San Francisco Bay Area residents exit region in growing numbers, study finds
BERKELEY — Residents are exiting the Bay Area at a far greater pace than people are coming into the region and the exodus from the Bay Area and from San Francisco, in particular, is far more severe than is the case for California overall, a study released Thursday shows.
The defections from the Bay Area and California have increased during the months of government-ordered business shutdowns to help ward off the spread of the coronavirus, according to a study by the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and UCLA.
"Exits from the Bay Area have increased during the pandemic, particularly in San Francisco," researchers from the California Policy Lab stated Thursday.
The Cal Policy Lab analyzed the residential locations of Californians who have a credit history to determine whether they were staying put, moving into a region, or moving out of a region.
"While a mass exodus from California clearly didn't happen in 2020, the pandemic did change some historical patterns," said Natalie Holmes, the author of the report, a research fellow at Cal Policy Lab, and a graduate student at Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. "Fewer people moved into the state to replace those who left."
The exodus was noticeably severe in the Bay Area compared with California as a whole.
During the fourth quarter of 2020, 114,600 exits from the Bay Area were reported, which was up 29.7% compared with the same October-through-December period of 2019. For all of California, 267,000 exits were reported, an increase of 14.9%
The big problem, however, is that far fewer people came into the two regions over the same three-month period in successive years, according to the Cal Policy Lab study.
About 54,200 people entered the Bay Area in the fourth quarter of 2020, which was down 27.1% from the entrances into the region in the final three months of 2019. About 127,600 entrances were made into California in the fourth quarter, down 30.4% from the year before.
One Bay Area county suffered a dreadful net loss of residents, the report determined.
"San Francisco is experiencing a unique and dramatic exodus," Holmes said.
The study compared exits and entrances during the fourth quarter of 2020 with the October-through-December quarter of 2019:
Because of the timing of the departures, it's possible that the economic and health hazards posed by the coronavirus could be influencing people to exit California and the Bay Area.
The report suggests that the coronavirus could unleash multiple reasons to prompt Californians to depart the state or exit the Bay Area.
"Faced with the prospect of indefinite remote work and school, some families have sought additional space or proximity to support networks," the report stated. "Others, out of work because of public health directives or weak demand for their services, have sought relief from high costs of living."
It wasn't immediately clear whether wealthy residents are among those who have decided to depart California, the Bay Area, and San Francisco, or for that matter, tech hub Silicon Valley in big numbers.
"Some fear that mass departures by the state's wealthy could reduce local and state tax revenues, potentially affecting the services governments are able to provide for years to come," the report stated.
The study noted that it's too soon to tell how long-lasting or extensive the exodus might be. But experts warned that the implications could be enormous.
"The stakes are high," California Policy Lab stated in its report. "Significant population shifts could affect the size and composition of regional labor markets as well as rent and home values."
