San Francisco checks so many boxes on the urban amenities spreadsheet that Albouy concluded in a 2009 paper that it boasts the highest overall quality of life of any major American city. There’s great natural beauty, a moderate climate, plenty of Silicon Valley– fueled jobs, a rich cultural scene, the best burritos in the world, more artisanal rye whiskey than any one person can handle, and— despite all the sniping about the inadequacy of BART and Muni—a relatively robust transportation system. The latter factor may seem a head-scratcher, but consider: When the cost savings from shorter commutes and fewer car miles are factored in to the overall cost of living (part of a “location affordability” index devised by the Department of Housing and Urban Development), San Francisco is found to be the second-most cost-efficient major city in the nation, again behind D.C.
Of course, there’s a catch. Just because you find it rational today to funnel a huge percentage of your income into rent doesn’t mean that the same will hold true tomorrow. Every person has a tipping point: that moment when manageable sacrifices become unsustainable misery. Desirability begets more desirability, a fact of economic life that means housing and other costs will always rise alongside the standard of living. Compounding that harsh reality is another, mainly political, one: For decades in San Francisco, housing stock has not kept pace with demand. The calculus is grim: The combination of rent control (which helps plenty of individuals but also constrains the market as a whole by stifling mobility) and stringent limits on new development ensures that the level of sacrifice necessary to survive in San Francisco keeps rising. At some point, the numbers will no longer work for anyone except the most well-off.
But that’s the future. For now, if you’re still hanging on by your fingernails, teetering between reasonable costs and unjustifiable ones, you have to be strategic about where and how you spend your money. Speaking of which, whatever happened to that guy in the walk-in closet?
“He moved back to Fresno,” says Albouy. “He couldn’t hack it.”
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