
83 percent of Bay Area renters plan to leave, says survey - jseliger
https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/15/16150828/survey-bay-area-leave-sf-renters
======
nostrademons
Holy selection bias, batman. The data is taken from an Internet survey by
ApartmentList. Why would you ever go on ApartmentList? Because you're looking
for a new apartment. Why would you go on ApartmentList particularly, vs. a
more common rental site like Craigslist? Because it's organized by city - the
front page has glossy photos of major metropolitan areas - and so you can
easily browse through other cities without knowing much about what
neighborhoods exist in that city.

Title should be "83 percent of ApartmentList visitors in the Bay Area plan to
leave". While anecdotally I know a lot of people that are considering moving
away, it's nowhere close to 83 percent, and the way the data was collected for
this PR piece doesn't support that conclusion either.

~~~
beambot
Questioning the sampling methodology is fine... but why would you expect the
percentage (83%) to be higher on ApartmentList than, say, Craigslist?

As long as we're sharing anecdata... 83% sounds about right based on my friend
cohort.

~~~
nostrademons
Craigslist is organized primarily by neighborhood: if you go to
sfbay.craigslist.com and visit apts/housing, the first level filter is by
region (east bay, north bay, SF, peninsula, etc), and then before you even get
to the type of housing, the next-level filter is by neighborhood (Mission,
Potrero, Sunset, etc.) These regional filters are virtually useless for
someone moving out of state; if I go to portland.craigslist.com and the top-
level filters are clark/clackamas/multnomah/etc, I have no idea what these
even mean. Even getting to another metro area's Craigslist is a challenge; if
I hit www.craigslist.com, it defaults to sfbay.craigslist.com, and to go
elsewhere requires finding the tiny "other US cities" link on the front page
(the default is "Nearby", which gives other California cities) and selecting a
metro area.

All this facilitates within-region moves at the expense of between-region
moves.

If I go to ApartmentList.com, it defaults to San Francisco, but right
underneath the three local metro areas (ironically, it doesn't have San Jose,
where I am) are glossy photographs of Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, and
12 other metro areas. And if I click on one of them, the first filters that
come up are by price, size, and amenities. Everything is located on a map, and
I don't need to know anything about local neighborhoods.

ApartmentList is clearly using "people who are looking to move between cities"
as their market segmentation and features for them as a differentiator, which
is great, but also means that their data is suspect if generalized to the
population as a whole.

(As for anecdata; I'd say that among my friends and acquaintances close enough
to keep tabs on their life, maybe 50% are looking to move out of the Bay Area
at some point, including myself & my wife. But only three - out of a sample
size of several dozen, perhaps close to a hundred - have actually done it, and
two of those moved back to their hometown to be close to family when kids
arrived. Moving cities is a big commitment; people dream of it, but few do
it.)

------
iamleppert
I moved out to the bay area five years ago. Mostly, because I'm a nerd and
wanted to be around other like-minded nerds and fulfill my nerd dreams.

Fast forward to today. I've worked at startups, big tech, and generally have
lived that tech life. I see my friends back in Ohio taking vacations, buying
homes, and generally having a nice life. And I see myself here, paying more
and more rent each year, working in the high stress of startups and in the
tech scene as my own passion for the actual tech slowly wanes. Sure, I make a
lot of money and I have a fancy job but money and prestige, I've learned,
isn't everything. If you're pissing all that money away with no end in sight,
except to become fabulously wealthy in some kind of exit that likely won't
ever happen, you start to question your original motives.

At this point I have decided to stay another five years here, mostly so I can
say I had a "10 year career" in the bay area. I will then take that
experience, most likely back to the midwest, and try to leverage it into a
better job than I'd be able to get by spending 10 years back in the midwest.
Hopefully, this strategy will be successful for me. I think by then I'll have
a shot at becoming director or VP-level, and coupled with my experience out
here I will stand out in the midwest. I'll also have a far better experience-
lead "technical education" out here than I would have ever had in Ohio, and
that at least stands for something.

~~~
pj_mukh
It sucks that you have to choose between,

"Mostly, because I'm a nerd and wanted to be around other like-minded nerds
and fulfill my nerd dreams."

and

"taking vacations, buying homes, and generally having a nice life. "

Ideally, you wouldn't have to choose between the two. In fact, the two should
compliment each other instead of trade-off.

~~~
chris_7
My techie friends in New York tend to be the ones taking the interesting
vacations because they have a lot more money.

New York and Bay Area tech companies can pay two or three times what the
suburban office park type companies pay, and they have other benefits that add
up as well (i.e. fully-paid tiny-copay health insurance). While housing costs
will eat into that somehwat, whether you rent or buy, I don't think that they
come close to cancelling out that increase.

Then, when we do go on vacation, there are more flights, since we're near
major international airports. Since I live near EWR and JFK, I don't really
need to consider connecting flights for European vacations, for example.

There are other less objective things for describing a "nice life", of course
(IMO, renting vs. buying should be categorized as one of these, neither is
superior). For example, non-chain restaurant availability, quality of cultural
institutions, etc.

~~~
closeparen
Yes, the difference between $250k and $1.2m homes will absolutely cancel out
the difference between $80k and $120k salaries.

You're coming out ahead only if homeownership is not important to you, or
you're willing to live in shared/substandard housing. Which is a perfectly
reasonable thing to do in your early 20s, but not necessarily long term.

------
schnevets
I'm noticing similar sentiments among friends in New York City. Everyone came
here for jobs/culture/friends after graduating, but the mad-rush of
millennials is making the city more and more unlivable. Nobody wants to spend
their thirties in a cramped, overpriced studio, but nobody is ready to leave
their hip, startup lofts for the drudgery of a Westchester office complex (let
alone endure an hour commute into the city every day).

Smaller cities (the Portlands, New Havens, and Columbuses of the country) will
continue to inherit the overflow, with those cities that have the lowest
cultural cachet taking the lowliest remnants. Given the demand for urban
environments by businesses and consumers, it seems like the only thing holding
back any city from heavy growth is incompetence or negative reputations.

~~~
tmh79
> but the mad-rush of millennials is making the city more and more unlivable

IMO, the problem is the policies of the city that are unfriendly to growth and
make housing a zero sum game, the problem isn't than people expressing their
preferences.

~~~
sliverstorm
It may not be a zero sum game, but it at least approximates/approaches zero
sum. How exactly would you change downtown Manhattan such that _anyone &
everyone_ who wanted to live there could?

~~~
twinkletwinkle
You've drawn a false dichotomy between the current situation and an
unrealistic scenario. The truth is there could be more growth and room for
more people without it being room for literally everyone.

~~~
sliverstorm
Right, and that's what I mean by it approximates/approaches zero sum.

I'm not arguing against development, I just think a lot of the pro-development
folks imagine that cities are _making_ things zero sum with their policies,
when real property will _always_ have that element.

~~~
Dylan16807
Housing does not inherently have a major zero-sum factor until you're inside
one of the densest downtowns in the country. In the general case it's all
about policies and whether they allow demand to turn into construction.

------
kevinburke
If you grew up here, you'd like to stay here or start a company here, please
get involved politically in electing candidates and pushing for policies that
help lower the price of housing.

\- AB 71 would raise $300 million a year for affordable housing, call your CA
Assemblymember.

\- SB 35 would take power from local NIMBY's for projects that meet affordable
housing targets. Call your CA Assemblymember.

\- Email baylands@ci.brisbane.ca.us and ask them to build 4400 units of
housing on the Baylands, just south of San Francisco. They are waffling but
the local residents want to build an office park.

\- Email your C level employees and VC's and tell them about your struggles to
continue staying here, afford a babysitter or find a good school, and ask them
to get involved in developing better housing policy for the Bay Area.

~~~
Balgair
Those are all really nice things for the Bay itself, but they aren't the way
to fix things, they are just band-aids.

If you really wan't to fix it, call your legislator and tell them to get rid
of Prop 13. It's not commonly known for transplants to the Bay, but property
taxes only get re-assessed upon sale of the property in California. They do
not get reassessed every 5 years or so, like in most states (read the wiki
article for more info, and yes, what I said is not exactly true, things get
complicated very quickly, but I think the gist of what I said was true)

My folks in the East Bay paid ~70k for the house in about 1970. Their monthly
taxes are under $200 and they paid off the mortgage a few decades ago. Their
new neighbors paid ~1 million for the exact same 3 bed/1 bath but just
_filled_ with black mold. We estimate they pay ~2.5k/month in taxes, let alone
the mortgage (likely ~6.5k/month total with electricity, water, sewer, etc.
every month, for the rest of their lives).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_\(1978\))

~~~
cjensen
Let me give a clear example of why repealing Prop 13 would be a bad idea: my
Mom.

My Mom has a fixed income and owns her home. Plenty of savings for retirement
like a responsible person. My Dad retired in 1986. This is in Fremont,
California. Since then, prices have skyrocketed. In your example, she would
have to pay $30K/year in taxes.

So here's the problem: how do you plan for retirement if reassessments are a
thing? Depending on luck, you may live for 40 years or more past retirement.
Must one move away from family that serves as a support system?

Some states do reassess, but recognize that that is a policy choice.
California has made a choice which results in predictable tax consequences
which can be planned for. It's not a perfect policy choice, but it is a
legitimate choice that results in predictable outcomes.

~~~
jdavis703
If people had "skin in the game" with regards to the housing market you'd see
a lot more people out ensuring an adequate supply of houses are constructed.
Instead, you have large amounts of people living off of Prop. 13 and rent
control "subsidies" who are actively opposing new housing construction. We
need to slowly phase out these "subsidies" to ensure that people making the
policy decisions also live with the consequences (whether they be positive or
negative). There are many other metro areas in the U.S. that don't have Prop.
13-style controls or rent control, and have a much larger supply of affordable
houses.

------
leggomylibro
Too expensive, too crowded, too stifling, and nowadays sometimes even too
bland.

Without roots in the city, there doesn't seem to be much to recommend it these
days besides the weather and the massive, insane availability of liquid
capital compared to the extensive dearth in other markets. But as long as the
money is there, and other sources of investment capital remain locked away,
that's not a bad recommendation.

SV VCs may be getting more cautious, but investors in other markets don't seem
particularly eager to loosen the purse strings. So they may say they plan to
leave, but I just finished a comic fantasy novel called 'Thud!', and this
(lightly edited) passage comes to mind:

-

"I'd wonder...you know, if I were a king...I'd wonder why people were happier
living in squalor in [the city] than staying back home. ...

"There's dwarf bars all over, and they've got mining tools wired to the wall,
and there's dwarfs in 'em every night quaffing beer and singing sad songs
about how they wish they were back in the mountains digging for gold. But if
you said to them fine, the gate's open, off you go and send us a postcard,
they'd say, 'Oh, well, yeah, I'd love to, but we've just got the new workshop
finished...maybe NEXT year we'll go back home.'"

~~~
dv_dt
> SV VCs may be getting more cautious, but investors in other markets don't
> seem particularly eager to loosen the purse strings.

There is some sort of irony in SV VCs being at a keystone of the internet and
yet somehow being unable to invest outside of SV.

~~~
leggomylibro
It does make a sort of sense - VCs in the bay area seem to congregate there
because software companies can promise (if things go just right) stratospheric
return rates. Those glitzy home-runs can fund a lot of flops, and the
investors still win out.

If you want to make something physical, you can't hand-wave and make wild
assumptions about growth rates and user acquisition and ARPUs. You have a Bill
of Materials, distribution costs, a slim margin, and rapid competition from
cheaper and often outright dangerous knock-offs with little recourse. Look
what happened with hoverboards.

So in a market that is as jaw-droppingly risk averse as this, but people still
want to grow their huge hoards of capital, the money takes the path of least
resistance and follows the only available market that can theoretically
produce an exponential growth curve more than once every few decades.

------
alexandercrohde
Well for context, having lived in SF for 5 years before leaving, yes 80%
probably plan to leave, probably 80% do leave, but only after many career
years.

It's where I cut my chops because I could get a 6 figure engineering job
without a relevant degree. Very few people expect to stay in a city
permanently, and remember many of those workers aren't even citizens, so many
of them plan to return "home" at some point.

This doesn't mean anything unless the influx is less than the outflux.

~~~
robbyking
I've lived in SF for close to 20 years, and I completely agree.

That said, I'm part of the 83% who are planning on leaving, but there are two
main problems:

• If I leave, where will I go? As many faults as SF has, it's still a
beautiful, world class city, rich with culture. Walkability is huge for me,
and I don't want to live someplace where I'm tied to my car.

• Salary. Usually the cost of living follows the pay scale of a local economy,
but that doesn't help you when you want to buy things priced at a national
level: computers, cars, bikes, etc. If you earn $160k/yr, buy a new MacBook
Pro isn't a big deal; if you make $60k/yr, you have to put a little more
thought into it.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Salary. Usually the cost of living follows the pay scale of a local economy,
> but that doesn't help you when you want to buy things priced at a national
> level: computers, cars, bikes, etc. If you earn $160k/yr, buy a new MacBook
> Pro isn't a big deal; if you make $60k/yr, you have to put a little more
> thought into it.

I see this brought up a lot, but these expenses are such a small portion of my
outlay that it barely moves the needle. Maybe I'm just weird.

Also, cars _do_ vary across geographical areas. The MSRP may be the same
nationally, but the drive-off price is pretty variable.

~~~
aianus
Don't forget retirement. That's the number one lifetime expense for most
people and it's priced at a _global_ level. You reach that point so much
faster working in the Bay Area.

~~~
cylinder
What? If you're really saving a bunch for retirement and able to buy a Mac
without hesitation, then you are doing well! Cost of living isn't an issue
then is it?

If you're really affording all these things then your housing expense is
manageable.

But most in these cities are not. At least in NYC it seems to be just trust
fund kids who aren't running off debt / paycheck to paycheck living.

~~~
closeparen
You're doing well as long as you're a childfree renter. But no amount of
abstinence at the Apple store will put you anywhere near affording
homeownership, a bedroom for a child, access to decent schools, etc.

You'd need to put down $50k to mortgage a 3-bedroom _house_ in a good school
district normal housing market, or $250k to mortgage a 2-bedroom condo in a
distressed urban neighborhood. That $200k gulf is 10 years of maxed-out 401k
_plus_ a new top-of-the-line Mac every year. Hardly anyone has that much to
cut. But if they did, after 10 years, the gulf in necessary down-payment would
be much wider than $200k and they'd still come up short.

That's why people are comfortable entering these situations as new grads (you
can have a comfortable life as a young single renter in a small or shared
space), but feel a need to leave them eventually (starting a family is
basically off the table as long as you live there, and you're always at risk
of being priced out if your rent rises faster than your salary).

------
S_A_P
From my outside looking in perspective, it seems the gold rush is waning in
the Bay Area. There will always be a pretty healthy tech industry there but
anecdotal evidence tells me that fewer people are heading west to make it big
in startups. This is probably a good thing for everyone except real estate
speculators though.

~~~
stevenwoo
I own and am considering selling to retire (versus going to work to finish
paying off the mortgage), it's kind of crazy real estate wise out here - the
amount that zillow/redfin reports as positive home appreciation every month
_feels_ like more than the last bubble. Maybe the bubble is about to burst,
but I don't know how to determine that.

~~~
nfriedly
First, congratulations!

Second, don't try to "time the bubble". Instead think about your goals. What
do you actually want, and what is best for you (and your family if
applicable). What's going to make your life more meaningful? What would make
it a better story if someone were to tell it?

If cashing in now and moving someplace cheaper is in line with your goals,
then do it!

If staying put and finishing off the mortgage is a better match, then so be
it.

Lastly, financial independence doesn't have to mean not working. I'm still
10-15 years away from that point, but I certainly plan to keep working well
after I have enough to retire. I'll just have a bit more flexibility in what I
choose to work on.

------
matt_wulfeck
The Bay Area is only a place of permanence for those lucky enough to buy a
house. For the rest of us, it's a place to get fantastic work experience and
awesome pay.

Even if you're paying $2k to rent a studio, if your take-home pay goes from
$500 to $1500 you're coming out way ahead dealing with the headaches of living
here. But you need to move away to truly realize those gains.

~~~
autotune
Not to mention there are plenty of companies out here who are okay with their
employees working remotely, so if you can make a 6 figure salary in a place
with more arts and culture and where rent is $1500 for a luxury one bedroom
downtown instead of $4500, then it's clear what the better choice would be.
Also you'd be stupidly lucky to pay only $2K for a decent studio, personally I
pay $2600 and that was a steal for the location (not getting stabbed at night,
no homeless tents, close to MUNI), and amenities (washer/dryer).

~~~
sebbecai
And then there's roommates... I used to pay $600 a month for an SF house, and
did this by having 2 roommates and a live-in girlfriend. Saved enough for a
house. Much comes down to delayed gratification.

~~~
autotune
And then there's the ability to sleep at night without your roommate having a
conversation next your door at 2 AM, a different set of roommates that
expected only you to take out the trash, another roommate that blasted tv next
to your door at 2 AM, having to switch out a good roommate with someone who
might also be terrible when they leave, not having your own space to work and
focus on the job and hobbies, etc. etc. There is no delayed gratification when
there is nothing to work towards to as you slowly go insane living with people
who have no idea what it means to be "quiet" at night nor have a basic level
of accountability/self-awareness, even if they say they do.

------
dmode
I would take this survey with a heavy grain of salt. From the article

"The two-question survey (“Do you plan on settling down in another city?” and
“What’s your biggest reason for leaving?”) covered 24,000 respondents
nationwide."

If I was living in SF and someone asked me "Do you plan on settling down in
another city?" \- my answer would be yes, somewhere in the Bay Area suburb
like Palo Alto. I think very few people are looking to "settle" in SF.

------
pfooti
I have lived here since 2010, so somewhat early in the current bubble. I am
lucky enough to rent a place that's fairly large (most of a house) but also
rent controlled, so I can afford to live here. If my landlord sold the house
and I had to find a new place, I'd have to leave. So: plan to leave? Probably.
Want to? Nope. I love the outer sunset. I just foresee a time when I won't be
able to afford to live here anymore.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
If you had to pay market price you'd probably want to leave.

------
HumbleGamer
Not a lot of reasons to stay if you will never own a home here. Stay in the
bay so you can pay someones mortgage for the rest of your life or share an
apartment? Meanwhile the cost of a shared room is more than people are paying
for a mortgage in other areas not too far from here.

------
cal5k
To what degree is this reflected by actions? Has anybody checked past survey
results?

It could just be that renters in SF are the grumpiest ;-)

------
abalashov
This smacks of the folk threatening to move to Canada every time a Republican
president gets elected (although with this particular one, they may really be
onto something). If the Bay area's hold were this fragile, it wouldn't have
got this way to begin with. Clearly, living within driving distance of 90% of
the world's tech giants outweighs a great many other considerations, despite
the rent pressure cooker.

Disclaimer: don't live in the Bay Area and don't plan to, so have no dog in
this fight.

------
gnahckire
Didn't live in SF but, I lived in the south bay and recently moved away. I'm
glad I did. I'm making more & saving more living somewhere else.

That being said, I do think the bay area is a great place to start one's
career.

~~~
dinedal
Where'd you go to?

------
excitom
>In 2015, the US Census found that about 80,000 people left the SF-Oakland
area over the course of a year. But then about 100,000 new people moved in to
replace them.

The sentence that explains it all.

------
caseysoftware
I think the key question I don't see answered here is "When?"

Most people want to move at some point and often do for jobs, kids, spouse's
job, etc. But whether this is impending (this year) or "an acknowledged
desire" is a big difference.

------
velobro
I'm moving the bay in less than two weeks from the Central Valley. I plan to
stay there around 5 years or so then move.

I'd like to own a home one day and there is no one in hell that is happening
in the Bay.

------
rhombocombus
...and come to Portland. (I kid, I kid. It's a neverending joke here)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
...on their way to Seattle.

(The Californian invasion has always been a thing in the PnW)

~~~
snuxoll
Don't forget us down here in Boise. The constant influx of people from other
regions is straining our housing market, especially since the vast majority of
employment options still left (after HP split and Micron downsized) are in the
service industry. My mom paid $900/mo for a 4 bedroom house in a south-Boise
subdivision in 2010, I'm now paying $1200/mo for a 3 bedroom house 5 miles
further out in Meridian. Our housing costs aren't SF-crazy, but when you
consider the lack of public transport necessitating vehicle ownership and
depressed wages (lots of people making under $10/hr at call centers) it's
becoming unaffordable for the masses.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> I'm now paying $1200/mo for a 3 bedroom house 5 miles further out in
> Meridian

Uhm...wow, that's cheap. If you had a decent tech job in Boise (at HP?) it
might work out pretty well.

~~~
snuxoll
Sure, it's affordable for me now - back when I was making $32K/yr on a MSP's
help desk it would have been almost half of my wage - and that's good money
for the majority of the population here. Lucky me, I make $85K now working
from home - but 4 years ago it was a different story, and there's still plenty
of people in the area who are trying to make ends meet.

Boise has been really slow to recover from the recession, where many people
used to be able to get decent jobs at Micron, HP, Simplot, etc. there's much
less available - call centers and other service industry positions have begun
to dominate. The median cost of a house in the area is back to pre-2008 levels
and rising fast, but wages aren't.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Sounds a bit like Spokane, though they have a lot of medical going on to keep
things sane.

------
RickJWagner
Remote work is nice. You can get paid by the big employers, but live in a
place where you can save a few bucks.

You can always visit the big cities on vacation.

------
notadoc
The bay area, like most of the USA, needs to build up. It is sprawling enough
as is. Build up, not out.

------
mullen
High Speed Rail helps fix this issue. You can live an hour out of the city,
where housing prices are much lower and the schools can be much better and
then commute via HSR to the city. Unfortunately, there are too many short term
voters and residents in California to see the vision of high speed public
transportation to solve many of the housing ills that plague this state.

~~~
compiler-guy
Even if all the municipalities suddenly jumped on board, even in the best case
high-speed rail is a decade and a half off. It isn't a realistic solution.

~~~
mullen
SF to Gilroy could be done in under a decade, which then would be connected to
LA once that track was done.

California is messing up the HSR project by not getting SF to Gilroy and LA to
San Diego completed first. Sacramento to Nowhere is a PR blunder for the
state.

~~~
jonathankoren
It's because that's the only places where they can actually build. The
peninsula is full of millionaires that hate the idea of HSR. ("But I don't it
at grade!" "But I don't want it in the air!" "But I don't want it in a
trench!" "But I don't in a tunnel!" "It's all moving so fast!" "Can we put an
HSR to stop every 2 miles?")

[https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/10/14/palo-alto-
bla...](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/10/14/palo-alto-blasts-high-
speed-rail-project-for-moving-too-fast)

[http://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/high-speed-rail-
met...](http://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/high-speed-rail-met-with-
concerns-in-san-carlos/article_6743a242-5d52-11e7-970f-f3255fe73447.html)

------
smcdow
No surprise there. Does anyone think of the Bay Area as anything more than a
way station in life?

------
cbtacy
Speaking as a 20+ year resident - thank god.

~~~
kevinburke
I'm a 20+ year resident - I grew up here. My friends and family are slowly
leaving, and it's really sad.

------
tmh79
IMO this is a terrible outcome, and its exactly what the NIMBY landowning
class in the SFBA wants to happen.

~~~
dasil003
Is it really what they want? Do they expect property values to keep going up
even when people decide it's not worth it anymore?

~~~
matt_wulfeck
If you talk to them, they really do want that. They care a lot less about
their properties values than they do about the amount of cars parked on their
street and their daily commute times.

You would think that they would simply sell their million-dollar bungalow and
move to greener pastures, but that's just not what happens.

------
arcaster
Please don't come to Austin. All you Californians do is complain about the
heat!

~~~
hpguy
Alright, since this is not the first time I see this: what the deal about
people from Austin trying to shoo people away? As if Austin was really that
great and everybody wanted to come there? And isn't it the case that the more
tech people go live in the Austin, the better the tech scene and thus benefit
tech people like you (I assume you're in tech)?

I had lived in the Bay Area, moved to Austin just to move to another place
within a year. Austin has many nice things, but definitely not one of the top
US cities I would consider building a family in. I can list out tons of things
about Austin that would be deal breakers for many people and there are better
cities out there in many aspects.

I'm truly puzzled by this sentiment from Austin people.

~~~
ausjke
Most people came from CA are too liberal that is out of touch with reality,
they ruined CA then came to TX for its next victim. I suggest them moving to
North Korea directly instead. Without them Austin will be a much better place
for sane people.

I can not wait for CA to become independent from the states.

