[UnpossibleJim]

How much of this do you think comes from the Bay Area and Los Angeles housing costs and the ability to remote work in the last couple of years (which seems to be coming to an end... possibly) and how much do you think is because of policy and city deterioration which has been publicized?

I can't speak for CA but I see parallels in Seattle, though there's only movement to other cities within other WA cities (mainly the east side).

[majormajor]

The common refrain is very Yogi-Berra-like, "nobody lives there anymore, it's too crowded."

Few people on the right want to connect things like rising homelessness -> rising rents and property values in the same period -> an influx of high paying jobs. There aren't concrete policy proposals given to fix those things given the circumstances of the last decade, just finger-pointing at whatever particularly policy someone doesn't like. The amount of gymnastics done to blame anything other than "importing a bunch of high-earners and/or wealthy people has unintended consequences" is high. E.g., pointing to pre-Covid out-migration overall numbers while ignoring net in-migration within the US for earners over 100K/yr. (I haven't seen if this has changed post-Covid, it wouldn't suprise me if it has, but one would want to keep an eye on it over the next two years as policies around WFH shift, of course.)

[Mountain_Skies]

Why would you even mention "the right" in any conversation involving the governance of San Francisco? What level of control does a party need before accepting responsibility for their governing instead of looking for an exiled boogeyman to blame?

[bombcar]

I’ve seen people argue that the lack of complete unity on CA politics is the cause of all problems; e.g. the right is still to blame.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Well, even CA still operates under the basic assumptions of contemporary US capitalism. There's a notable limit to what you can accomplish in terms of social change when you still cannot (or refuse to) directly control housing costs (for example), or control capital flows, or the labor share of (in this case, state) GDP.

While there are some great analyses that point out the flaws and hypocrisy in Democratic governance within CA, I think it's also equally true to say that the state's "left" leaning situation ends up pointing out the inherent contradictions of contemporary US capitalism as well as anything could.

[timtom39]

I lived in SF for ~8 years and left during COVID and bought a house. I have worked remote for 5 years (long before covid). My quality of life is just better not living in SF. I should have left earlier. It is all of the reasons you listed and more.

Also, I am a startup junkie and avoiding CA's 13% capital gains has more than offset any pay cut I might take by working remote (which hasn't happened).