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The San Francisco Chronicle has done some analyses of the Bay Area exodus, and the majority are not moving to Texas but instead to places like San Joaquin and Madera county (counties that border the Bay Area). People want the bigger house, but they also want to be able to visit their friends and family.

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I'm typing this from Madera County. People are fleeing the Bay Area to move to the worst air quality in the country? My wife and I are figuring out how to move away (again) because the smog is really messing with her health. The air is so much worse here than when we were growing up. Heck, she wants to move to the cleaner air of Santa Clarita (north of L.A.--where we used to live).

This is accurate in my anecdotal experience. I'm from the Bay Area (5th generation or so) and so I have a lot of cousins, aunts, and uncles here and the general trend for friends/family has been to move to cheaper areas in the exurbs: Stockton, Tracey, Antioch, Fairfield, Vacaville, Modesto, etc. This is where the working class are getting pushed out to as they can no longer afford to live in the inner Bay Area.

It's not just working class — a corporate lawyer friend of mine did the same.

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