By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-19 11:45:36 | Updated at 2024-10-19 13:18:55
1 hour ago
Ken and Michele Freeze have few regrets about putting the Bay Area in the rearview mirror.
In 2019, they sold their split-level $750,000 home in Martinez, California, and bought a much larger property with a five-car garage in Meridian, Idaho, for $496,000.
Ken, 69, says homelessness was 'getting out of hand' in Martinez and local beauty spots were 'littered with needles.'
'People didn't want to take their families down there,' he told The Mercury News.
The Freezes are far from alone.
New polling shows that nearly half of Bay Area residents are struggling with rising housing costs and a range of quality-of-life issues, and seek to leave in the next couple of years.
Ken Freeze, 69, and Michele Freeze, 68, were lured away by the rural expanse of Idaho.
Those escaping the Bay Area say the crime, homelessness and soaring housing costs are driving them out.
The survey, by the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley, revealed that 47 percent of denizens want out of the five-country metro area.
Pollster Russell Hancock said the results uncovered the 'complicated feelings' residents have about a once-desirable area that he said was at an 'inflection point.'
The Bay Area has long been plagued by vagrancy, drugs, crime, and other social problems, which critics say is made worse by the area's liberal-leaning politicians failing to crack the whip.
Concerns about housing and crime are dominating San Francisco's mayoral race, in which London Breed, who has led the city since a 2018, faces stiff opposition from four major opponents.
Critics say the city is caught in a doom loop, characterized by street homelessness and open-air drug markets.
Downtown recovery from the pandemic has been slow, with many empty storefronts and low street traffic.
Even so, Bay Area home prices jumped 6 percent in the year to June, with the median home price reaching an eye-popping $1.4 million.
This is unattainable for many homebuyers.
The rise is understood to reflect gains by Bay Area tech workers, fueled by the soaring value of stocks in their sector.
Soaring property prices was the main reason that drove out former San Bruno renters Jason Troutman, 45, and Grace Xu, 37, who once planned to put an offer on a small cottage in Half Moon Bay.
'At the end of the day, we couldn't go forward with paying a million dollars for a tiny, one-bedroom house,' they said.
Instead, they opted for a quirky $695,000 house with a pool, palm trees and mountain views in the Ahwatukee neighborhood on the south side of Phoenix.
'You can't get all that in California anymore, unless you're Elon Musk,' said Troutman, who works remotely.
Their mortgage costs less than their monthly $2,600 rent in San Bruno, and they finally have space for the cat and dog they'd wanted.
Still, Troutman said they miss the Bay Area's natural beauty, its food scene, and their family ties there.
'It wasn't necessarily that we wanted to leave the Bay Area,' he told The Mercury News. 'But it made a lot of sense.'
Jared Troutman, 45, and Grace Xu, 37, didn't want to spend $1 million on a one-bed.
Mary Ezell-Wallace, 73, and Samuel Wallace Jr, 83, traded Oakland for El Dorado, Arkansas.
Mary Ezell-Wallace and her husband moved to El Dorado, Arkansas. They left their four-bed, three-bathroom house they originally bought for $106,000 in 2006 and bought a stunning 5,5000 square-foot home for $400,000 that they lovingly refer to on Facebook posts as the 'Wallace Estate.'
The sight of homeless people struggling with fentanyl addiction on the streets of the Bay Area has become all-too-common for some long term residents.
Though millions of Bay Area residents balk at the cost of housing, the number of those planning to relocate is nevertheless falling, the poll showed.
Last year, 52 percent said they were looking to exit; in 2022 it was 56 percent.
The survey of 1,773 residents found that roughly four fifths also complained about housing prices, while similar numbers said the number of unhoused vagrants was a big headache.
Locals also expressed alarm about the costs of insurance and the growing clout of Silicon Valley's big tech companies.
Former Oakland residents Mary Ezell-Wallace, 73, and Samuel Wallace Jr, 83, are among those who have voted with their feet.
In 2006, they bought a large brick two-story home in El Dorado, Arkansas, where Mary had grown up.
Mary told The Mercury News she used to think 'Oakland was one of the greatest places there was' and enjoyed the convenience of local stores where they 'could get anything we wanted real fast.'
But in the early 2000s, the increasingly run-down area started 'to feel like a third-world country,' she said.
'I didn't want to wait until everything got worse than it already was.'
They sold their four-bed, three-bathroom house in the hills above East Oakland for $575,000, and bought a 5,500sq ft home in El Dorado, Arkansas, where Mary grew up, for $400,000
'Living in Oakland was stressful every day and night,' she said. 'It's so much better down here.'
Likewise, long-standing San Jose residents Susan and Dan Hyland, both 47, are another couple who have joined the Bay Area exodus.
They wanted out of their home in the Willow Glen neighborhood in 2018 because they were seeking better schools for their sons — a fifth grader and a high school sophomore.
They went from renting a 1,200sq ft home and bought a $1.1 million, 4,200sq ft home in Granite Bay, California
'I was rooted in Willow Glen,' Susan told The Mercury News.
'For us to leave felt very scary, but once we found a community and environment like where we're at, we have never looked back.'
Since they moved, Susan's mom also sold up and joined them. Susan now works as an executive assistant in a venture capital firm.
'So many people are scared to make that move because of their community, but it really is feasible to find happiness outside of a place that seems so special and irreplaceable,' she said.
Dan and Susan Hyland, both 47, and their two sons, moved up into the mountains of California.
The Hylands decided to move east into the Californian mountains.
The Freezes now spend their weekends in Idaho sifting for gold deposits in the nearby riverbeds, hunting for artifacts with metal detectors and spending time in their woodturning studio built in the garage.
Those fleeing the Bay Area almost uniformly say they benefited from being able to upgrade the homes they lived in.
Some say they appreciate the change of pace of life and putting California's social problems in the rearview mirror.
But leaving the Bay Area does not always solve every problem, says Ken Freeze.
They enjoy their new life in Idaho — Michele installed a wood turning studio in their five-car garage; Ken collects coins and is involved with a local history group. They spent several weekends this summer in the mountains with a gold prospecting club.
Still, they now say California's problems of traffic, urban sprawl and overcrowding have followed them to Idaho, which is growing fast.
'In the short time we've been here, areas that when we first moved here were just open fields are now apartment complexes and buildings,' Ken said.
'I'd just like to see them pull back the reins a little bit and let the infrastructure take a breath.'
Respondents to the survey lived across Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties.
