A new survey finds 46% of Bay Area residents expect to leave the pricey California region within the next few years.
The poll, released this week by Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Bay Area News Group, surveyed 1,801 adults across the region. Even among those planning to depart, 66% said they still feel they belong in the Bay Area.
Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, told the news group that housing costs are the core issue. “What they’re concerned about is our inability to solve our basic problem, which is housing — housing and the high cost of living here,” he said. “That’s what’s driving people out.”
Renters showed stronger intentions to leave than homeowners, according to the poll findings. Electrician David Collins, 53, represents that struggle despite deep roots in the region. His family has lived there for five generations, and he said he loves the area’s nature. Still, he is preparing to go.
“I’d love to stay. I worked seven days a week trying to save money to buy a house, and it just kept being unattainable,” Collins told the news group. “How am I going to retire?”
Gina Bidinger, 59, faces similar pressures from her $2,600-per-month, two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in Alameda, where she lives with an adult daughter and her 76-year-old mother. She told the news group she was stunned by housing prices elsewhere, describing a six-bedroom, four-bathroom house available for $300,000 in states like Nevada and Texas.
“It’s a little hard to make that decision to move out of California, because this is really all I’ve ever known,” Bidinger said. “The only thing that really holds me back is my children that are here.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie declared a “rent emergency” last month and proposed measures to combat evictions. The announcement came as city rents for one-bedroom apartments have hit headlines exceeding $5,000. “Today, most San Franciscans feel our city is finally moving in the right direction, but many are also asking whether they can still afford to live here,” Lurie said in a statement. “We are taking action to tackle San Francisco’s rent emergency head-on and help San Franciscans stay in their homes.”
The mayor’s office said San Francisco rents are spiking faster than anywhere else in the country. Data from Apartment List showed the city’s apartment vacancy rate dropped to just 2% in August, while rent prices have jumped 26% in the past year. “This leads the nation and represents the fastest post-pandemic rent growth captured by our model,” the Apartment List analysis stated.
Beyond affordability, politics emerged as another factor pushing residents away. Some survey respondents cited policies including a proposed billionaires tax and sanctuary city laws as reasons for their discontent.
The survey results land amid broader national attention on California’s outmigration patterns, with IRS data showing the state among the biggest losers of residents and their wealth. The Bay Area’s particular strain combines tech-industry wealth concentration with housing scarcity that has priced out middle- and lower-income workers.
The poll’s finding that most would-be leavers still feel belonging in the region underscores a painful tension: attachment to place colliding with economic reality. For Collins, that means abandoning the landscape his family has called home for over a century. For Bidinger, it means weighing unknown states against the pull of children who remain in California.
Lurie’s rent emergency declaration includes several proposed actions aimed at slowing displacement, though specific policy details were not outlined in the survey release.