The High Cost of Living in the Bay Area

I live in San Jose, where the cost of living is somewhat better than in Mountain View, but the skyrocketing rent is something that needs to be looked at more by City Council. We practically need to have better rent control. Renting a house or apartment and buying gasoline are the single greatest expenses people living in the Bay Area have to make (Mercury News). When the economy is going well, businesses expand because they have the money to hire more employees. When things are not going so well, they drop employees.

The San Jose Mercury News states that 200,000 homes are needed but we are only putting in 80,000 homes a year. $15 minimum wage simply doesn’t cut it. But see, the right-wingers would have us working, being paid nothing. What is even more frightening is that a family of four bringing in $117,000 a year is considered low-income in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo Counties. I have no idea how the hell people survive in the Bay Area, as I have plans to buy my parent’s condo out if I ever do make enough money so I can do this.

Housing is not the only situation that’s expensive in the Bay Area—it is the gasoline, as well as goods. Working only covers so many expenses. Many workers are not getting the salary they need. This is a huge problem but the administration is content to ignore this situation, which is happening all over the country, not just in the Bay Area. California itself has a high cost of living. The average price of a California home is $538,640 dollars. Currently, to be able to live in Los Angeles, it takes $112,930 to buy an average home in Los Angeles.

Living outside of California is cheaper than living inside of California. Those of you with jobs who live in California can understand this. While anybody outside of California luxuriates with having a less high cost of living, Bay Area people move away to Reno, or Henderson, NV, sometimes driving up the cost of living in those locations as well, which pisses off the natives. The Bay Area has 58,000 people coming in from abroad and then leaving since things are very expensive. Almost 46,000 people decided to leave for other states. People moving to the Bay have higher incomes than people who abruptly move out.

California has more younger people than older people (San Francisco Chronicle). California and the Bay Area have a growing population, granted, but people move in and out all the time. Californians escaping California went to Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington in 2016, according to Next 10. I suppose to continue living in California you have to be a billionaire or a millionaire. The second-highest high-income location is Honolulu, Hawaii (NY Times). The tech industry's demands lead to high competition in the Bay Area because people who wind up getting hired have the skill, which is why tech is very competitive. Not only is housing expensive in the Bay Area, so are the utilities. Making a poor neighborhood more expensive by remodeling the homes is a low thing to do but something that happens. We have to figure out ways of reducing the housing costs in the Bay Area because it is impossible to live here. Many people get priced out because they wind up having to move. Even if you live in Gilroy and have an enormous commute to get to work, the prices are still expensive. The wages either go up or the housing prices come down.

Works Cited

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/10/bay-area-cost-of-living-spikes-in-2018/.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/us/bay-area-housing-market.html

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/If-people-are-fleeing-the-Bay-Area-for-cheaper-12889909.php