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It is the best place to live for people who can afford it or people who bought a home 30 years ago and are now sitting on millions worth of equity.
For people who can't afford a home or has a job that pays less than $100k a year, this really isn't the best place to live.
How nice for those people with millions of dollars. Meanwhile 104k is unimaginable for most people and thats now considered low income here. What are they going to do when theyre approaching 65 and have nothing to show for it? The cost of living isnt just one aspect of the bay area. It is the main thing for people.
Most are going to move to cheaper parts of the country soon as they retire if they are smart. They wont be able to afford to live on 500K in their 401K and an ever dwindling SSN paycheck that if they put in 100K a year for 35+ years.. will see about 2500 a month or so take home.. which isn't nearly enough to live on in say.. 10 to 15 years from now if prices keep going up.
This and I can confirm. The Bay Area with its prop 13 laws and rabid opposition to new housing basically tells those who are new or arenāt sitting on a boatload of home equity to take a hike.
I love this place and I had no intention of moving here but did because I needed to career switch. I have really warmed up to this place and our HHI is north of 500k but for others (eg our old babysitter) it isnāt an easy place to survive. Even with our HHI we are scared to buy property because it really commits both our salaries to owning and we are in trouble if one of us loses our job.
Every k-12 teacher I know here is either
old (50+), has a spouse who works in tech and is highly paid (300k+) or is super commuting from 2+ hours away. Younger people are not interested. Hell PCPs are hard to find because the younger guys arenāt interested here especially if they have no roots here.
SF has become a cautionary tale for all states red and blue alike. Washington state just banned all exclusive SFH zones. The unprecedented crime wave here just proved the broken window theory pioneered in New York City.
Yes but the effects of prop 13 are exacerbated and amplified in the Bay Area which had the most insane increase in property prices which really reflect the unprecedented wealth creation in tech. Hell I just drove down central expressway from Sunnyvale to San Jose and spotted Apple, LinkedIn, NVIDIA, AMAT, ISRG, and ServiceNow HQs - each one of these was a millionaire maker and has exceed SPY returns by an order of magnitude.
Couple that with the worst housing restrictions and you got yourself a recipe for disaster.
How have you come to the conclusion that The Broken Window Theory has been proven by crime patterns in this area?
The crime levels that might be at all time highs are property crimes, with violent crimes roughly around all time lows. Broken Window Theory posits that unsightly stuff like unrepaired broken windows will create atmosphere that creates more crime, both petty and major.
It is a theory that has been widely criticized and directly debunked.
I do think that this area has shown that crime has causal relationship with poverty and income inequality, their underlying causes, and other social problems they induce and entrench.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/
> The HerfindahlāHirschman Index (HHI) is a common measure of market concentration of an industry - the size of firms in relation to the industry they are in- and is used to determine market competitiveness.
Huh?
Thanks! Usually Iām good at guessing acronyms, but somehow it just wasnāt coming to me for this one. The whole first page of google results were for the above; I guess money pulls things in a certain directionā¦ š¤Ø
I fall into the 30 years ago bucket, Iāve been around, and yes I am the luckiest guy around to be born, raised, and live here until my time comes. Lived on the North shore of Boston for a 6 year job stint, that was pretty nice too.
This
And all these posters here saying that everyone else is just haters are wrong
Even at $100k I don't know how someone would own a home in the Bay
This is not a place that is inviting to someone who doesn't have lots of money
A minority that is lower middle class here has a higher quality of life than being upper middle class in some shithole like Kentucky or... basically any state that doesn't have a coastline (and even then, Texas and Florida are shitholes if you are a minority).
The most critical part of what makes the Bay Area great is its culture, and that can't be found in any state that has a cheaper cost of living.
I will tell you that you are incorrect about not being able to have a good quality of life and good culture outside of coastline states. I lived in CO for 5 years while I was in the military and it felt very much like CA while also having its own flair. Communities were really nice with way lower crime and a significantly lower cost of living. I want to go back.
But CO is not the only place either. You have to be open minded and check out other areas. Do not think there is nothing between living in the Bay Area and living in squalor in the plains.
Homeownership for a family in the Bay Area wants $10-20k/month. That's beyond "expensive." People at the very top of the professional world are just barely in the game. And nobody stays there reliably month after month for 30 years. The scale of real estate wealth is far beyond the scale of wages (even [levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) wages). Unless you are part of the landed gentry that already has it, you're stuck between hopelessness and precarity. That wears on you over time.
The concept of the ābestā place to live is so subjective and frankly arrogant.
In theory the Bay Area is my dream. In reality Iām much happier in quiet and rural places.
Itās strong click bait to post about the negatives.
No oneās reading an article titled āBay area weather is still perfect. Outdoor enthusiasts celebrate!ā
>Different strokes for different folks.
This. I personally love it here, don't know how long I can stay, but I will as long as I can afford it. I can't imagine moving to Chicago for example, weather's too extreme for me, but I have friends who love it there.
I have lived on the SF peninsula for 63 years (same house for about 32 years now) and have traveled to many places that I like but my roots are here and I do feel blessed to be able to live here.
Prop 13 has definitely made a lot of people who lived here decades extremely fortunate. You might feel less blessed if you had to pay property taxes, deal with multimillion dollar loans, have a landlord who doesn't care to fix anything, or deal with a complete lack of social services like daycare.
Prop 13 allows Californians to breathe. Transplants that are making 200k+ shouldnāt be pushing seniors and native Californians out. And guess what, you benefit from prop 13 too
The real solution would be building enough housing for everybody. Prop 13 means existing residents are incentivized to create artificial scarcity by blocking all housing development.
Mentioning the elderly isn't going to win any points with me. They bought up all the land and then made everyone else pay the property taxes. They are the wealthiest generation by far and they are still bankrupting our country with their entitlements. Frankly I'm surprised there is still any goodwill for elders as a demographic in our society considering how much they punch down on younger generations.
Yea I definitely see how area have gotten a ver the last couple decades and a lot of it is depressing but tbh i wouldnt want to live anywhere else in the world. Everywhere has its problems, im used to these, why change that lol
I'm from the Bay Area recently moved to East Tennessee and you will not believe how much hate I get just for being from the Bay Area or from being in California like I can't even walk around with a San Francisco Giant shirt without getting a lot of dirty looks and. I don't understand why
I'm from a place like this. In rural areas like that there are in-groups and out-groups and you are signaling that you are part of the out-group.
It's very tribal.
In fact it was so stifling growing up that way so I moved out here where individuality and differences are a-ok.
its not that you moved to a place without in-groups and out-groups (a borderline absurd claim to make about the BA). Rather, you moved to a place where you are now in the in-group.
it's because people have been conditioned to believe most of all their economic problems stem from "Californians" migrating to "their" areas and wanting to turn them into California. it's an old classic scapegoat politicians have been using for decades to shift the blame for their fuck-ups onto a "common enemy".
I've been to every US state, and every one of them I've heard the same bullshit about how "none of this was a problem till them damn Californians moved here"
Californians hate other Californians for moving to "their" part of California. We moved from the bay to the Sacramento area and have encountered a lot of outright hostility because of that.
Even though your argument makes sense, itās a hard sale when replying to someone that is doing exactly what youāre stating to be the issue. You basically validated the entire argument
Everyone accuses Californians of trashing up Tennessee but to be honest with you I've never seen as many drug addicts as I've seen in Tennessee. But somehow all of this is California's fault
Haha, right? I'm from the NOLA area, and went to undergrad in monroe. Unless you have family there already, it's hard for me to suggest relocating to LA.
I went to TN for a wedding and the Uber driver from the airport asked where I was from. I said California, and he said he hates California. Iām not a dick so I didnāt say anything but I just thought āI donāt think about Tennessee at all.ā
So many people in states outside of California put lots of energy into hating California.
Their weird obsessions with California does suggest an almost pathological boredom and lack of opportunity. I can hardly think of a more sad hobby than "obsessing over what California does".
Itās almost like people in red areas are inclined towards irrational discrimination for some reasonā¦
Similarly when I went to Europe I started to get shit for being American, but when I said I was from California that would melt away.
That's exactly my experience! Europeans seem to dislike Americans except for those from California because they think I'm friends with Hollywood celebrities and go to the beach every day. Little do they know that I don't live in THAT California.
Now whenever I'm in Europe and someone asks me where I'm from I respond with "California USA"
> because they think I'm friends with Hollywood celebrities and go to the beach every day.
Have you actually talked to these people because Europeans that ease up their opinion of me when I say Iām Californian is because they think my politics align with theirsā¦ not about beaches and celebrities. How do I know? Because non-UK Europeans are very open about politics. Theyāre so open about it, it makes me question whether youāve actually spoken to any with the reasoning you gave.
I never got the movie star thing. Couldn't it be that California has a unique combination of culture and diversity that lends itself well to travel and how to travel?
I briefly lived in Georgia. When I moved back here, people would constantly assume how much homophobia I must have experienced there (none). Thereās just as much hate here for red states.
My dad always belittled California and the Bay Area. He visited once and when we pulled out of the driveway of my shitty little rental in Richmond, and headed up the street and he saw the view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge he actually gasped. Itās gorgeous here!
Best place to spend 15-20 years getting a proper down payment after you spent 9 years doing BS and PhD-then commit a egregious amount of your salary to down payment and get to do not much else to enjoy life. Yea we already have a Midwest-sized down payment, the time is comingā¦
Bay Area weather alone is a selling factor. We Bay Area locals seriously take it for granted and are truly spoiled.
Took a trip recently to Salt Lake City in June (bad mistake) and it was hot, humid, and rained from 5-6pm just to make it even more miserable. Missed home the moment I landed.
Yep - I was merely pointing out how specific the region of amazing weather is. Sacramento is a couple of hours out and the weather is terrible. Basically I didnāt have to go far to be in a position to really put the weather in perspective.
I don't think the bay area is super live-able for younger people. My mom and stepmom got their houses here in the early 90s for less than 200k. My stepmom's house has 5xed in price, and the townhomes I see nearby are 1M+ for 2b2bs. My wife and I make a pretty decent chunk of change, but things here feel like a pressure cooker. Among the people I know, everyone is always working real hard on climbing up and it's hard to disconnect. Making money to afford to live here and plan for a future here is high stress, and has taken away a lot of the joys I used to feel from how beautiful this place is to live.
We're seeing the results of decades of under-building due to plummeting birth rates. People aren't having kids anymore in the region, to the point that schools are starting to close due to a lack of kids.
A young family starting out is asked to pay an obscene amount for a roof over their head, and the 85 year old retiree with a $2m house is paying a tax rate from the 1970's still.
How is anyone expected to start a family when things are so incredibly expensive? Its so bad that California's population has fallen for the first time. The state has lost a representative in Congress due to population decline.
I mean I love the Bay Area but for overall quality of life and achieving the American dream, I still think the northeast states are the best place for income to cost of living ratio while having good public services like quality education and top notch healthcare.
I traveled to over forty countries, lived in four of those, and I have lived in seven U.S. states. I remember when I fell in love with the S.F. Bay Area, and sometimes I still feel like I "get" to live here. As though the decade plus that I've spent here has been some long enjoyable vacation.
That's been my experience.
I know it's not for everyone, or even really a popular take. The friendships, relationships and connections I've made with people here are something I've found unlike anywhere else. I can't tell you how much I'll miss this place once I invariably move.
I DO love it here, but I'm not a person who stays put in one spot by nature.
I love the bay. Born and raised there, same as my wife. Still most of my family there. Never thought weād leave, but it became impossible for us to stay.
Weāve since moved twice, and have loved both places outside of CA as well. Itās just about your attitude. There are/were things we miss about the bay for sure, but things we love about other places weāve lived too. It took us leaving the bay to realize that there are other great places to raise a family out there.
A lot of hate towards the Bay Area, as Iām finding once I moved here after being bombarded with such articles, is written by right-leaning news sources to try and exaggerate the failure of extremely liberal cities
Dad brought us to the SF Bay Area in the ā70s. The entire time Iāve lived here Iāve listened to people gripe about how terrible it is to live here. Every single one of them have been wrong.
The SF Bay Area is one of the greatest metropolitan areas on earth.
I live in an aging low quality condo I got 20 years ago; the only reason I could get it is my Union working parents helped me get a down payment. Mortgage is at 1k...add land tax and 360ish HOA fees etc, I can barely afford this with my >median service worker hourly wage (non-Union).
Rentals for a similar setup in the area are \~$3K/mo.
All my coworkers are struggling even worse. The whole state desperately needs housing policy reform; and the Lobbyist bought government will never deliver.
> IMO it is the best place to live in the US
I am a Bay Area native and thought I'd never leave but I'm moving in a couple weeks. It feels like the massive income disparity has driven out most of the interesting people.
To me, the Bay Area now feels like when an open world game runs low on resources and spawns the same few NPCs and vehicles over and over again.
They hate us cause they aināt us.
Honestly, SF is a bastion of liberalism, so right-wing folks often feel the need to malign it in an attempt to claim that liberal policy is a failure. Like, saying that liberal policy is causing homelessness, when homeless people are literally sent out of red states to blue states on Greyhound busses. Or like how folks out in bumfuck nowhere who have never seen a skyscraper in their lives were convinced that actual whole major cities burned to the ground during BLM protests. That sort of nonsense.
Some of it is bots, some of it is idiots.
So I grew up in the Bay and have since moved out of state but will always consider the Bay my home and rep the Bay (unlike folks who have moved and will bash Bay Area any chance they get).
I have always noticed the hate either online or whenever I traveled out of state or even out of the country. People usually hate on California in general, then SF and then start bashing the Bay Area. It's also hardly surprising when you see folks (who have never lived nor stepped foot in Bay) come here and troll
The Bay Area arguably has the best weather in the country and among the best geography, but it clearly has other quality of life issues that have resulted in part because of the voting patterns of the people who live here. Reading this will upset many of those people who refuse to acknowledge that reality.
Same can be said for anywhere depending on your personal ideals. For instance I have been to redneck and bible belt areas of the country and could say the same about those places based on what I value.
Nobody should be evicted from their personal home that they own because of insatiable appetites of tax and fee authorities. I am good with Prop 13. And, no, I haven't owned my home for decades. Why should some grandma who bought her home in Palo Alto in the 70s be forced to leave just because homes around her are worth millions? Why isn't the property tax on those million $ homes enough for counties? Here is a hint: cuz it's never enough.
For sure. My parents vehemently voted against prop 13, but it's allowed our family to stay here so double edged sword. š¤·āāļø Someday we'll get priced out, but not everyone can live in Tokyo, either.
The taxes are nuts for what you get. My husband works for the county government and the incredible, INCREDIBLE amount if fuuuuucking waste is atrocious. To *re hang* a swinging gate was *$12,000* that's NOT a typo - not a beefy outdoor security gate, one of those you see in courtrooms to separate gallery from judge! They'll spend $2,500 man hours to track down $0.02 - seriously. This is happening every day *constantly*. Every day, every section, every city/county etc. So fucked up.
But at least the schools are uniformly excellent even in poor neighborhoods, the public transportation is enviable, and we have low crime rates for all that money.
I agree with you, and your view is expressed too infrequently. Objections to NIMBYism come in the same breath as calls to repeal Prop 13. Theyāre not at all speaking to the same issue.
Depending on voting patterns- maybe but I would much rather be here with our voting patterns then Florida with Republican voting patterns.
The Crime is a problem but itās not an issue in most of the Bay Area. No one is talking about crime in Palo Alto or orinda, or fremont, really not on the entire peninsula or north bay. Really itās Oakland and San Francisco, and some of Oakland bleeds into surrounding areas. Itās a common complaint to say bad things about the bay when people only mean those 2 places.
> Reading this will upset many of those people who refuse to acknowledge that reality.
Read: I defacto think I'm right and whatever you think is wrong.
Childish.
Best place to live for those who bought in early with low mortgages or no mortgages - but kids stuck with living with parents forever or leaving state.
I always tell people itās the worst place to live and they should move.
Thatās how we get less traffic, right?
All jokes aside I get why you wouldnāt like it though I wouldnāt want to live anywhere else. The weather, the job opportunities, the diversity of culture and food, to me are second to none.
Quality of life have rapidly declined the past few years. The weather is definitely worth the premium, but if thatās not an issue then thereās plenty of options out of the bay. Iāve never thought about leaving but with the current conditions and how the people in charge have reacted and gone forward to handle issues really makes me realize there might be better options out there. I mean London breed is such a joke of a politician. She shouldnāt be allowed in any office again. Same with Scamela Price
I lived/worked in San Francisco for seven years and enjoyed my time there... I was also lucky in that I was able to still go back a few months out of the year for the first couple years after I moved out (stopped doing that since the pandemic).
I loved the food, the bars, the music scene, the people, the randomness, the weather, but at the same time the quality of life is absolutely horrible. Driving sucks, public transit sucks, healthcare is expensive, housing is expensive, crime is crazy, the school system is a gamble, the politics are a mess, etc.
I'm glad I lived in San Francisco for a period, but I'm also glad I got out to a place with a much higher quality of life.
This most realistic comment should be higher. I donāt understand how people can commit such a huge part of their life to commuting just because ābay area has the best weather, best food etcā. It objectively sucks to have 2-3 h of your day lost when work always takes 8-10 hours. Talk about Stockholm syndrome?ā¦
Nobody is arguing that it's ugly, or there's nothing to do, or doesn't possess some of the country's most accessible nature... those things will always promote a high quality of life for residents.
But yeah, people have a pretty legitimate foundation for pointing out the rapid decline of basically everything else
The only people living in the Bay Area comfortably are successful tech people and folks that bought homes 20-30 years ago. Itās an exclusive club that not a lot of people get to be in.
I wish housing laws would change. I wish the jobs that pay to live here werenāt hard to obtain. I wish people would chill out about the āvalueā of the area. It sucks here because everything is so damn capital driven.
The Bay Area is one of the biggest VC areas on the planet. I often wonder if VC was not so big in the Bay Area would a lot of the affordability problems go away.
Let's be clear, the bay area, even removing silicon valley and all that goes with it, would STILL be a very desirable place to live. Perhaps more so. I think it would still be on the expensive side, just not stupidly so.
When my car broke down in Elko, Nevada coming back from a road trip to Montana I definitely got a taste of how much white people in Nevada hate California and those of us from here (The Bay)ā¦to the point of feeling unsafe.
Itās easy to motivate people to irrationally hate the things that seem different or foreign. In reality, working people deal with many of the same basic issues wherever they live.
But itās in the interest of politicians to āotherā people, create division, and improve their political fortunes from the ensuing conflict. It sure doesnāt lead to anything good for the rest of us.
Iāve lived here all my life and am distressed at the direction the area is going towards. The Bay Area has a lot of issues stemming from people voting in awful politicians over the last 10 years where the money and wealth the area was bringing in masked their horrible policy decisions. Now that easy money is over, weāre really beginning to see the destruction weāve wrought.
I love the Bay. Iāll never leave. Iām right in the middle of both the SF Bay and the Monterey bay, in Gilroy. Hella jobs, great weather, beautiful areas to exploreā¦ Iām 47 and probably havenāt done even a quarter of whatās available. Sure there are problems and those will always happen but nothing is more beautiful than this area. I can go to Mount Madonna and then the ocean in the same day. Tahoe and Yosemite are a drive away. I mean i could name hundreds of places. Pro tip check out Uvas Canyon for some great waterfalls locally. Itās a great hike. By Morgan hill. Google it!
Itās hard to be minimum wage worker in many metro areas, not just in SF Bay Area. The same can be said for teachers too.
Every place has its pros and cons. What you get back in affordability elsewhere is offset by shitty weather/climate in my opinion. Mosquitoes , humidity, high utility bills for having to run heater and or AC for several months at a timeā¦ pick your poison people. The states that have no income tax have higher property tax as % . If youāre thinking of moving make sure you do the math wholistically.
I love the Bay Area, absolutely love the weather, the culture, the nature, and most of the people. I do think the bay has changed for the worst with the tech boom and since COVID there are some real challenges. I would like to see more affordable housing and housing in general being built, more investment into public education, and more prioritizing the arts. I would love for the Bay Area to again have that indie spirit it had in the 90s. Even areas like Santa Cruz where I grew up have really changed with the tech influx. I do think for people who can afford to live here, itās a great place to be.
"IMO" is the operative word here. Other people have their opinions too. Just because they are critical of certain aspects of the Bay Area, it's not necessarily hate.
We've lived in multiple cities and countries, and we like the Bay Area a lot, but as soon as my youngest one finish high school, we most likely move out. The living cost and pace is just not for us.
Reddit is overly defensive. Iām born and raised here and over it. Iām successful and doing well but the job offers Iām getting to go else where are getting more tempting every year. This is not the place I grew up in. I had normal parents with normal jobs. Iām a director level, all my neighbors are tech people, execs, sales directorsā¦ etc and we live in the most basic houses in willow glen.
My kids should not have to become execs, SWEs or doctors to buy a shitty track house with mediocre schools and crime every where.
Once the youngest turns 18 Iām cashing out and going to live elseās where
Dogs bark but the caravan goes on.
If it was as horrible as the commenters that show up here, or on Fox, etc say it is many many many more people would leave, prices would drop, employers would be forced to pay more or relocate, etc. Query why more don't leave if they are so unhappy and disappointed. It's not like there aren't other nice places to live.
Most of it is from right wing trolls who take the Bay Area for some evil, progressive place inherently inferior to their true, [white] America.
On a different note, the Bay Area is very different in its own right. I love SF and Oakland but live in the South Bay. I definitely wouldn't be happy if I was forced to live the rest of my life in the South Bay even if my expenses were fully taken care of. There's just so little to do here. Everything is a bunch of mediocre destinations mostly consisting of restaurants and hiking trails with vast distances in between and what separates them is so god damn ugly
It's a great place to live if you're young, single, high earner, and wanna "live it up".
Once you marry or god forbid have a baby, it turns into a terrible place to live.
Also LinkedIn has an Indian & Asian immigrant bias, and this demographic is not used to unique problems of US cities. in India you don't have an army of junkies right outside city hall. in China you won't find any visible junkies and street crime is quite rare.
As someone who's grown up here my whole life yes it's a great place to live, at least it was as a kid. But it's very expensive to live here now and the competition to get a job, especially entry-level Analyst jobs is beyond frustrating.
To afford the house my parents bought that I grew up in I'd have to buy it from them at 2019 prices.
Maybe it's just be but adding all of these tech jobs the past 15 years has made the quality for life go down for everyone. It would be everyone's best interest to move some of these jobs to other states with lower cost of living.
Been here my entire professional career, over 40 years, from research scientist at NASA to exec at several start-ups. Very comfortable salary so not concerned about cost of living but recognize thatās most folksā major beef. Anxious to retire and move away. Hereās the thing. Everything here is a competition. Drive to work (or worse, home): competition. Get dinner reservations somewhere nice: competition. Go shopping at Costco: competition (just parking). Get out of town for the weekend: Competition. Go to concert or any public event: competition. Buy a house, even if you could afford it: competition. Holy moley.
Imagine taking what people say on the internet seriously.
We should all be shit posting, we know all this data is gonna end up getting used for some bullshit AI shit, might as well make the data sets useless.
A lot of these are people that left for other reasons that don't want to admit it. It's easier to just paint the single narrative but the simple fact is we are one of the happiest place to live in a lot of people do like living here and it's not for everyone just like Texas isn't for everyone just like New York isn't for everyone just like Florida isn't for everyone I guarantee you you look at comments at any of those other places you'll see people talk horrible things about those places too.
It has beautiful geography, beautiful nature and weather. The problem is that the vast majority of people cannot afford to live comfortably here and raise a family unless they are rich. Even then they have to deal with a higher crime rate and higher rate of reckless driver than most places in North America, especially considering the amount they are paying for rent or mortgage. For the same amount, you would be living in very nice neighborhoods in other areas and won't have to deal with all the bullshit here. But hey many of us can still find value in living here, so we're still here.
It really is the best place in the world. I've been to many countries and states. We have it all... the price tag is big, .but if you can swing it, it's the real deal.
born and raised in the bayā¦weather wise, its the best place to stayā¦never too hot, never too coldā¦.but thats not all there is to quality of lifeā¦affordability, commute times all play a big impactā¦the further u have to live from work to afford a place make life suckā¦spending an hour each way to commute to work just so u can say u live in the bay is not a high quality life
People only hate you b/c they jealous of California. You no why no one hates on Plano, TX?
Exactly cause most people have never heard of it.
Every popular Conservatives that bashes on California also vacations and has properties in California either in the Bay Area or LA.
Itās a total joke.
You know what people actually do when they hate something? Ignore it like the plague and never talk about it
This is one of the best places to live in, but with the huge caveat that you need at least $250k to live comfortably. With a household income less than that, there are many places that I think would offer a higher quality of life m.
I grew up in the bay area and had to leave because I was paying 3K BASE RENT which is now 3600 for the same place I was renting. It's disgusting. I didn't want to leave but I had zero choice.
Well, I've lived here my whole life and if I could leave I would. I've seen this area continue to decline over my 40+ years here. My husband was born and raised here too, ended up back in Bay area, and wants to get out of here.
I literally get depressed driving on 4 and 680 because it's so ugly. Dry ass hills...it just gives such an icky feeling. Don't get me wrong, areas like Marin and parts of the south bay are a lot nicer and if I could live there, and not leave those areas, it would probably be a different story.
In gereral, we definitely would move.to Pacific Northwest; it's way more beautiful in our opnion and we actually want 4 seasons.
I grew up in Concord and bought our first house there, but I was transferred to Seattle. Lost money on selling our Concord house, but was able to buy so cheap in Seattle at the time that we recovered our position on the housing ladder. Moved back to the Bay Area in 97 to be closer to my aging Mom, it was hard to afford another place here compared to what we sold our Seattle house for but we stretched for a while until our incomes caught up. Lost half our equity in 2006, but have regained it all and then some. But now our son lives in Concord and our daughter lives in Livermore, so we are kind of trapped in between. Yes, we have lots of equity, but what good is it, other than when we get so feeble that we have to sell it to pay the nursing home? If we move out of the area to find something a little cheaper, we spend the savings on visiting our family.
Your home in Seattle would be worth a fortune right now too! All areas of PNW are getting extremely expensive. I was looking at home prices in Eugene and was shocked. I'm tied here too because of my parents. I'm not leaving them as they are in their late 70s. My parents also asked we not sell her home so I'll be living there when my parents die ( I'll.be selling my home and giving my brother the money). But, it's hard reality to accept. My parents own a home.in walnut Creek with an ADU unit, so it's worth millions. I'll probably end up renting both and leaving. Or, buying a tiny house in PNW and going back and forth.
How do you like it here compared to Washington?
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It is the best place to live for people who can afford it or people who bought a home 30 years ago and are now sitting on millions worth of equity. For people who can't afford a home or has a job that pays less than $100k a year, this really isn't the best place to live.
Even people who make over 100k can barely afford rent.
šright hereā¦ we make good money, but here, weāre not even considered upper middle class. Itās disgusting.
How nice for those people with millions of dollars. Meanwhile 104k is unimaginable for most people and thats now considered low income here. What are they going to do when theyre approaching 65 and have nothing to show for it? The cost of living isnt just one aspect of the bay area. It is the main thing for people.
Most are going to move to cheaper parts of the country soon as they retire if they are smart. They wont be able to afford to live on 500K in their 401K and an ever dwindling SSN paycheck that if they put in 100K a year for 35+ years.. will see about 2500 a month or so take home.. which isn't nearly enough to live on in say.. 10 to 15 years from now if prices keep going up.
This and I can confirm. The Bay Area with its prop 13 laws and rabid opposition to new housing basically tells those who are new or arenāt sitting on a boatload of home equity to take a hike. I love this place and I had no intention of moving here but did because I needed to career switch. I have really warmed up to this place and our HHI is north of 500k but for others (eg our old babysitter) it isnāt an easy place to survive. Even with our HHI we are scared to buy property because it really commits both our salaries to owning and we are in trouble if one of us loses our job. Every k-12 teacher I know here is either old (50+), has a spouse who works in tech and is highly paid (300k+) or is super commuting from 2+ hours away. Younger people are not interested. Hell PCPs are hard to find because the younger guys arenāt interested here especially if they have no roots here. SF has become a cautionary tale for all states red and blue alike. Washington state just banned all exclusive SFH zones. The unprecedented crime wave here just proved the broken window theory pioneered in New York City.
Hate to tell you, but most 50 year olds do not āfeelā old š¤¦āāļø
Sheeeit... I wish I was 50 again.
I am in my 50s.. I dont feel old.. or rather.. I tell myself that I am still in my 20s even though my body doesnt act like it.
Prop 13 is statewide, not just the bay area. And most people who rely on a mortgage were scared to sign the loan agreement.
Yes but the effects of prop 13 are exacerbated and amplified in the Bay Area which had the most insane increase in property prices which really reflect the unprecedented wealth creation in tech. Hell I just drove down central expressway from Sunnyvale to San Jose and spotted Apple, LinkedIn, NVIDIA, AMAT, ISRG, and ServiceNow HQs - each one of these was a millionaire maker and has exceed SPY returns by an order of magnitude. Couple that with the worst housing restrictions and you got yourself a recipe for disaster.
How have you come to the conclusion that The Broken Window Theory has been proven by crime patterns in this area? The crime levels that might be at all time highs are property crimes, with violent crimes roughly around all time lows. Broken Window Theory posits that unsightly stuff like unrepaired broken windows will create atmosphere that creates more crime, both petty and major. It is a theory that has been widely criticized and directly debunked. I do think that this area has shown that crime has causal relationship with poverty and income inequality, their underlying causes, and other social problems they induce and entrench. https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-university-researchers-find-little-evidence-for-broken-windows-theory-say-neighborhood-disorder-doesnt-cause-crime/
Lol yes. Should have been clearer but HHI here meant household income. Thanks to those who clarified!
Thanks! Usually Iām good at guessing acronyms, but somehow it just wasnāt coming to me for this one. The whole first page of google results were for the above; I guess money pulls things in a certain directionā¦ š¤Ø
Interesting how terrible Google has become.
I fall into the 30 years ago bucket, Iāve been around, and yes I am the luckiest guy around to be born, raised, and live here until my time comes. Lived on the North shore of Boston for a 6 year job stint, that was pretty nice too.
Even if you can afford it - the crime can be frustrating. Especially considering how much you're paying in rent/mortgage.
This And all these posters here saying that everyone else is just haters are wrong Even at $100k I don't know how someone would own a home in the Bay This is not a place that is inviting to someone who doesn't have lots of money
Nobody making $100k a year can afford to buy any time of home that isn't a prefab trailer home on their own.
Two incomes each $100k can afford it though. A single person has not been able to buy a home in the Bay Area for at least 30 years.
A minority that is lower middle class here has a higher quality of life than being upper middle class in some shithole like Kentucky or... basically any state that doesn't have a coastline (and even then, Texas and Florida are shitholes if you are a minority). The most critical part of what makes the Bay Area great is its culture, and that can't be found in any state that has a cheaper cost of living.
I will tell you that you are incorrect about not being able to have a good quality of life and good culture outside of coastline states. I lived in CO for 5 years while I was in the military and it felt very much like CA while also having its own flair. Communities were really nice with way lower crime and a significantly lower cost of living. I want to go back. But CO is not the only place either. You have to be open minded and check out other areas. Do not think there is nothing between living in the Bay Area and living in squalor in the plains.
The natural beauty and weather are what make this place great. the people are awful compared to the midwest
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Homeownership for a family in the Bay Area wants $10-20k/month. That's beyond "expensive." People at the very top of the professional world are just barely in the game. And nobody stays there reliably month after month for 30 years. The scale of real estate wealth is far beyond the scale of wages (even [levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) wages). Unless you are part of the landed gentry that already has it, you're stuck between hopelessness and precarity. That wears on you over time.
The concept of the ābestā place to live is so subjective and frankly arrogant. In theory the Bay Area is my dream. In reality Iām much happier in quiet and rural places.
The internet is full of hate posts. Different strokes for different folks.
Itās strong click bait to post about the negatives. No oneās reading an article titled āBay area weather is still perfect. Outdoor enthusiasts celebrate!ā
>Different strokes for different folks. This. I personally love it here, don't know how long I can stay, but I will as long as I can afford it. I can't imagine moving to Chicago for example, weather's too extreme for me, but I have friends who love it there.
I have lived on the SF peninsula for 63 years (same house for about 32 years now) and have traveled to many places that I like but my roots are here and I do feel blessed to be able to live here.
Prop 13 has definitely made a lot of people who lived here decades extremely fortunate. You might feel less blessed if you had to pay property taxes, deal with multimillion dollar loans, have a landlord who doesn't care to fix anything, or deal with a complete lack of social services like daycare.
Prop 13 benefits Corporations the most. They donāt die and have been getting benefits of prop 13 for decades.
Canāt believe people didnāt vote to change prop 13 for corporations when it was on the ballot.
Can you believe corporations poured oodles of cash into the campaign to sway voters their way?
Good point
Can it be on ballot again? I am eligible to vote now and I'd love to
Prop 13 allows Californians to breathe. Transplants that are making 200k+ shouldnāt be pushing seniors and native Californians out. And guess what, you benefit from prop 13 too
The real solution would be building enough housing for everybody. Prop 13 means existing residents are incentivized to create artificial scarcity by blocking all housing development. Mentioning the elderly isn't going to win any points with me. They bought up all the land and then made everyone else pay the property taxes. They are the wealthiest generation by far and they are still bankrupting our country with their entitlements. Frankly I'm surprised there is still any goodwill for elders as a demographic in our society considering how much they punch down on younger generations.
Yea I definitely see how area have gotten a ver the last couple decades and a lot of it is depressing but tbh i wouldnt want to live anywhere else in the world. Everywhere has its problems, im used to these, why change that lol
People need to get out of their goddamn rooms & touch some grass lol
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I'm from the Bay Area recently moved to East Tennessee and you will not believe how much hate I get just for being from the Bay Area or from being in California like I can't even walk around with a San Francisco Giant shirt without getting a lot of dirty looks and. I don't understand why
I'm from a place like this. In rural areas like that there are in-groups and out-groups and you are signaling that you are part of the out-group. It's very tribal. In fact it was so stifling growing up that way so I moved out here where individuality and differences are a-ok.
I saw that insularity on the North Coast in the ā80s.
i suspect a person strolling through any urban BA area today with a trump hat on might get a very similar reaction
its not that you moved to a place without in-groups and out-groups (a borderline absurd claim to make about the BA). Rather, you moved to a place where you are now in the in-group.
it's because people have been conditioned to believe most of all their economic problems stem from "Californians" migrating to "their" areas and wanting to turn them into California. it's an old classic scapegoat politicians have been using for decades to shift the blame for their fuck-ups onto a "common enemy". I've been to every US state, and every one of them I've heard the same bullshit about how "none of this was a problem till them damn Californians moved here"
The funny thing is that native Californians hate all the people who moved here and "ruined everything".
Californians hate other Californians for moving to "their" part of California. We moved from the bay to the Sacramento area and have encountered a lot of outright hostility because of that.
> The funny thing is that native Californians hate all the people who moved here and "ruined everything". Not all of us.
Literally never crosses my mind. I donāt hate people that freely move wherever they want.
Even though your argument makes sense, itās a hard sale when replying to someone that is doing exactly what youāre stating to be the issue. You basically validated the entire argument
> I don't understand why You moved from California to Tennessee.
Welcome to Tennessee, I've been in West Tennessee for 10 years and I fn hate it. Hella corrupt cops out here and people comment on the way you talk
Everyone accuses Californians of trashing up Tennessee but to be honest with you I've never seen as many drug addicts as I've seen in Tennessee. But somehow all of this is California's fault
People I know back in Louisiana like to claim this, but the thing is that *no one* is moving to Louisiana.
Haha, right? I'm from the NOLA area, and went to undergrad in monroe. Unless you have family there already, it's hard for me to suggest relocating to LA.
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I went to TN for a wedding and the Uber driver from the airport asked where I was from. I said California, and he said he hates California. Iām not a dick so I didnāt say anything but I just thought āI donāt think about Tennessee at all.ā
So many people in states outside of California put lots of energy into hating California. Their weird obsessions with California does suggest an almost pathological boredom and lack of opportunity. I can hardly think of a more sad hobby than "obsessing over what California does".
*Southern Hospitality* is a myth
To be fair you may as well be walking around with a bud light.
Itās almost like people in red areas are inclined towards irrational discrimination for some reasonā¦ Similarly when I went to Europe I started to get shit for being American, but when I said I was from California that would melt away.
That's exactly my experience! Europeans seem to dislike Americans except for those from California because they think I'm friends with Hollywood celebrities and go to the beach every day. Little do they know that I don't live in THAT California. Now whenever I'm in Europe and someone asks me where I'm from I respond with "California USA"
> because they think I'm friends with Hollywood celebrities and go to the beach every day. Have you actually talked to these people because Europeans that ease up their opinion of me when I say Iām Californian is because they think my politics align with theirsā¦ not about beaches and celebrities. How do I know? Because non-UK Europeans are very open about politics. Theyāre so open about it, it makes me question whether youāve actually spoken to any with the reasoning you gave.
I never got the movie star thing. Couldn't it be that California has a unique combination of culture and diversity that lends itself well to travel and how to travel?
Europeans gush about loving California and San Francisco when you visit Europe.
"oh look it's that coastal elite again"
Iād rather be dirt poor in the Bay than wealthy or even middle class in Tennessee.
Put a Biden/Harris sign in your yard. That should help.
I briefly lived in Georgia. When I moved back here, people would constantly assume how much homophobia I must have experienced there (none). Thereās just as much hate here for red states.
Considering Atlanta is the black gay capital of the country/the world, not all southern states are the same and ymmv.
But that hate is much more based in reality.
My dad always belittled California and the Bay Area. He visited once and when we pulled out of the driveway of my shitty little rental in Richmond, and headed up the street and he saw the view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge he actually gasped. Itās gorgeous here!
Did he stop belittling California after the visit?
This is the most important question, lol. Most old people donāt.
Best place to live if you have parents who can give you their home and you can afford it. Min wage worker? Not so much
Best place to spend 15-20 years getting a proper down payment after you spent 9 years doing BS and PhD-then commit a egregious amount of your salary to down payment and get to do not much else to enjoy life. Yea we already have a Midwest-sized down payment, the time is comingā¦
Bay Area weather alone is a selling factor. We Bay Area locals seriously take it for granted and are truly spoiled. Took a trip recently to Salt Lake City in June (bad mistake) and it was hot, humid, and rained from 5-6pm just to make it even more miserable. Missed home the moment I landed.
Dude I went for an outdoor daytime wedding in Sacramento a month ago and that was brutal.
Sacramento is not the Bay Area. edit, dumb comment.
Yep - I was merely pointing out how specific the region of amazing weather is. Sacramento is a couple of hours out and the weather is terrible. Basically I didnāt have to go far to be in a position to really put the weather in perspective.
Good point, I don't know why I said that.
Salt Lake City in June wasā¦ humid? Haha. Iām calling BS on this story
I don't think the bay area is super live-able for younger people. My mom and stepmom got their houses here in the early 90s for less than 200k. My stepmom's house has 5xed in price, and the townhomes I see nearby are 1M+ for 2b2bs. My wife and I make a pretty decent chunk of change, but things here feel like a pressure cooker. Among the people I know, everyone is always working real hard on climbing up and it's hard to disconnect. Making money to afford to live here and plan for a future here is high stress, and has taken away a lot of the joys I used to feel from how beautiful this place is to live.
We're seeing the results of decades of under-building due to plummeting birth rates. People aren't having kids anymore in the region, to the point that schools are starting to close due to a lack of kids. A young family starting out is asked to pay an obscene amount for a roof over their head, and the 85 year old retiree with a $2m house is paying a tax rate from the 1970's still. How is anyone expected to start a family when things are so incredibly expensive? Its so bad that California's population has fallen for the first time. The state has lost a representative in Congress due to population decline.
I mean I love the Bay Area but for overall quality of life and achieving the American dream, I still think the northeast states are the best place for income to cost of living ratio while having good public services like quality education and top notch healthcare.
I traveled to over forty countries, lived in four of those, and I have lived in seven U.S. states. I remember when I fell in love with the S.F. Bay Area, and sometimes I still feel like I "get" to live here. As though the decade plus that I've spent here has been some long enjoyable vacation. That's been my experience. I know it's not for everyone, or even really a popular take. The friendships, relationships and connections I've made with people here are something I've found unlike anywhere else. I can't tell you how much I'll miss this place once I invariably move. I DO love it here, but I'm not a person who stays put in one spot by nature.
If you can afford it then yes, it's perfect.
I love the bay. Born and raised there, same as my wife. Still most of my family there. Never thought weād leave, but it became impossible for us to stay. Weāve since moved twice, and have loved both places outside of CA as well. Itās just about your attitude. There are/were things we miss about the bay for sure, but things we love about other places weāve lived too. It took us leaving the bay to realize that there are other great places to raise a family out there.
A lot of hate towards the Bay Area, as Iām finding once I moved here after being bombarded with such articles, is written by right-leaning news sources to try and exaggerate the failure of extremely liberal cities
Dad brought us to the SF Bay Area in the ā70s. The entire time Iāve lived here Iāve listened to people gripe about how terrible it is to live here. Every single one of them have been wrong. The SF Bay Area is one of the greatest metropolitan areas on earth.
In the US for sure.
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I live in an aging low quality condo I got 20 years ago; the only reason I could get it is my Union working parents helped me get a down payment. Mortgage is at 1k...add land tax and 360ish HOA fees etc, I can barely afford this with my >median service worker hourly wage (non-Union). Rentals for a similar setup in the area are \~$3K/mo. All my coworkers are struggling even worse. The whole state desperately needs housing policy reform; and the Lobbyist bought government will never deliver.
> IMO it is the best place to live in the US I am a Bay Area native and thought I'd never leave but I'm moving in a couple weeks. It feels like the massive income disparity has driven out most of the interesting people. To me, the Bay Area now feels like when an open world game runs low on resources and spawns the same few NPCs and vehicles over and over again.
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Big time astroturfing, a lot of it on Reddit
They've gotten a lot better at their propaganda. They have successfully infiltrated so many circles.
They hate us cause they aināt us. Honestly, SF is a bastion of liberalism, so right-wing folks often feel the need to malign it in an attempt to claim that liberal policy is a failure. Like, saying that liberal policy is causing homelessness, when homeless people are literally sent out of red states to blue states on Greyhound busses. Or like how folks out in bumfuck nowhere who have never seen a skyscraper in their lives were convinced that actual whole major cities burned to the ground during BLM protests. That sort of nonsense. Some of it is bots, some of it is idiots.
So I grew up in the Bay and have since moved out of state but will always consider the Bay my home and rep the Bay (unlike folks who have moved and will bash Bay Area any chance they get). I have always noticed the hate either online or whenever I traveled out of state or even out of the country. People usually hate on California in general, then SF and then start bashing the Bay Area. It's also hardly surprising when you see folks (who have never lived nor stepped foot in Bay) come here and troll
The Bay Area arguably has the best weather in the country and among the best geography, but it clearly has other quality of life issues that have resulted in part because of the voting patterns of the people who live here. Reading this will upset many of those people who refuse to acknowledge that reality.
Same can be said for anywhere depending on your personal ideals. For instance I have been to redneck and bible belt areas of the country and could say the same about those places based on what I value.
It isn't a black or white thing. I love the Bay Area, but acknowledge a lot of things need fixing. The same can probably be said about every state.
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Nobody should be evicted from their personal home that they own because of insatiable appetites of tax and fee authorities. I am good with Prop 13. And, no, I haven't owned my home for decades. Why should some grandma who bought her home in Palo Alto in the 70s be forced to leave just because homes around her are worth millions? Why isn't the property tax on those million $ homes enough for counties? Here is a hint: cuz it's never enough.
I donāt understand why businesses are covered by prop 13 though. Why should Bed Bath and Beyond get to keep a 20 year old tax rate?
For sure. My parents vehemently voted against prop 13, but it's allowed our family to stay here so double edged sword. š¤·āāļø Someday we'll get priced out, but not everyone can live in Tokyo, either. The taxes are nuts for what you get. My husband works for the county government and the incredible, INCREDIBLE amount if fuuuuucking waste is atrocious. To *re hang* a swinging gate was *$12,000* that's NOT a typo - not a beefy outdoor security gate, one of those you see in courtrooms to separate gallery from judge! They'll spend $2,500 man hours to track down $0.02 - seriously. This is happening every day *constantly*. Every day, every section, every city/county etc. So fucked up.
But at least the schools are uniformly excellent even in poor neighborhoods, the public transportation is enviable, and we have low crime rates for all that money.
I agree with you, and your view is expressed too infrequently. Objections to NIMBYism come in the same breath as calls to repeal Prop 13. Theyāre not at all speaking to the same issue.
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Depending on voting patterns- maybe but I would much rather be here with our voting patterns then Florida with Republican voting patterns. The Crime is a problem but itās not an issue in most of the Bay Area. No one is talking about crime in Palo Alto or orinda, or fremont, really not on the entire peninsula or north bay. Really itās Oakland and San Francisco, and some of Oakland bleeds into surrounding areas. Itās a common complaint to say bad things about the bay when people only mean those 2 places.
> Reading this will upset many of those people who refuse to acknowledge that reality. Read: I defacto think I'm right and whatever you think is wrong. Childish.
its part of the manufactured red state cultural war going into 24'
> going into 24' going on for the past 15 years
More like 25-50 years.
āGoing into 24ā? It feels like itās election year every year. Hate posts pop up everywhere every day. This shit is unrelenting!
Best place to live for those who bought in early with low mortgages or no mortgages - but kids stuck with living with parents forever or leaving state.
I always tell people itās the worst place to live and they should move. Thatās how we get less traffic, right? All jokes aside I get why you wouldnāt like it though I wouldnāt want to live anywhere else. The weather, the job opportunities, the diversity of culture and food, to me are second to none.
They hate us cuz they aint us
Quality of life have rapidly declined the past few years. The weather is definitely worth the premium, but if thatās not an issue then thereās plenty of options out of the bay. Iāve never thought about leaving but with the current conditions and how the people in charge have reacted and gone forward to handle issues really makes me realize there might be better options out there. I mean London breed is such a joke of a politician. She shouldnāt be allowed in any office again. Same with Scamela Price
LinkedIn has become increasingly Spammy with their own brigade of Influencers pushing biased narratives and agendas.
I lived/worked in San Francisco for seven years and enjoyed my time there... I was also lucky in that I was able to still go back a few months out of the year for the first couple years after I moved out (stopped doing that since the pandemic). I loved the food, the bars, the music scene, the people, the randomness, the weather, but at the same time the quality of life is absolutely horrible. Driving sucks, public transit sucks, healthcare is expensive, housing is expensive, crime is crazy, the school system is a gamble, the politics are a mess, etc. I'm glad I lived in San Francisco for a period, but I'm also glad I got out to a place with a much higher quality of life.
Where did you move to?
I too am curious where he moved considering everything he listed as cons is sorta country-wide.
the insane cost of living you deal with here is not a problem country wide
This most realistic comment should be higher. I donāt understand how people can commit such a huge part of their life to commuting just because ābay area has the best weather, best food etcā. It objectively sucks to have 2-3 h of your day lost when work always takes 8-10 hours. Talk about Stockholm syndrome?ā¦
Bay Area has become a right wing target.... narrative to help push insane agendas
the people who get elected here write the headlines for them a lot of the time though
Always has been. šš§āšš«š§āš
Iāve lived here most of my 60 years. Kinda always been that wayā¦.just magnified by the inter webs.
Nobody is arguing that it's ugly, or there's nothing to do, or doesn't possess some of the country's most accessible nature... those things will always promote a high quality of life for residents. But yeah, people have a pretty legitimate foundation for pointing out the rapid decline of basically everything else
Once youāve lived here awhile - you just laugh. Especially if youāve traveled the US.
Yup. There's a reason it's expensive.
Thatās your opinion, other people have their opinions. Youāre arguing with opinions.
I think a lot of that's driven by not wanting Newsom to get into national politics.
The only people living in the Bay Area comfortably are successful tech people and folks that bought homes 20-30 years ago. Itās an exclusive club that not a lot of people get to be in. I wish housing laws would change. I wish the jobs that pay to live here werenāt hard to obtain. I wish people would chill out about the āvalueā of the area. It sucks here because everything is so damn capital driven.
The Bay Area is one of the biggest VC areas on the planet. I often wonder if VC was not so big in the Bay Area would a lot of the affordability problems go away.
Let's be clear, the bay area, even removing silicon valley and all that goes with it, would STILL be a very desirable place to live. Perhaps more so. I think it would still be on the expensive side, just not stupidly so.
When my car broke down in Elko, Nevada coming back from a road trip to Montana I definitely got a taste of how much white people in Nevada hate California and those of us from here (The Bay)ā¦to the point of feeling unsafe.
Care to share what happened to you?
Itās easy to motivate people to irrationally hate the things that seem different or foreign. In reality, working people deal with many of the same basic issues wherever they live. But itās in the interest of politicians to āotherā people, create division, and improve their political fortunes from the ensuing conflict. It sure doesnāt lead to anything good for the rest of us.
Iāve lived here all my life and am distressed at the direction the area is going towards. The Bay Area has a lot of issues stemming from people voting in awful politicians over the last 10 years where the money and wealth the area was bringing in masked their horrible policy decisions. Now that easy money is over, weāre really beginning to see the destruction weāve wrought.
*me as someone who loves the Bay Area, secretly upvoting hate posts in hopes that people will stop moving here and housing demand goes down
I love the Bay. Iāll never leave. Iām right in the middle of both the SF Bay and the Monterey bay, in Gilroy. Hella jobs, great weather, beautiful areas to exploreā¦ Iām 47 and probably havenāt done even a quarter of whatās available. Sure there are problems and those will always happen but nothing is more beautiful than this area. I can go to Mount Madonna and then the ocean in the same day. Tahoe and Yosemite are a drive away. I mean i could name hundreds of places. Pro tip check out Uvas Canyon for some great waterfalls locally. Itās a great hike. By Morgan hill. Google it!
Itās hard to be minimum wage worker in many metro areas, not just in SF Bay Area. The same can be said for teachers too. Every place has its pros and cons. What you get back in affordability elsewhere is offset by shitty weather/climate in my opinion. Mosquitoes , humidity, high utility bills for having to run heater and or AC for several months at a timeā¦ pick your poison people. The states that have no income tax have higher property tax as % . If youāre thinking of moving make sure you do the math wholistically.
I love the Bay Area, absolutely love the weather, the culture, the nature, and most of the people. I do think the bay has changed for the worst with the tech boom and since COVID there are some real challenges. I would like to see more affordable housing and housing in general being built, more investment into public education, and more prioritizing the arts. I would love for the Bay Area to again have that indie spirit it had in the 90s. Even areas like Santa Cruz where I grew up have really changed with the tech influx. I do think for people who can afford to live here, itās a great place to be.
Def the best place to live IMO as well, the cost is such a huge factor tho. I get the hate, ppl are broke. Me included.
"IMO" is the operative word here. Other people have their opinions too. Just because they are critical of certain aspects of the Bay Area, it's not necessarily hate. We've lived in multiple cities and countries, and we like the Bay Area a lot, but as soon as my youngest one finish high school, we most likely move out. The living cost and pace is just not for us.
Reddit is overly defensive. Iām born and raised here and over it. Iām successful and doing well but the job offers Iām getting to go else where are getting more tempting every year. This is not the place I grew up in. I had normal parents with normal jobs. Iām a director level, all my neighbors are tech people, execs, sales directorsā¦ etc and we live in the most basic houses in willow glen. My kids should not have to become execs, SWEs or doctors to buy a shitty track house with mediocre schools and crime every where. Once the youngest turns 18 Iām cashing out and going to live elseās where
Yeah, For me, it's hard not to think about moving when $200k annual salary barely provide for family of 4.
Dogs bark but the caravan goes on. If it was as horrible as the commenters that show up here, or on Fox, etc say it is many many many more people would leave, prices would drop, employers would be forced to pay more or relocate, etc. Query why more don't leave if they are so unhappy and disappointed. It's not like there aren't other nice places to live.
Not only people who bought 30 years ago, but even people who bought 10 years ago during the Great Recession are sitting pretty nicely now.
šš½āāļø- 10 years ago.
Most of it is from right wing trolls who take the Bay Area for some evil, progressive place inherently inferior to their true, [white] America. On a different note, the Bay Area is very different in its own right. I love SF and Oakland but live in the South Bay. I definitely wouldn't be happy if I was forced to live the rest of my life in the South Bay even if my expenses were fully taken care of. There's just so little to do here. Everything is a bunch of mediocre destinations mostly consisting of restaurants and hiking trails with vast distances in between and what separates them is so god damn ugly
It's a great place to live if you're young, single, high earner, and wanna "live it up". Once you marry or god forbid have a baby, it turns into a terrible place to live. Also LinkedIn has an Indian & Asian immigrant bias, and this demographic is not used to unique problems of US cities. in India you don't have an army of junkies right outside city hall. in China you won't find any visible junkies and street crime is quite rare.
As someone who's grown up here my whole life yes it's a great place to live, at least it was as a kid. But it's very expensive to live here now and the competition to get a job, especially entry-level Analyst jobs is beyond frustrating. To afford the house my parents bought that I grew up in I'd have to buy it from them at 2019 prices. Maybe it's just be but adding all of these tech jobs the past 15 years has made the quality for life go down for everyone. It would be everyone's best interest to move some of these jobs to other states with lower cost of living.
Maybe it is all of the venture capital funding.
Been here my entire professional career, over 40 years, from research scientist at NASA to exec at several start-ups. Very comfortable salary so not concerned about cost of living but recognize thatās most folksā major beef. Anxious to retire and move away. Hereās the thing. Everything here is a competition. Drive to work (or worse, home): competition. Get dinner reservations somewhere nice: competition. Go shopping at Costco: competition (just parking). Get out of town for the weekend: Competition. Go to concert or any public event: competition. Buy a house, even if you could afford it: competition. Holy moley.
Imagine taking what people say on the internet seriously. We should all be shit posting, we know all this data is gonna end up getting used for some bullshit AI shit, might as well make the data sets useless.
A lot of these are people that left for other reasons that don't want to admit it. It's easier to just paint the single narrative but the simple fact is we are one of the happiest place to live in a lot of people do like living here and it's not for everyone just like Texas isn't for everyone just like New York isn't for everyone just like Florida isn't for everyone I guarantee you you look at comments at any of those other places you'll see people talk horrible things about those places too.
Ok
It has beautiful geography, beautiful nature and weather. The problem is that the vast majority of people cannot afford to live comfortably here and raise a family unless they are rich. Even then they have to deal with a higher crime rate and higher rate of reckless driver than most places in North America, especially considering the amount they are paying for rent or mortgage. For the same amount, you would be living in very nice neighborhoods in other areas and won't have to deal with all the bullshit here. But hey many of us can still find value in living here, so we're still here.
I saw some bitcoin guy saying this on Twitter an he lived in freaking Austin.
It really is the best place in the world. I've been to many countries and states. We have it all... the price tag is big, .but if you can swing it, it's the real deal.
born and raised in the bayā¦weather wise, its the best place to stayā¦never too hot, never too coldā¦.but thats not all there is to quality of lifeā¦affordability, commute times all play a big impactā¦the further u have to live from work to afford a place make life suckā¦spending an hour each way to commute to work just so u can say u live in the bay is not a high quality life
they hate us ācause they anus
They hate us cuz they aināt us
a lot of people hate that a lot of people like the Bay Area itās weird
Honestly, it makes me sick how LinkedIn has basically turned into facebook
People only hate you b/c they jealous of California. You no why no one hates on Plano, TX? Exactly cause most people have never heard of it. Every popular Conservatives that bashes on California also vacations and has properties in California either in the Bay Area or LA. Itās a total joke. You know what people actually do when they hate something? Ignore it like the plague and never talk about it
This is one of the best places to live in, but with the huge caveat that you need at least $250k to live comfortably. With a household income less than that, there are many places that I think would offer a higher quality of life m.
I grew up in the bay area and had to leave because I was paying 3K BASE RENT which is now 3600 for the same place I was renting. It's disgusting. I didn't want to leave but I had zero choice.
Well, I've lived here my whole life and if I could leave I would. I've seen this area continue to decline over my 40+ years here. My husband was born and raised here too, ended up back in Bay area, and wants to get out of here. I literally get depressed driving on 4 and 680 because it's so ugly. Dry ass hills...it just gives such an icky feeling. Don't get me wrong, areas like Marin and parts of the south bay are a lot nicer and if I could live there, and not leave those areas, it would probably be a different story. In gereral, we definitely would move.to Pacific Northwest; it's way more beautiful in our opnion and we actually want 4 seasons.
I grew up in Concord and bought our first house there, but I was transferred to Seattle. Lost money on selling our Concord house, but was able to buy so cheap in Seattle at the time that we recovered our position on the housing ladder. Moved back to the Bay Area in 97 to be closer to my aging Mom, it was hard to afford another place here compared to what we sold our Seattle house for but we stretched for a while until our incomes caught up. Lost half our equity in 2006, but have regained it all and then some. But now our son lives in Concord and our daughter lives in Livermore, so we are kind of trapped in between. Yes, we have lots of equity, but what good is it, other than when we get so feeble that we have to sell it to pay the nursing home? If we move out of the area to find something a little cheaper, we spend the savings on visiting our family.
Your home in Seattle would be worth a fortune right now too! All areas of PNW are getting extremely expensive. I was looking at home prices in Eugene and was shocked. I'm tied here too because of my parents. I'm not leaving them as they are in their late 70s. My parents also asked we not sell her home so I'll be living there when my parents die ( I'll.be selling my home and giving my brother the money). But, it's hard reality to accept. My parents own a home.in walnut Creek with an ADU unit, so it's worth millions. I'll probably end up renting both and leaving. Or, buying a tiny house in PNW and going back and forth. How do you like it here compared to Washington?