Surprise! Almost half of the people living in the San Fransisco Bay Area are eager to get out of Dodge — and not just for a vacation. They are seeking to escape their oppressive and expensive hometown.
A full 46% of Bay Area residents are planning to leave their community at some point in the next few years.
A new poll conducted by the Bay Area Council has several significant insights on what seems to be a growing problem for San Fransisco, and to a broader extent, California.
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The group’s president Jim Wunderman told local reporters that more and more people were looking to get out every year. “This is the trend we’ve been observing. Two years ago, it was 34%, and last year it was 40.” Now the number has reached 46%, and it’s not showing any signs of turning around any time soon.
Most of the poll’s respondents say that they’ve lived in the area for at least 20 years and that they increasingly believe that life in the Bay Area is heading in the wrong direction.
Forty-five percent of those who say they are planning to leave cited cost of living as the driving factor, while 27 percent said housing and rent costs are becoming too much to bear.
Sixteen percent of that group said they plan to move somewhere else in California, while Texas, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona topped the most sought-after states outside of California for relocation.
“On the downside of it is all the people who need to be here to provide all the services are being priced out,” Wunderman said to KTVU. “We’re seeing teachers, government workers, firefighters, police officers actually not able to live in the communities.”
Among the chief complaints of Californians as a whole are the radical policies implemented by the state government. A case in point is the draconian water rationing law that is to kick in by 2020. Under this law, it will be illegal for residents to take a shower and do their laundry on the same day.
Is it any wonder that California was found earlier this year to have the worst “quality of life” in America. According to the survey, one way of measuring quality life is whether residents can even afford to have a roof over their heads. By that standard, California is failing. Just ask Los Angeles’s homeless population, which is the largest of any city in the country.
