From San Francisco Business Times:
More than a third of Bay Area residents recently polled by the Bay Area Councilsaid they are planning to leave the region, as skyrocketing housing costs, terrible commutes and an increasingly high cost of living make the area very difficult to afford.
In addition, over half of the residents polled in San Francisco County said the region was headed in the wrong direction, a massive leap from the only 28 percent who felt the same way last year. You can read the full report here. …
Overall, the poll painted a gloomy picture for the Bay Area, with 22 percent of those who answered saying high housing costs are their biggest concern, followed by traffic at 17 percent and cost of living at 9 percent.
The council said it considers the study to be a “canary in a coal mine” and called on local civic and business leaders to work to address the issues to keep the region from experiencing a mass exodus.
“Residents’ discontent is palpable, and we can’t ignore it,” Jim Wunderman, Bay Area Council president and CEO, told the San Francisco Business Times. “Traffic is horrific. Our housing shortage is pricing workers, families and others out of their homes and out of the region. Together, these problems threaten to erode our economic vitality and diminish our quality of life.”
The question this business consortium’s survey asked was, ‘I am likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years. – Agree or Disagree’. This is different from ‘Planning to Move’, but not as urgent-sounding.
The remainder of the poll shows a common priority response to issues in North America: ‘Housing’, ‘Traffic’, ‘Cost of Living’, and ‘Crime’ are this year’s four biggest concerns. Interestingly, ‘Supply of Water’ was the #2 issue of 2015. It has since fallen off the radar, but it’s still only Spring.
Yet, there is hope on the transport front. The data do not show the recent uptick in VMT, but that is relative to the lower price of fuel, which is on the rise again.
http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/08/07/california-has-officially-ditched-car-centric-level-of-service/#more-329920
I used to watch Sci-Fi movies of dystopian future cities where everyone is crammed into tiny apartment slums and wonder why they don’t just leave for the countryside. But, I’ve come to realize that people get trapped by economic constraints.
For example, in Hong Kong, there are people that are literally living in cages. They have a small cage in a building where they live out their meagre lives. And, I wonder, this is so bad that isn’t leaving the city a better option for this person? Like, how much worse does it have to get before you’ve had enough? But, I guess leaving just isn’t an option.
For San Franciscans, many flee to Portland and Seattle (or Colorado, Austin, etc) and are able to find jobs in their current fields. Is that the same for many Vancouverites? How many Vancouverites want to leave but don’t have a viable city to go to? Calgary seems like a one industry town. Is Toronto the only other option? And, it has bad weather.
Are we, as a city, managing to just hang onto people, especially young families, simply because they have nowhere else to go? If so, that means they’ll put up with a lot, including cages.
And yet, there is hope on the housing affordability front, as espoused in this, one of the most intelligent, solutions-based, positive and proactive articles on the affordability crisis, with a notable benefit to funding rental housing.
http://vancouversun.com/opinion/an-affordable-housing-manifesto
And no cages.
The thing I find absolutely confounding about the bay area is the total lack of construction.
I was in San Francisco last week, and the only two buildings I saw going up were related to the Transbay Terminal. How is a city with such an incredibly booming economy barely building any housing?
They can’t even keep the BART properly funded, clean and in a decent state of repair. WTFSF?