The $400K Habitat for Humanity homes weren't in San Francisco. They were an hour out in the 'burbs.
Man, that makes it a whole lot worse. In a recent RV trip, I drove out of the SF area on I-580. Traffic was jam-packed way past Livermore, up till Tracy.
The area needs more than software developers to thrive long term.
Teachers should be able to live near where they teach without a 2 hour commute each way...
I agree. If I were a teacher, I would say "To hell with it", pack up and move.
The article you reference says:
Redfin reported that there wasn’t a single home for sale in San Francisco that a teacher making that average salary could afford. In San Mateo County, 1.2 percent of homes — one in 80 — were affordable for teachers; in Santa Clara County, the number was 1.3 percent...
If a Bay Area tech company needs to set up a server farm, they could, say, open it in a less expensive mid-sized city, like Bend, Oregon. But a Bay Area school has no such luxury...
Obviously, they do not value teachers enough. And there are other jobs that pay even less, I am sure. So, more reason for people to vote with their feet. Let the children of those highly-paid high-tech workers be untaught, their fancy cars not repaired, their expensive homes not maintained, their garbage not collected. Or should their companies and the high-tech workers get taxed enough so that they will move to Bend, Oregon? Of course the cities and the state do not want to chase these high-tech companies away.
And not all high-tech workers can afford multi-million-dollar homes. My brother left Google, and they tried to get him back with more stock options. After debating the pro and con, he declined. The extra pay was nowhere near enough for him to get a house that he wanted. It would be a decline in standard of living for his entire family in exchange for a bragging right. Many workers would love to get a chance to work at Google even if they had to rent a room from someone, or jam the family into a tiny old home. Not my brother.
In the end, it's up to the individuals to do what is best for themselves.