, and I'm also in California but not anywhere near downtown Metro. Instead I'm about an equal distance from the center of La and the center of San Diego, and the beach cities of orange county- each roughly an hour drive in their various directions (modulo traffic). Daycare here, at a fairly premium facility connected to the UC system, is 1700 a month for a toddler and would probably be about $2,200 for an infant (full day/5 days a week). Rent is probably not a consideration in a move someone like yourself or ourselves might make, but if it had to be, an entire three bedroom house with a swimming pool can be had month-to-month at about $3,500-4500. median home value is somewhere around 750 to 850 depending on what side of what street you live on. This doesn't really remedy the tax situation but it does look like a completely different universe in contrast to what you're going to deal with in the middle of San Francisco or LA, or even (to a much lesser extent) San Diego. The downside is that you had better really, really, really like the company of fake-aggressive midlife crisis bros in humongous lifted pickup trucks, because that's who you're largely going to be surrounded by.

_blz2 3y ago

Will you continue voting blue after your move and bring back same policies?

VoodooJuJu 3y ago
I'd also like to know. I'm always very interested in what people who move from blue -> red have to say about this, whether they notice any kind of connection between the fact that the blue state is undesirable and the red state is more desirable, and if they continue voting blue in the red state, how exactly they'll reconcile that and rest assured the same doom won't befall that state.
- beej71 3y ago
  And yet the price of housing is higher in the "undesirable" part of the country?
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    Seems like housing prices are always the last domino to fall.
yipyipyipee 3y ago
Good question. I think both parties are have their policies that work and don't work for me. I'm in favor of social programs to get people on their feet, instead of paying for the fallout ten times over by letting people slide into homelessness and crime. I'm all for prosecuting people who steal, including petty theft, which SF has completely gone off the rails with. We should be helping lift people up to a bare minimum so that we're all lifted up. People should also be held accountable for their actions. I'll be voting for whoever sees things the way I do.

beej71 3y ago

But I don't get is how it's so crap and at the same time so expensive. Maybe people leaving will finally bring some prices down. I left 10 years ago for no other reason other than I was getting kind of bored of the Bay Area. Seems like it's really gotten rougher since then, but prices don't reflect that.

yongjik 3y ago

I wish you well, but it sounds a bit like generalizing some SF-specific problems to the whole CA. I live in a boring suburb in the East Bay, where commute is horrible, but there's zero human feces on pavement, no homeless tents, and my high school kids have no problem taking a walk (or bike ride) around town at 11 pm. Of course, suburb being suburb, it's not good for the environment (you have to drive to get anywhere), and it's boring as hell. YMMV.

yipyipyipee 3y ago
Yea my problems in SF are more extreme, definitely. However, it just still doesn't make sense for us to stay. We pay so much in taxes, so much in child care, and so much for housing. We could be saving on all of these fronts and still have all the things we want.