The Empire (State) struck back today with yet another piece in the Wall Street Journal about the demise of Silicon Valley and how all the techies are fleeing:
Remote Work Is Reshaping San Francisco, as Tech Workers Flee and Rents Fall
Many if not most of the examples given are families with kids. Families with kids have been escaping San Francisco for many decades and it is nothing at all new. The city has long had more dogs than kids and probably more vets than prediatricians, more dog walkers than teachers.
Frankly, under COVID, there's nothing to do in the city. The restaurants, bars, clubs, concerts, sports, opera, ballet, symphony etc etc are all closed. I don't go out much these days not for fear of COVID so much as there's no place to go and nothing to do. The things keeping me here are (a) good, brisk summer weather, (b) a serious COVID response from government that has kept the infection rate low and © the ready availability of delivery for almost anything.
But when COVID wanes, I predict several things: (1) When all the fun stuff reopens, the city will again be the lure for new graduates and tech bros it has long been, (2) companies letting their workers work from home will rediscover the value of office brainstorming and cross-fertilization among employees and companies, (3) the people who ran to Phoenix and other places with "normal" North American climates will fondly remember how great it was to live in Northern California.
I've seen this all before, most relevantly 2000-2003. Except then while the fun scene didn't die completely as now, it just got dull. But then there came a new generation of grads and entrepreneurs and life went on with real estate climbing to new highs. The same articles about it all being over were written back then, but Stanford and Berkeley didn't shut their doors (thought they temporarily have this time) and kept pumping out smart kids with new ideas and there were still rich guys in Los Altos Hills with plenty of money to fund them and life went on.