This especially made me laugh because the VP of Eng at one of my Silicon Valley startups was from Cleveland and would often joke "I escaped a prison sentence by leaving Cleveland" and "The place is so polluted the river caught on fire, TWICE!".
I've been to Cleveland and it's actually a pretty solid place to live. I would argue you could have a far better life there with a $50k house than slavishly working for the rest of your life for a multi-million dollar tiny home in a giant sprawled out suburb.
FWIW I never met a single person in the bay area that didn't want to live basically anywhere else, but couldn't because of work (and access to work). I'm sure they're there but I never met them. Networking is going to be terrible during COVID too, which is arguably the best thing about being down there for a startup anyways.
I just think people are going to be amazed at how much that place hollows out as more tech companies decide to permanently go remote. I loved the weather, but I also like not having to work as much to put a roof over my head. I'm sure that resonates with a lot of other people too, that don't think retiring early surrounded by friends and family is a prison sentence.
Sure it's not as bad as say, northern Minnesota, but once you get away from the ocean and desert areas, if there's standing freshwater around there can be plenty of mosquitoes. The last time I camped in Big Basin everyone was running through clouds of them to/from the restrooms.
But yeah, in the cities like SF and LA, there aren't very many. The city would spray for mosquitoes at night when I lived in San Mateo, which surprised me coming from the midwest and not expecting Californians to be ok with such chemicals sprayed throughout their neighborhoods while they slept.
I'm really hopeful that remote work becomes widely accepted so that everyone gets more of what they want. That those who don't want to live in a city are no longer forced to and for those that want to live in a city, it becomes more affordable.
The most recent tech boom finally managed to get some construction going on in SF, but in a city where living rooms were converted into bedrooms and wildly successful 20-somethings having roommates, it's going to have to fall a long way before the city is affordable again on minimum wage.
All this says is you live in a bubble. I know many people who would love to live here but can't afford to do so. I also live here and the only reason I'm considering leaving is the expense. I imagine most people who own a home here don't stay here because they hate it. They could sell their homes and probably retire early anywhere else. FWIW I'm not from here. The only people who want to live "anywhere else" aren't from here and are only here for the money. Those people will leave, sure. But then again, maybe not, when they see that employees here make more than they do in Cleveland.
> I'm sure that resonates with a lot of other people too, that don't think retiring early surrounded by friends and family is a prison sentence.
I think you're vastly underestimating the number of people that are from here that want to stay here. I've got many, many friends that have left the area simply because they can't afford it.
It's going to be decades before the bay "empties out", because as soon as that starts happening, those people living six adults to a three-bedroom home are going to start spreading out and the people that left against their will are going to come back. And there is still going to be an absurd amount of money here, even it gets spread around some.
And as much as companies may start to allow remote work (not at all a forgone conclusion in my mind, although the $$ seems right), there are still going to be competitive advantages to employees and founders who decide to live here.