Bay Area's Middle Class Is Being Squeezed Out in Droves: Report

[KamaAina]

http://www.newsweek.com/bay-areas-middle-class-being-squeezed-out-droves-report-454178

For well over two decades now, the San Francisco Bay Area has struggled with rapidly growing income inequality and the lack of housing supply as a booming Silicon Valley lures workers from around the world with six-digit salaries. As the middle- and lower-class residents in the Bay Area are pushed to the brink, they're leaving the area in droves for cheaper pastures, according to a recent report.

Mark Uh, a data scientist for the real estate website Trulia, found that San Jose led the nation by a sizable distance in middle- and low-income residents leaving. Nearly half of all households that left San Jose between 2010 and 2014 made less than $60,000. Only 27.4 percent of San Jose residents as of 2014 made below that threshold.

San Jose's "move-away rate," which is the current share of households living in the city compared with the share leaving the city, is a whopping 77.2 percent, meaning San Jose middle-class households are 77 percent more likely to move out of the city than to move in.

"If people with brown eyes make up 60 percent of a city’s population,” Uh says, “our expectation would be that 60 percent of everyone who moves out would have brown eyes.” But with the middle class in San Jose, that’s not happening. Instead, Uh discovered that for San Jose residents who make more than $150,000, a somewhat standard mid-level salary for Silicon Valley workers, move-away rates were the lowest in the nation at minus 52.7 percent. The negative move-away rate occurs because there were far more high-income households moving in rather than away.

And here I am desperately trying to get out, if only to the slightly less exorbitant (but far cooler!) East Bay.

[bkkyosemite]

1. I'm from San Jose I'm now in Medford OR.

[KamaAina]

2. Figures.

One of my many objections to $iliValley is the lack of awesome females. Thanks a lot!

[TDale313]

3. Born and raised here. I'm 45.

Actually ended up moving back in with my folks for a while about 9 months ago to pay off some bills, save some money. Cost of living here has gotten crazy. I'm very fortunate to have that option, but yeah, it really shouldn't be this hard. I could move out of the area I suppose, but all my roots and family and support system are here.

Started a new job, too. That'll help, but still below what it takes to have any sort of cushion around here.

[bkkyosemite]

4. It is so hard for the average person to live there unless you bought a house many years ago.

My cousin still lives there but she is in the same house she bought in the 1970's but still owes on it because they refinanced several times. It is very hard for the average person to live there. My family either have died from being there all their lives or have moved away. My son, my ex living with my son live here too. My other grandchildren have moved to WA, TX etc because of the cost of living is out of sight there. People that live there really do not have the concept that what they pay for rent or mortages would buy them mansions elsewhere yet they live in a small WW 2 home maybe ...that is about a million dolllars.

[elljay]

5. For sure.

The 750 sq ft, 1 BD, 2 ba home on a 4500 sq ft lot across the street from me on the Peninsula just sold for 900k. It has doubled in just 4 years. No doubt they will be filing to build a mini-mansion on the lot and no doubt they will get approved. My quiet canyon is becoming the crowded suburb I had hoped to avoid.

[KamaAina]

6. She was born and raised in San Jose

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