The Bay Area, especially San Francisco, is getting more and more expensive. Many residents are fleeing from the high expenses to other parts of California and other states.
The value of a bachelor’s degree is decreasing with each passing decade and won’t always guarantee a job that will allow someone to support themselves financially, at least not within the couple years after graduation. In an area where rent is the most expensive in the world, many students are debating whether they can afford to stay in SF. So where do the students of SF State plan to live after graduation?
Alyssa Castillo, an English literature and cinema major, who plans to graduate in the spring of 2019, plans to stay in SF after graduation. “I’m hoping to live with my boyfriend and looking for what we can afford, [I] would live anywhere with two bedrooms and [would] rent out the second one. Or a studio just for the two of us,” says Castillo. Castillo is from Fremont and her dad lives in Oakland so staying in the Bay Area would be ideal for her. After graduation she hopes to join film sets or do something with writing, both accessible jobs in the bay area.
Juni Lian, a civil engineer major, plans to move to Florida after graduation. “I like the weather, and I have friends that live there,” Lian says on why he wants to go to Florida. Since many people enjoy the moderate weather of the Bay Area, weather is a big factor when considering other places to live.
Many other areas and states are weary when people from the Bay Area try to move there because it creates a housing bubble if many people move from here at once, raising rent and housing prices. Oregon being one the most popular destinations for baydestrians, some homeowners have refused to sell their houses to people from California. Rent has risen in cities where many people from the bay area have moved, making people not very welcoming to people from the bay.
Sabrina Latifi, an English education major, says she plans to do her credential in Southern California and if she likes it there, she will stay there after graduation but if not she plans to return to the bay.
“I haven’t really decided where I want to live yet because I know that with my career I can work anywhere. That’s why I’m going to Southern California to see how I like it down there, if I don’t like it I plan to come back to the bay,” says Latifi. Once Latifi gets her credential she plans to teach high school students. If she returns to the bay, she says she plans to live in a house with roommates.
Living in the Bay Area is great, if you can afford it, which is getting harder and harder to be able to do. From the weather, food, and diversity, leaving is hard for some especially for those people from here. “ ‘When you move away, he said, ‘a lot of stuff just feels like a step down.’Food and weather, sure, but politics especially,” Marion Denny says in an SF Gate article.
Picking where to move can be even harder once people have gotten used to all the amenities of the Bay Area. The traffic and high rent will of course not be missed but despite these drawbacks of the area many people are trying to stay. “No place is perfect, but some are better than others (at least subjectively speaking). It’s not always a matter of finding ‘the right city’ but one that’s simply more tolerable than others. No matter where you live, concessions must be made, priorities codified,” Michelle Robertson writes in an SF Gate article.
