She asks with a sympathetic head tilt, the same kind you might receive when someone checks in on how your grandma’s holding up or if you finally got that raise your boss has been promising you for months. I’m at a birthday party in the Mission, surrounded by recent friends I’ve accumulated from thin connections from high school, college, friends of friends and work. But I could be at a new trendy restaurant, getting to know a couple who just moved here through my husband’s work colleague. Or I could be at the dog park, talking to a complete stranger.
Here is San Francisco, the City by the Bay most of us moved to and that almost no one is from. Natives play the token role here — you likely know one or two who will never leave the comfortable circumference they’ve always known, though they may go back to Marin, Oakland or Palo Alto, where they’re really from.
Almost everyone expects you to head back to a segment of the country that’s “reasonable.”
But for most of us, it’s the city we flocked to when a tech job called. Or when our partner’s/boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s job did. Or when we needed something more weird or liberal.
You’ve surely gotten the question before, in one form or another, whether here or back home. It’s a question I was never asked when I lived in Chicago or Iowa or even Buenos Aires, where the possibility of my becoming a permanent resident would have been much more far-flung.
But here no one expects you to stay. To the contrary, almost everyone expects you to head back to a segment of the country that’s “reasonable,” one where you can “raise a family” or afford to own a home. Where the rent isn’t swallowing up more than half your income and spitting out a mere 400 square feet. Where there are fewer homeless people and cleaner streets.
It’s a loaded question, one whose undertones run wide and deep. For women of a certain age, of which I am, the inquiry jabs at the prospect of children invading your life, because what 31-year-old married woman is allowed to ponder her future without the prospect of toddlers and a backyard? As a former city-spawned, backyard-less child, I’m not all that interested in an expansive patch of grass to call my own, and the idea of children isn’t all that important at the present moment.
That specific intonation is rarely directed at a man—when it is, it’s directed toward their career prospects and ability to climb the start-up ladder.
It also pokes at your income level. And your capacity to deal with littered needles, a pervasive trash problem and the constant smell of urine.
My indecisiveness has always plagued me, only furthering my distaste for this specific question, so it’s no surprise I have no answer. Often I successfully sidestep the question and lob the inquiry back squarely in the asker’s face. They answer firmly and immediately, “Oh, I’ll definitely move back to North Carolina eventually. You know, in a few years.”
There’s nothing wrong with that answer. Seeking comfort and stability and home ownership is understandably desirable.
To be so firm in a conviction is something I’ve never done well at any stage of my life thus far. Winging it with a mildly uncomfortable feeling and avoiding too much eye contact is more my jam.
A survey from the Bay Area Council advocacy group found that 46 percent of residents said they plan to move away soon.
And when only 12 percent of households in San Francisco can afford a median-priced home (the median home value in San Francisco is $1.3M, according to Zillow), they already know the answer. You could try moving outside the city, sure, to Oakland or Berkeley or, God forbid, the peninsula, but with rents and housing costs rising across the Bay, does that really solve the problem? Could that ultimately just postpone the inevitable, delaying a move back to Chicago or Boston or wherever by just a few years?
And Chicago is not a bad place to be—my birthplace and a fantastic city—even with its brutal winters, high homicide rate and pervasive racial segregation. Sure, I could move to Austin or Denver, one of those booming, once-small cities that is attracting those who are defecting from the Bay Area in droves. According to a study from LinkedIn, for every 10,000 LinkedIn members in the Bay Area, 1.69 moved to Austin last year.
A survey from the Bay Area Council advocacy group found that 46 percent of residents said they plan to move away soon, up from 40 percent last year and 35 percent in 2016.
My husband and I get the question often, much to our mutual dismay. When we’re asked it together, we’ll defer to who knows the questioner better, smirking at the other with glee, excited at the prospect of whatever the other will say and reveal about their current feelings. Feelings undoubtedly colored by our most recent week in this great city, encouraged by a particularly glorious weekend spent hiking or disheartened by a recent walk to the corner coffee shop, where not one but two people were seen injecting heroin-filled needles in their thighs.
If/when I leave, I’ll feel like a fraud. I already know it. Not because I’m the stereotype — a tech-adjacent millennial who moved across the country because a great job called (my husband), and we came running to a city that we, in retrospect, knew almost nothing about. That part I’ve made peace with. It’s because the reason why we will leave will be the same issue we helped perpetuate—rising housing costs.
And while our new mayor promises to build, build, build, there’s no real end in sight.
So next time I’m at a party or a dinner or the dog park, I’ll do what I usually do: I’ll mirror that sympathetic head tilt and say, “We’re not really sure,” and feign a thin-lipped smile.
Because in truth, we’re not.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Hunter Walk, investor and former head of product at YouTube. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
