LA is expensive as well, but there are places that you can rent on the cheap, or at least a reasonable amount of money, and be safe. If this wasn't the case, LA as a city would break down. We need music, artists, actors, people pouring coffee, and serving tables to keep this city alive. We need a poor person living in the same building as an executive. On top of that, we need places where poor people can afford to eat, so there is a McDonalds anywhere you go.
I bring up McD's because I was "over-fooded" in SF and went on a desperate search for something trashy to eat, almost to no avail.
I'm just wondering how SF is able to sustain itself and how it plans to sustain itself in the future if they push all the poor people to such a distance that they can't even take the BART or bus to work anymore.
The other difference is that LA is very much a gig economy. There are a LOT of people out here that either don't have a job and live just fine, or they have a day job and do random gigs during their off-hours. As someone once told me, you don't sleep in LA, you just rest. Others have pointed out that this is a work area, and so on. But even so, there are so many different industries down here that you can, with time, talent, and luck, have sustainable life and your own place, well outside tech, movies, music, art, and so on.
My impression is that the bay area is an area with a few viable ways to make a living. Is it just that the lower class has to live in the dangerous areas of Oakland (and elsewhere) to just have a roof over their head?