Ken and Michele Freeze have no regrets about leaving the Bay Area in the rearview mirror.
In 2019, they sold their $750,000 split-level home in Martinez, California, and purchased 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 “full of needles.”
“People didn’t want to take their families there,” he said. Mercury news.
The Freeze are far from alone.
A new survey shows that nearly half of Bay Area residents are struggling with rising housing costs and a variety of quality of life issues, and are looking to leave in the coming years.
Ken Freeze, 69, and Michele Freeze, 68, were drawn to the rural expanse of Idaho.
Those fleeing the Bay Area say crime, homelessness and rising housing costs are driving them out.
He surveyof the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley, revealed that 47 percent of residents want to leave the five-country metropolitan area.
Pollster Russell Hancock said the results revealed the “complicated feelings” residents have about a once-desirable area that he says is at a “tipping point.”
The Bay Area has long been plagued by vagrancy, drugs, crime and other social problems, which critics say are exacerbated by the area’s liberal-leaning politicians’ failure to crack the whip.
Concerns about housing and crime dominate the San Francisco mayoral race, in which London Breed, who has led the city since 2018, faces stiff opposition from four major opponents.
Critics say the city is trapped in a vicious cycle, characterized by homeless people on the streets and open-air drug markets.
The center’s recovery from the pandemic has been slow, with many stores empty and little traffic on the streets.
Still, Bay Area home prices rose 6 percent in the year through June, with the median home price reaching a staggering $1.4 million.
This is unattainable for many homebuyers.
The increase is understood to reflect the gains of Bay Area tech workers, boosted by the rising value of stocks in their sector.
Rising property prices were the main reason that drove out former San Bruno renters Jason Troutman, 45, and Grace Xu, 37, who once planned to move. Make an offer on a small cabin in Half Moon Bay.
“At the end of the day, we couldn’t go ahead and pay a million dollars for a small one-bedroom house,” they said.
Instead, they opted for a quirky $695,000 home with a pool, palm trees and mountain views in the Ahwatukee neighborhood on Phoenix’s south side.
“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 $2,600 monthly rent in San Bruno, and they finally have room for the dog and cat they 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 room.
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-bedroom, three-bathroom home that they originally purchased for $106,000 in 2006 and purchased a stunning 5,5000-square-foot home for $400,000 that they affectionately refer to in Facebook posts as ‘Wallace Estate.’
Seeing homeless people battling fentanyl addiction on the streets of the Bay Area has become all too common for some longtime residents.
Although millions of Bay Area residents balk at the cost of housing, the number of those pHowever, the desire to move is declining, according to the survey.
Last year, 52 percent said they were looking to get out; in 2022 it was 56 percent.
The survey of 1,773 residents found that around four-fifths also complained about house prices, while similar figures said the number of homeless homeless people was a major headache.
Locals also expressed alarm about insurance costs and the growing influence of Silicon Valley’s big tech companies.
Former Oakland residents Mary Ezell-Wallace, 73, and Samuel Wallace Jr, 83, are among those who voted with their feet.
In 2006, they bought a large two-story brick house in El Dorado, Arkansas, where Mary had grown up.
Mary told The Mercury News that she used to think “Oakland was one of the best places there was” and enjoyed the convenience of local stores where “we could get anything we wanted very quickly.”
But in the early 2000s, the increasingly deteriorating area began to “look like a third world country,” he said.
“I didn’t want to wait until everything was worse than it already was.”
They sold their four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the hills above East Oakland for $575,000 and bought a 5,500-square-foot home in El Dorado, Arkansas, where Mary grew up, for $400,000.
“Living in Oakland was stressful day and night,” he said. “It’s much better down here.”
Likewise, longtime San Jose residents Susan and Dan Hyland, both 47, are another couple who have joined the Bay Area exodus.
They wanted to leave their home in the Willow Glen neighborhood in 2018 because they were looking for better schools for their children, a fifth-grader and a high school sophomore.
They went from renting a 1,200-square-foot home to buying a 4,200-square-foot home worth $1.1 million in Granite Bay, California.
“She was rooted in Willow Glen,” Susan told The Mercury News.
“For us, leaving was very scary, but once we found a community and environment like we have, we never looked back.”
Since they moved, Susan’s mother also sold and joined them. Susan now works as an executive assistant at a venture capital firm.
“A lot of people are afraid to take that step because of their community, but it really is doable to find happiness outside of a place that seems so special and irreplaceable,” she said.
Dan and Susan Hyland, both 47, and their two children, moved to the mountains of California.
The Hylands decided to move east, towards the mountains of California.
The Freezes now spend their weekends in Idaho searching for gold deposits in nearby river beds, searching for artifacts with metal detectors, and spending time in their woodturning studio built in the garage.
Those who fled the Bay Area almost uniformly say they benefited from being able to improve the homes in which they lived.
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 doesn’t always solve all problems, says Ken Freeze.
They enjoy their new life in Idaho: Michele set up a woodturning studio in their five-car garage; Ken collects coins and participates in a local history group. This summer they spent several weekends in the mountains with a gold prospecting club.
Still, they now say California’s traffic problems, urban sprawl and overpopulation have followed them to rapidly growing Idaho.
“In the short time we’ve been here, areas that when we moved here were just open fields are now apartment complexes and buildings,” Ken said.
“I’d just like to see them loosen the reins a little bit and let the infrastructure take a breath.”
Respondents lived in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
