Exodus of San Francisco's middle class

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

It's urban flight flipped on its head: The number of low- and middle-income residents in San Francisco is shrinking as the wealthy population swells, a trend most experts attribute to the city's exorbitant housing costs.

Many worry it's increasingly turning San Francisco into an enclave of the rich, where nurses, firefighters, cops, teachers and others professionals aspiring toward homeownership or in need of cheaper rent can no longer afford to stay.

"A kind of derogatory term for the city would be Disneyland for yuppies," said Hans Johnson, demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California. "There is a legitimate public policy concern when a city that many people have lived in for many years and regard as their homes, becomes so expensive they can't afford to live there anymore."

From 2002 to 2006, the number of households making up to $49,000 per year dropped by 7.4 percent, those earning between $50,000 and $99,999 declined by 4.4 percent, and those bringing home between $100,000 and $149,999 fell by 3.9 percent, according to Census Bureau estimates. In polar opposition, the number of households making between $150,000 and $199,999 surged 52.2 percent and those earning more than $200,000 climbed 40.1 percent.

... Since 2002, the median price for all San Francisco home types has risen 113.5 percent to $790,000, according to DataQuick Information Systems. While the housing slump has dragged down values by more than a third in some parts of the region, it's only nudged prices in the city down 5.4 percent from their peak.

A San Francisco household requires an annual income of $196,878 to afford a median-priced home in the city, according to a February report from the California Budget Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/21/MNJJ10NPSK.DTL&tsp=1

that do little else but fight to keep affordable housing. :scared:

I'm a nurse at UCSF and had to move down the peninsula in order to find affordable housing. The bad part of it is commuting but it's still cheaper than living in the city.

Back in the late 70's I had an opportunity to go to work in SF in a middle class paying job, but even then it was far too expensive so I had to turn the offer down.

Love that city, but it hasnt been affordable for decades to anyone not in the upper tax brackets.

wrapped up in rent control and struggles over redevelopment

People have been fighting this for at least that long

They have only started losing badly in the last few years, though

It wasn't an uncommon phenomenon at all. Needless to say I was quite puzzled when I asked them why they moved here. To the person it was to escape the ridiculously high housing prices. The easterners I talked to who moved to Iowa were oftentimes escaping the congestion. But with the the San Franners housing was at the top of the list.

a house in Sonora

I had moved from Healdsburg where I was paying $150 a month for a room in a Victorian house w/pool/hot tub/sauna

When I got to SF to attend UC Berkeley was shocked to learn that a studio in the city ran $475 a month (in 1984) !!


Learned to do what the Asians in Chinatown did and slept in very cramped quarters while saving my 20% for a down payment on a reasonably priced 3 BR house in Sonora as the city was way out of my price range


despite having relatives that lived there since the 1880's it is long past affordable for most working people...unless they moved there 25 years ago and are in a rent controlled building...

The exodus this refers to began in the late 80's early 90's. SF is an expensive city to live in always has been, has been for some time considered a financial hub = rich people and not necessarily code pink progressives i.e. Mr. & Mrs. Di Feinstein.

Many are willing to commute from here cause prices elsewhere are far less exorbitant by Calif standards and it's only, minus the grid lock, a little some less than 2 hrs to the city so why not, especially if you're making $1,000 per hour. Brad & Angelina just bought a chateau in France on 1,000 acres...not all that far from Clooney's villa in Tuscany by MapQuest I'll wager; so again why not?

The rich are different and they know it. They know they have the options others will never have.

San Francisco has ALWAYS had ridiculously high prices for housing. People are finally coming to their senses, and realizing that your money goes a lot farther toward buying a home in many other cities.

Pretty sad that it takes an economic downturn for people to wise up, though.

I remember a thread here last Winter when people were comparing their $300 heating bills and even more recently, when people post what they spend on gasoline. :scared:

My utilities run about $60 a month all year around and I haven't had to drive my car since November. The streetcar takes me wherever I want to go.

On the other hand, we knew when Gavin Newsom was elected that we'd have to fight to keep the little affordable housing we have here because he's backed by the real estate lobby just like Pelosi is.

The same thing has happened to Santa Fe and Taos here in New Mexico, and in other scenic or quaint towns across the country. Families that have been here for hundreds of years are finding out their children have to leave the area unless they inherit the family home because there is no other way for them to afford to live there.

The wealthy seem to want to turn anyplace they inhabit into another Palm Springs, the epitome of snob zoning, where "undesirables" like nurses, teachers, cops and firefighters (not to mention plumbers and auto mechanics) are stashed away in rundown housing in unattractive towns at least an hour's commute away.

"Disneyland for yuppies" just about says it all. My own feeling is that I'm perfectly happy to leave those Magic Kingdom nouveau riche types there to stew in it, no services, no servants, and no help available.

It's high time the Gilded Age starts bearing a few unintended consequences for THEM.

I am not aware of any "snob zoning" in San Francisco. Simply the economic pressure of so many people wanting to live there.
It is by far the most desirable city on the west coast, and one of the most desirable in the world.
The only land use changes I have heard of are the ongoing conversion of warehouse/industrial property to residential.

People who live out in the 'burbs or the boonies are regularly castigated on here for having an overly car-dependent lifestyle,
while those who give that up to move to the city are cursed for yuppifying the city.

as the snobs gentrify the area and bid prices up.

There has been rampant real-estate speculation which has driven prices up. The sub-prime debacle is deflating this somewhat.
Higher gasoline costs have also tipped the cost equation further towards living in the city for those who work there.
That drives up housing costs as well.

I don't think that people who are moving into San Francisco are bidding prices up because they want to make it too expensive for the riff-raff to live there.
I have never been to Taos or Santa Fe, but I doubt that this is the case there either.

I think we agree that we are talking about the effect of market forces here,
so let's just drop the bit about "snob zoning" since it has nothing to do with this discussion.
The words you are looking for are "rent control". Whatever happened to rent control?

in the Bayview which used to have a large black community, too.

This is a fight that will never end and we know that.

:shrug:

I'd much rather live in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, San Rafael, Portland, or Seattle. :shrug:

(And I'm sure there are smaller cities in Oregon and Washington that I don't know about that would suffice. :) )

i'm a child born of the late 1970s so i know nothing else but an extremely expensive city.

what really pissed me off was all the students who recently transfered to Davis when i went there and deliberately reregistered to vote to end rent control. dumbasses. the very next year we saw rental prices explode. people were moving further and further away, some ending up closer to Sacramento than Davis. it was utterly stupid. rents would double or triple in a single year, costing anywhere from $800-$1200 for a studio or $1600-$2400 for a 2 bedroom, this back in 1998. when you start hitting Bay Area costs and you are at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours from the City, there's something wrong. fucking shit-for-brains "conservative free market" students... hopefully the bubble pop fixed that stupidity -- but all UC Davis students are now stuck in essentially a closed market. charge 'em whatever you like, they are desperate to find a place to live. what're they going to do, commute 2+ hours every day to go to class?