Average one-bedroom rent in San Francisco is $3,520, and two bedrooms is $4,550. It's much cheaper elsewhere in the Bay Area. In Oakland, average one-bedroom rent is $2,470, and two bedrooms is $3,050. $4,300 is very plausible in Oakland.
Source: https://www.zumper.com/blog/2020/02/zumper-national-rent-rep...
To be more accurate, it is only a subset of SF residents (in the IT space) that get that kind of pay, I often wonder how is the life of those that do not belong to that elite and that do not make that kind of 6 figures money.
If we take these as valid data:
https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/occupationalem...
And set an arbitrary threshold at 45 US$/hour, the amount of people exceeding that are 31.1%, if we set it at 50 US$/hour they are 19.4%.
If we draw another line, those that get less than 25 US$/hour are 42.1% and those that get more than 25 but less than 45 are 26.6%.
So, even if we assume that 40% of people commutes for long distances (and BTW technically are not SF residents), since only between 20% and 30% of San Francisco workers can actually afford it, it still leaves us with 30%-40% of people that must be in a really tight spot.
I mean, if you live in SF and have a yearly income of "only" 50-60,000 US$ working some 2000 hours at 25-30 $/hour, and you live in a house that you can rent for roughly the same amount or that you can sell for (say) a million, what actually keeps you there?
Maybe you can find somewhere else a similar job, paid in the 15-20 $/hour range, you lose 20,000 on the job but get an additional 40,000 from the rent or from interests on the capital.
Classic perverse incentive, the only way to fix this is a drastic vacancy tax.
What does this have to do with not renting the apartment? Any business will deduct interest payments as a business expense.
Just use a land value tax.