The major obstacle to living in SV is the insane cost of homeownership that puts the (pretty commonplace) aspiration of living in one's own home with a nice yard out of reach of all but the richest (even being in the top 5% of incomes in the nation is no guarantee of being able to own a house in Palo Alto, for example.) With the recent passing of Prop 19, things get even worse: people who are looking to inherit homes from their parents are in for a shock if they have siblings --- they may be forced to pay a much higher property tax if they do not all live in the property! Prop 19 is written to benefit Realtors and Firefighters: realtors get to pry houses out of seniors' hands to sell, and firefighters get to increase their salaries and ranks. Prop 19 will also massively reduce incentives to rent (or alternately, bump up rents to much higher levels to cover the much higher property taxes), leaving housing the same or much worse off (my bet is on the latter.)

Add to this the ridiculously high income tax burden and sales tax burden, and it becomes clear that raising children is also out of reach for most (particularly if you do not want to send your children to the piss-poor public schools in many areas.)

For singles also, particularly men (who comprise the majority of techies), things are pretty bleak: there is too much competition for women, and opportunities to date do not come by easily at all.

If homeownership and family formation are supremely hard, and so is finding a mate, what exactly is the rationale for continuing to live in the Bay Area? It seems to me that the Bay Area will become an in-and-out type of place (like Manhattan or some of the other New York boroughs perhaps), wherein you bust your ass for several years and decamp to a lower-tax (or better still, no-tax) jurisdiction to get on with the next phase of your life.