High rents and high housing costs. One in three residents of San Francisco would leave. That may be the highest level since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
According to a new study by the Bay Area Council:
Soaring housing costs stemming from a chronic shortage combined with an overwhelmed transportation system and grinding traffic are taking a heavy toll on Bay Area residents, with one third saying they are likely to bolt the region in the next few years, according to results of the 2016 Bay Area Council Poll released today. Just 40 percent of residents say the region is heading in the right direction, a significant decline from 55 percent last year and 57 percent in 2014.
If what is calculated at 2 million people depart, the tax base would be crippled, demand for housing would collapse and the traffic on streets would dwindle.
Fortunately for the area, few people could find jobs outside the region, particularly if the exodus totaled the 2 million, even given their concerns about living costs (64% of those surveyed), housing (48%), traffic (39%) and income inequality (27%).
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And the traditional worry about the area’s weather has waned:
Concerns about housing costs and the region’s high cost of living drowned out worries about the drought. Even with an underperforming El Nino, just 4 percent of Bay Area residents ranked California’s historic drought as their leading concern, a precipitous drop from the 28 percent that put it at the top of the region’s most important problems in 2015.
The Bay Area Council can take comfort in the fact that most of the people who want to leave have nowhere to go.
Methodology: The 2016 Bay Area Council Poll, which was conducted by Oakland-based public opinion research firm EMC Research from Feb. 12 to March 9, 2016, surveyed more than 1,000 residents online about a range of issues related to economic growth, housing and transportation, drought, education and workforce. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
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