Residents of the tech giant hub Silicon Valley are unhappy with the quality of life in the area and plan to move out of the area in the coming years. Ultra-liberal Silicon Valley is home to Apple, Google, Meta, Wells Fargo and Visa, to name a few. The study comes after other polls have shown that residents on the West Coast are ready to jump ship and move to states like Florida and Texas.
The latest Silicon Valley Poll found that 56 percent of respondents say they are likely to leave the area “in the next few years.” Sixty-four percent of respondents said that they region is “on the wrong track,” a ten-point jump from last year. The poll write-up noted that this figures is shared across gender, ages, races and ethnicities.
“Extreme” housing costs and homelessness are seen as the area’s most serious issues. Nine out of 10 residents rate these issues as “very” or “extremely” serious.
African American and Latino respondents are the “most alarmed” by housing costs at 82 percent. Seventy-two percent of white residents and 76 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander respondents feel the same.
Though considerable majorities see high housing costs as an “extremely serious” problem, there is little consensus around solutions. There is no majority support for building more single-family housing and only 39 percent would support additional units on single-family lots…What support there is for housing drops precipitously when any kind of construction is proposed within a half-mile of home, but particularly for low-income housing (a 14-point drop) and housing for the homeless (a 17-point drop).
Sixty-two percent of Republican respondents said the quality of life in the region has grown “much worse.” Only 23 percent of Democrat respondents agree. It is noted that the decline in quality of life is more pronounced in San Francisco County.
Eighty-two percent of LGBTQ+ respondents said they feel a “sense of belonging” in Silicon Valley, as do 83 percent of full-time students. A minority of white, African American and Latino and Asian and Pacific Islander respondents feel a sense of belonging in Silicon Valley.
Last month, a poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle covered by Townhall found that roughly one-third of residents are likely to leave the city within the next three years. Sixty-five percent said that “life in the city is worse than when they first moved here.” On top of that, less than a quarter of respondents said they expected life to improve in the next two years. Thirty-five percent said it would worsen.
“Those who want to leave aren’t just young and itinerant — they also express more negativity toward the city’s prospects and elected politicians than those who say they’ll continue living in San Francisco, the survey shows,” the Chronicle’s write-up noted. “They fall across all income brackets, including people in the lowest economic tiers who typically struggle to afford to live in the city.”
Between April 2020 and July 2021, 20 percent of people ages 25 to 29 left San Francisco. Homelessness was listed at the top issues plaguing the region. Public safety and housing affordability came in second.
John Whitehurst, a political consultant, told the Chronicle he has “never seen voters more upset and angry in San Francisco than they have been over the last two years and continue to be, and that anger gets expressed in many ways.” Recall elections are one way. Moving away is another.