San Francisco Has Topped Out

This month I've been posting--and probably boring you to tears, dear reader--about the untenability of life in the Bay Area ("Cascading Catastrophes", "Thousands Flee"). Chronicle writers have devoted time to this theme:

Bad things keep piling on — when is enough enough in the Bay Area? [bold added]

Come for the fog, stay with the smoke (Chron)

The lightning-sparked fires spreading in all directions, fouling the region’s air and driving people from their homes in at least six of our nine counties, are the latest onslaught in a year that already has given us too many layers of stress. They come as we enter our sixth month of a pandemic that has no clear end, as protests continue against the racial inequities made stark by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May...

In a poll last year by the Bay Area Council, for example, 57% of the people surveyed by the business group said that the region was on the “wrong track” — twice the number who held that view in 2015. Almost as many, 49%, classified themselves as “strongly” or “somewhat” likely to move from the region in the next few years. Asked why, nearly three-quarters identified housing costs or the cost of living as the main culprit.

Veteran writer Carl Nolte believes San Francisco will bounce back:

Forces keep battering San Francisco — and its spirit is still alive

2003: now this is fog.

There are a lot of examples of how the city has lost its soul: the tent encampments, the boarded-up stores, the urban failures you see everyday, the moving vans taking people away for good.

But I see other things: the man up the street who left some honey from local bees on my doorstep earlier in the summer, the woman who left a nosegay of flowers from her garden by her gate with an invitation to passersby to take the flowers home. The sidewalk libraries with free books. A city’s soul is intangible, wispy and ephemeral like the summer fog. You miss it most when the heat’s on.

Meanwhile, home prices are booming in a resort town:

Downtown Truckee, 12 mi from N Tahoe (Chron)

Tahoe’s new Gold Rush: Bay Area residents fleeing coronavirus push up home prices

The COVID-19 pandemic has stoked a real estate boom throughout the Tahoe region, propelled by thousands of workers fleeing San Francisco and the broader Bay Area. Freed from the shackles of 9-to-5 office work, these white-collar workers are seeking mountain homes near open space and tranquility far from downtown high-rises. And they have the money to pay for it.

Young people move here for the nightlife, job opportunities, networking, and the weather. The nightlife is non-existent, jobs and networking can be done remotely, and the smokey air, not fog, is now an annual summer phenomenon.

The population inflow is slowing, the outflow is accelerating, and, sorry Carl Nolte, IMHO I don't see what will stop these trends.