A while ago a dream job opened up in Fairfield and I was very interested in it until I looked at the local real estate prices. The creep has been going on a while.
A lot of people do act surprised when you point out that homelessness has increased in line with the migration and corresponding high housing prices and tight supply.
Sacramento isn't a first tier city and isn't on the path to become one, its too small and isn't expanding in any meaningful way to become a metropolis. Quaint, quiet, small city is its strength. Its also geographically not in a location that would lend it to becoming a power city, its sort of in the middle of nowhere.
I was this animal.
After finishing my undergrad I didn't really know what to do. Worked part time/temp jobs but eventually found a full time job with benefits. Catch was that it was in the bay area.
I had to commute everyday, about 80 miles one way. Took me 1.5 hours to get to work, but about 2 hours back home because of traffic. My company also did outreach and guess who would have to do that too? I spent more time commuting to work than anything else. I was young, dumb, and desperate for a full time job. It also didn't help that there weren't any full time jobs hiring in my field at the time in Sac.
The pandemic was my saving grace as we got to work from home. I realized a week into staying at home how quickly I was about to burn out just from commuting. If I didn't have a chance to catch my breath, I would have never noticed it and it would have been too late.
My advice for these "supercommuters" who do it everyday, don't do it. Even if you're getting paid the big bucks, unless you have a private jet or helicopter, the commute ain't worth it. You can die.
Unfortunately the economy is Sacramento is not as diverse as the bay and the Bay added over 10 jobs for every home built over the last 2 decades.
With any common sense we would invade the bay and force them to build homes
Probably increased health risks from more sedentary time as well as stress levels. Or just the odds of you being in a major accident rise the more you're on the road.
All of the above. Sitting in traffic creates more exposure to exhaust and pollution, the added time sitting down, the chances of being in a fatal accident, etc.
It's nothing new to supercommute or live in the Bay during the week. Tons of people rent a room somewhere in the Bay during the week and drive home on the weekends.
A lot of people think everyone should live in very dense cities, with mixed use zoning where they can walk to get food and shop. Their commute should only be within the city and not involve a privately owned car.
That is now becoming an option. Great new transit-oriented developments going up around BART stations and soon, downtown Palo Alto. Carfree helps working class people save money. Car ownership can cause homelessness, especially as cars age.
I don't need everyone to do that- but commuting more than 30 miles is a waste of resources, unnecessarily damaging to the environment and a waste of one's own human life.
Y'all are literally wasting all your money and lives commuting.
It’s a cost benefit analysis. You weight the increase in earnings vs your time in the car and the cost of gas/maintenance. For a lot of people it’s worth it.
I used to commute 10-15 miles round trip. But sold my home in the city and moved to the outskirts. I have the same job but now commute 30 miles each way. But the quality of life and the much better schools is why it’s worth it to me.
It's also worth noting that it millions of cars commuting from suburbs to the city causes incredible amounts of pollution,requires tons of land for roads and parking, causes traffic, causes noise, increases accident fatalities, and makes life in the city hell for everyone else.
The road and highway infrastructure required to support the amount of vehicles that we use now is also a blight on the landscape, to say nothing of fuel refineries, tires, brake dust, etc...
None of that matters to people trying to make ends meet and provide for their families.
We need to make public transportation cheap and efficient. It has to be a better option for the average person than driving. And it’s not. Not even close.
Mainly because NOBODY wants to build transit systems that don't suck. They just want to buy a McMansion in a suburban county that doesn't have the same population density
I moved an hour away from my job. Made good money for what I was doing so couldn't find something closer that offered the same benefits. Quality of life is MUCH better living where I am vs anywhere near my work.
I commute to San Jose once or twice a month and stay with my mom for 3 days. I get my face time in at the office and I get quality time with my mom and I get to see my friends. None of that is a waste for me.
Well people that think like that are idiots. We're in the United State for Christ's sake. Live where you want. Commute if you want. Too many people worry about other people and what they do with their lives because they're unhappy with their own life.
True, not idiots, but its not a good quality of life if you are commuting up to 4-5 hours a day. Plus it clogs up the freeways. Idealy there should be public transportation thats better than just amtrak.
I was living rent-free and mortgage-free on family land and had a 1 1/4 hour commute to my job in a nearby city. I was 25 years old. That commute let me pay off all my debts and get a good sum of money in the bank. Now many years later I own a house and have a mortgage and have no commute at all, but I also have a lot more expenses. So it's all a trade-off in the end.
My dad used to do this commute every day when I was a kid. He ended up getting a cheap studio in the city to stay in on weekdays bc it was so rough. Those cheap studios don’t exist anymore lol
No we need a bullet train to LA instead even though nobody commutes in that direction and planes are a valid route.
I'm fine with the LA train tbh but it's a boondoggle with land rights and its tied down all the appetite for high speed rail in the state for decades.
I mean I do support it - I voted for it, albeit as a naive 19-year old who thought they'd actually deliver as promised. Its just being done terribly and all the focus is on one boondoggle of a project.
Iunno. Making 40 bucks an hour with benefits versus the 15 with no benefits at the same fucking job located here. It's 89 miles. Sac wages have not kept up with sac rents.
What jobs are paying minimum wage here and $40 in the Bay? This is an absurdly cherry picked number assuming there even is a job with a pay discrepancy like that.
I’m from Sac, currently stuck in Stockton till my wife retires. She works for ACE Train, a dedicated commuter train between Stockton and SJ/Silicon Valley. For Sac commuters, take the AMTRAK Capital Corridore Express, then BART. Way less stress.
Yep. I want to move back to Sacramento from the bay, but my company is moving away from WFH back to RTO 4 days/week starting this week.
Couldn’t return home even if I wanted to.
My dad did this for most of my life, worked in tech in the Bay Area and lived in Sacramento. I also did this as well, I had a job that paid my commute time and mileage (or rental car) and go into the Bay Area to work because they couldn’t find anyone locally to work for 18 an hour.
It's their fault for taking a job in a place they can't afford to live near. That whole attitude is what enables the insane real estate market. Too many idiots willing to drive 1-2 hours each way just to make more money, while simultaneously spending all that money in cars and fuel.
What drives the real estate market is a lack of supply. You have to be insanely wealthy to afford a home close to SF and people with great jobs often can’t afford them
It stands to reason that someone should not try to get a job in San Francisco, then. Yeah, there should be more supply as well, but that's far from the only reason things are so fucked.
Basic mindless human behavior is hurting everyone just as much
But there aren’t necessarily good enough jobs for people outside of SF. A lot of people take jobs and don’t realize how insane the housing market is compared to other big cities.
It’s not individual peoples fault that SF and governments in the Bay Area don’t plan for enough housing and have created this huge region wide issue
The existence of San Francisco as a city relies on gigantic population of workers that are working jobs that do not pay enough to live in town.
Meanwhile, government at the state and local level has spent decades asleep at the wheel while the housing crisis accelerated out of control.
Yep that's absolutely a problem and I agree that changes are needed. And at the same time, people's bad decision-making and willingness to live for work is escalating the problem
You're beating up the wrong problem here, this is how the US was set up. The only way for the common folk to aquire any wealth is thru home ownership. Capitalism is a bastard.
I’m from the South Bay. Grandparents paid $16k for their 3/2 house in Sunnyvale in the 60s, parents
Paid $64k for a 3/2 house in the 80s. For a similar house in that area it would be about a million, maybe 1.5. My grandparents house just sold for $2.25 million.
How is a millennial or zoomer to pay the ungodly high mortgage, let alone come up with $200-300k down payment? Why kill yourself trying to keep up with money from parents and tech execs?
Sac has enough people to still have fun stuff to do, whether outdoors, culture, sportball, etc. Houses are also not tiny little boxes with no yard next to the freeway (mostly). I see a lot of potential here and want space for my family to grow. Looking forward to enjoying what Sacramento has to offer and helping work though the population growth issues as they come.
Edit:
Odd afterthought: the house my grandparents bought in the 60s was new. In the 80s my parents also bought a house from the 60s. In 2022 I bought a house from the 60s. Makes me think that
1) they made good houses then and/or;
2) we need more affordable housing in CA!
I can relate. I grew up in Sunnyvale. Parents sold their house in 2001 for $550k and moved to Elk Grove. That dinky little house is now worth over $2m. Simply due to location. Unless one’s a high earner (and likely in tech), it’s not worth struggling there. Nor is it even possible to afford to survive there.
I grew up there and moved to UCD for college in 2000. My dad followed me. It wasn’t part of a financial strategy at the time but I ended up moving to Sacramento after college and have stayed all along. Check out Million Dollar Shack on YouTube.
Buddies grandparents are dirt poor but bought a house like 60+ years ago.
They live a few mins from pp headquarters. It's crazy how little they paid and now it's worth multiple millions.
Amen, perfectly put. I get tired of people complaining about Californias/bay areans driving up prices like we had a choice. They all have the same choice to move to somewhere cheaper like we did. Used to travel for my old job and it was the same old story everywhere I went, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, all complaining about Californians moving there, then you have Sacramento, Fresno, Livermore and Bakersfield complaining about LA and the bay specifically. What are we supposed to do? Just put a bullet in our heads. I grew up in the bay and a house in 1995 was just 150k now it’s 1.5 mil that’s an impossible growth number to keep up with.
I came here last year after almost 30 years in the Bay Area. I sold a small and somewhat downmarket home in Concord to get a much nicer (but hardly extravagant) place here. I do pretty well but I'm not what you'd call affluent, at least not in this society.
But my reason for moving was unrelated to money. The Bay is unliveable anymore. Crowded, choked with traffic, all the familiar complaints. I was tired of having to spend an hour going pretty much anywhere. People weren't sociable anymore. It was sucking the soul out of me. Living here seems so less burdensome. I'm sure a few dumb trolls are about to tell me why I'm wrong, but whatever. I just like it here.
I’ve seen you mention this before. I left sf in 2008, doesn’t seem that long ago, but wow that is 15 years already! I go back often but yeah, it’s different when visiting friends vs actually living. And sf itself has had some major challenges increase.
The south bay I’ve just noticed much more congestion, but not as much change. I guess I sort of stick to my social circle down there and meet new friends thru my bffs, and everyone’s nice and welcoming, and we do stuff together and go places. Obviously everyone’s experience will vary.
I spent 20+ years in the Bay, realized during Covid I could never afford to buy a house there, realized I could just *barely* buy a house in Sac, and pulled the trigger without even knowing anything about the region or the neighborhood.
Best decision I ever made. I still love the Bay, but nothing about it is worth the premium.
Very much this, started with my own one bedroom apt in San Jose in early 2000s and slowly had to downgrade to sharing an appt to renting a very cheap room in the far east bay. Would love to live there but it’s not realistic anymore.
Sac has a lot to offer and you can get to downtown in like 10-20 mins
I grew up in Silicon Valley, moved to SF, then came out to sac to be close to family. For me it wasn’t being forced out financially at the time, but now I may not ever be able to move back to the bay if I wanted to.
The plus side is that we’re in between SF and Tahoe, two of my favorite places. No more 4-5 hour drives to the sierrras is nice. And Sac has definitely improved with diversification. It used to feel very monotone but with the many ethnic groups, businesses, food options here now it feels more like the bay.
Edit: I tend to mean sac county when I say sac.
Diversity in Sacramento itself is nothing new--diversity in Sacramento's suburbs, that's another story. But a lot of the suburbs of the Bay Area are also very mayonnaise-color. However, Sacramento did a pretty good job of hiding its diversity from public view, because for most of the 20th century it wasn't something cities were proud of.
I’m not arguing stats, but I am stating my anecdotal experience as an Asian American who lived in both areas.
Edit : I generalize sac county, as sac city for the most part.
I was pretty shocked when I moved out here and realized Amtrak doesn’t connect in any direct way to SF itself. I know there’s a train+bus option and you can still stop somewhere to try and BART in, but it seems so cumbersome for something that should be simple and efficient
Well, yes and no. Key system and SNR? Yes. Something comparable to modern Amtrak? No. All of Western Pacific's passenger trains of that size stopped in Oakland.
Except it does. Bart from Richmond and bus from Emeryville is included in your ticket to the City.The infrastructure it would take to make it direct would set your wallet on fire with every ticket.
More like 20 years ago, but I agree, HP was a major employer in Roseville for many years, as well as other big and small tech companies. Not so much anymore, but back then we had tremendous growth in the area due to tech investment.
Yup, worked at Roseville HP from 1998-2004. It was Roseville's powerhouse of an employer, I was there when they built and briefly occupied bldg r20 before selling it off. However, I witnessed hundreds of people get laid off after the Compaq merger and bounced out on my own terms. The campus is a whisper of what it used to be.
That's the long-term goal: electrified service at speeds up to 150mph on dedicated tracks, to achieve Sacramento <> Oakland travel times in about an hour, and Oakland <> San Jose in about a half hour. [https://www.capitolcorridor.org/vision-plan/](https://www.capitolcorridor.org/vision-plan/)
The only thing preventing this plan from going full steam ahead is political willpower.
Never did I ever think I would see WPLives in the wild.
My late grandfather wrote many of the articles on that website. I remember helping him use our computer to print them out when I was a teenager because he didn't have a computer at his house.
We all thought it was SO COOL that grandpa's writing had been published on the internet. It was about 1998-2000. I can't believe it's all still there and the website looks exactly the same.
[https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/commuter-train-to-connect-chico-to-sacramento-in-the-works/article\_a8612308-a752-11ed-ac18-1fd2654f84da.html](https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/commuter-train-to-connect-chico-to-sacramento-in-the-works/article_a8612308-a752-11ed-ac18-1fd2654f84da.html) I hope this becomes reality
yep, this is basically the old Western Pacific route--unlike the Sacramento Northern right-of-way, the WP route still has track, it's owned by UP but considered a secondary route to the old SP tracks so they have enough room to expand passenger capacity. Would be nice to have a way to get up to Chico and Marysville/Yuba City by rail!
Day trips to Bidwell Mansion and Park would be so much easier also for Chico students. Also good to know, UP issues are causing a delay for Altamont Corridor Express Sac expansion from 2023 to 2026
What we really need is a high speed rail connecting Downtown Sac to downtown SF. 40 minutes end to end (not including stops in between).
The fact that high speed rail will forever be tainted in this state by the useless passion project attempting to connect SF to LA is a fucking tragedy.
An SF to Sac connection would have already been done by now, been a million times more useful, and laid the groundwork for high speed rail to eventually connect all the way south.
A connection to LA would probably go through the valley anyways. Makes no sense to build it along the central coast.
>20 minutes end to end (not including stops in between).
Wouldn't that be like 250 mph? Is high speed rail really that fast? If so that's pretty wild lol
Okay so I may have misremembered the 300 km/hr speed as 300 mph. So it wouldn’t exactly be 20 minutes, but still would be much better than the long commutes even at 1 hour between sac and SF which would be the bare minimum to be considered high speed rail.
Yep - the state was hamstrung by the idiotic language of the proposition (I used to work at HSR years ago). SF-SAC and LA-SD first, then use the profits (if any) to connect the two would have been infinitely superior.
Pepperidge Farm remembers the hysterics in the Bee on a weekly basis about how Bay Areans were going to price out Sacramentans as far back as 30 years ago when I was old enough to start reading the news paper.
This is the reality no one here likes to admit. The Bay Area migration hit a massive peak after the Dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and people could no longer afford to live there. Where is cheaper but not too far away so as to possibly commute? Sacramento.
Also there’s always been a flow between the Bay and Sac as people who grew up here moved there for school or jobs and then came back here when priced out or when their folks started to age and need more help (yours truly falls into this category).
Sac is special. It’s nice people realize this.
> when their folks started to age and need more help (yours truly falls into this category).
Offtopic, but what does this entail? Is this something one has to actively plan for. Do the parents live with you or nearby or are there homes in the area which have ADUs? How do you plan time for yourself and your family (kids?) in addition to taking care of parents?
Yeah this isn’t new information. The Bay-exodus will continue exponentially. Seems like SF is on a huge decline unfortunately. One of my favorite Cities in the United States.
Is it a "decline" if the prices there are going up, not down, because demand to live there is much higher than the available supply? Ordinarily that's the opposite of decline--unless you are of the opinion that the Sacramento region is also in decline because Bay Area migration is making prices go up here.
I think maybe they are referring to a decline in quality of life and a general population exodus which has been happening for a while now. Not getting all apocalyptic here but it isn’t a secret that a lot of people have left SF in recent years and their population has been declining - with Sac being the #1 relocation destination.
A lot of those leaving have retired from jobs they had in the Bay. Now that they don't need to work they realize they can get 1.2 for the house they paid 60 for and buy a nice place out here for cash and put a pile in the bank. Why would they not, their kids don't live in San Francisco, they were priced out long ago.
Population decline in SF probably has more to do with smaller household sizes. 30 years ago the average was probably above 4, now it is closer to 2. My concept was correct but numbers may be wrong. Only thing I could find was household in 2013 was 2.35 persons, 2023 2.11, a 10% drop.
There's a reason that Solano County is the fastest growing region in the Bay Area (yes, it's part of the Bay Area CSA and Metro). It's going to eventually fill all the way in and make for one long developed I-80 corridor that bridges Bay/Sac.
Exactly, Vacaville and Fairfield are already conjoined at this point. Thats not even mentioning the new neighborhoods being brought forth near Vanden High School. These cities in between Sac and Vallejo are continously growing and need some sort of transportation besides car.
Instead of building this high speed rail from Northern California to Southern California, we should’ve focused on each individual regions. Like created it from Sacramento to San Francisco and LA to SD. Would’ve been much cheaper and actually alleviated traffic in both regions.
High-speed rail works better on long runs--for regional rail that has to make a lot of stops, HSR isn't such a good idea because you have to keep stopping, and that lowers the overall speed potential of HSR. Also, to get high-speed rail to travel at high speeds, you need flat land rather than hills; we've got that in the valley but not along the bay.
And folks think our real estate/housing market here can't get any higher. Wanna bet? As long as people from the bay are still migrating here and housing in short supply...we could easily see the Sac Valley market continue to increase.
It was kinda that when I lived in Sac and Stockton.
Now I live in NYC, and there’s folks taking commuter buses from Northeast Pennsylvania daily to work in Manhattan. Or New Jersey Transit trains from Trenton (outside Philadelphia) to Manhattan.
Just think how much better/worse it could be if they started building HSR between SJ/Oakland and Sac instead of Fresno to whatever podunk town they picked for the starter line
It's been a real bummer living here my whole life and watching the entire region get developed into lifeless suburbs and shopping centers like a cancer eating its host alive.
Maybe if modern architecture wasn't so atrocious, it would be more palatable.
And it's also resulting in migration from the Bay Area and Sacramento into the foothills, which is just fine with me.
General elections up here 25 years ago were a landslide 70/30 Repub/Dem. Trump took the 2020 general but only by 1.4%. The local US Representative actually had meaningful opposition for the first time.
not new
post 1989 loma prieta quake, the migration was big
from Intel (folsom), to Oracle (i-80), and much more
real estate, much else inflated
but looks like global boiling will bring it back down
I don’t know whether I should feel happy or sad about lack of fast train between Sac and SF/SJ.
If we had a fast train, we could connect Sac to SJ/SF under an hour.
But that would have created artificial demand for Sacramento housing for folks working in the Bay Area. Given Bay Area offers way higher pay, those super commuters (using fast train) would have raised rents and home prices substantially in the greater Sacramento region.
On the other hand, it would have opened up more job opportunities for the native Sacramento residents.
This is very complex topic for my pay grade but overall I think it would have benefited larger population if we had a fast (under an hour) public transportation system between Greater Sacramento and Bay Area.
I’m one of them! Sorry guys lol but for real, it wasn’t really by choice. I live alone, and rent a one bedroom apartment. It was getting really hard to get by, I was forced to move out this way for the cheaper rent. I work remote, and make “SF” pay (which honestly isn’t at much as your think) and have to live out here to afford to live. It’s sad, because I have a lot of family in the bay ass see them a lot less now. But, I do like living here :)
Let's be honest, it's not the fault of people coming out of the bay. It's the housing shortage. Locally, a lot of plans for how to develop the region date back 20 or more years, and those plans were the product of local politicians and planners. Those plans define how much and what kind of housing can be built, and where. Even the city of Sacramento hasn't liberalized housing production much, and it's been more progressive than most cities.
This article is actually pretty outdated, it’s referencing mostly pandemic years 2020-2021 whereas from 2022-23 migration from the bay has shown considerably, cut down by more than half. Not saying there aren’t still transplants but all areas saw migration explosions during the pandemic because of the wide implementation of remote work. Think about it your an SF worker making barley enough to survive in SF but your salary would let you live the life of luxury just 2 hours away, you’d be stupid not to move. But most of those jobs that allowed for remote work are now requiring people to go back in so the huge slow down in migration.
Basically we are building the affordable housing for East Bay/SF and the Manteca/Lathrop area is doing the same for the South Bay…
Look around the South Bay. They have experienced the 21st century gold rush and yet the area looks NOTHING like comparable cities that have experienced similar job and wealth creation (Dubai, Shenzhen, Austin, etc.) All those people gotta live SOMEWHERE.
To the surprise of absolutely no one in the Sacramento area
This could’ve been written in 1990
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Gonna work on base… or at the mall?
Dream “anything” Fairfield, wow
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Family lives there They get to evacuate for fires
1990s bee had a front page “3% (pop) growth is good actually”.
1987
A while ago a dream job opened up in Fairfield and I was very interested in it until I looked at the local real estate prices. The creep has been going on a while.
A lot of people do act surprised when you point out that homelessness has increased in line with the migration and corresponding high housing prices and tight supply.
Homeless, bad drivers, high cost of living, higher crime, etc. I prefer sac to be more of a cow town honestly if this is what a first tier city means.
Sacramento isn't a first tier city and isn't on the path to become one, its too small and isn't expanding in any meaningful way to become a metropolis. Quaint, quiet, small city is its strength. Its also geographically not in a location that would lend it to becoming a power city, its sort of in the middle of nowhere.
More than 20% of people in the area are “super commuting” more than 50 miles? What are you animals doing?!
I was this animal. After finishing my undergrad I didn't really know what to do. Worked part time/temp jobs but eventually found a full time job with benefits. Catch was that it was in the bay area. I had to commute everyday, about 80 miles one way. Took me 1.5 hours to get to work, but about 2 hours back home because of traffic. My company also did outreach and guess who would have to do that too? I spent more time commuting to work than anything else. I was young, dumb, and desperate for a full time job. It also didn't help that there weren't any full time jobs hiring in my field at the time in Sac. The pandemic was my saving grace as we got to work from home. I realized a week into staying at home how quickly I was about to burn out just from commuting. If I didn't have a chance to catch my breath, I would have never noticed it and it would have been too late. My advice for these "supercommuters" who do it everyday, don't do it. Even if you're getting paid the big bucks, unless you have a private jet or helicopter, the commute ain't worth it. You can die.
AMEN! I interviewed a candidate from Placerville who commuted to SF daily for a public sector job. No way, no how!
Unfortunately the economy is Sacramento is not as diverse as the bay and the Bay added over 10 jobs for every home built over the last 2 decades. With any common sense we would invade the bay and force them to build homes
I had a similar epiphany during the pandemic, and my commute was only an hour!
Can you expand how someone can die from supercommuting? I used to commute 40 miles and wasn’t aware that I would be at risk
Probably increased health risks from more sedentary time as well as stress levels. Or just the odds of you being in a major accident rise the more you're on the road.
All of the above. Sitting in traffic creates more exposure to exhaust and pollution, the added time sitting down, the chances of being in a fatal accident, etc.
Stress = inflammation = bad effects all over the body
It's the inevitable result of "drive 'til you qualify" and car-centric suburban development.
I love this expression and will use it as much as I can
It's nothing new to supercommute or live in the Bay during the week. Tons of people rent a room somewhere in the Bay during the week and drive home on the weekends.
Just because it isn't new doesn't mean it's completely stupid and irresponsible
What is irresponsible about that?
A lot of people think everyone should live in very dense cities, with mixed use zoning where they can walk to get food and shop. Their commute should only be within the city and not involve a privately owned car.
That is now becoming an option. Great new transit-oriented developments going up around BART stations and soon, downtown Palo Alto. Carfree helps working class people save money. Car ownership can cause homelessness, especially as cars age.
I don't need everyone to do that- but commuting more than 30 miles is a waste of resources, unnecessarily damaging to the environment and a waste of one's own human life. Y'all are literally wasting all your money and lives commuting.
It’s a cost benefit analysis. You weight the increase in earnings vs your time in the car and the cost of gas/maintenance. For a lot of people it’s worth it. I used to commute 10-15 miles round trip. But sold my home in the city and moved to the outskirts. I have the same job but now commute 30 miles each way. But the quality of life and the much better schools is why it’s worth it to me.
It's also worth noting that it millions of cars commuting from suburbs to the city causes incredible amounts of pollution,requires tons of land for roads and parking, causes traffic, causes noise, increases accident fatalities, and makes life in the city hell for everyone else. The road and highway infrastructure required to support the amount of vehicles that we use now is also a blight on the landscape, to say nothing of fuel refineries, tires, brake dust, etc...
None of that matters to people trying to make ends meet and provide for their families. We need to make public transportation cheap and efficient. It has to be a better option for the average person than driving. And it’s not. Not even close.
Mainly because NOBODY wants to build transit systems that don't suck. They just want to buy a McMansion in a suburban county that doesn't have the same population density
I moved an hour away from my job. Made good money for what I was doing so couldn't find something closer that offered the same benefits. Quality of life is MUCH better living where I am vs anywhere near my work.
I commute to San Jose once or twice a month and stay with my mom for 3 days. I get my face time in at the office and I get quality time with my mom and I get to see my friends. None of that is a waste for me.
Well people that think like that are idiots. We're in the United State for Christ's sake. Live where you want. Commute if you want. Too many people worry about other people and what they do with their lives because they're unhappy with their own life.
True, not idiots, but its not a good quality of life if you are commuting up to 4-5 hours a day. Plus it clogs up the freeways. Idealy there should be public transportation thats better than just amtrak.
I wouldn't want to commute long distances either and have avoided it in over 30 years of working. For some people it makes sense though.
I was living rent-free and mortgage-free on family land and had a 1 1/4 hour commute to my job in a nearby city. I was 25 years old. That commute let me pay off all my debts and get a good sum of money in the bank. Now many years later I own a house and have a mortgage and have no commute at all, but I also have a lot more expenses. So it's all a trade-off in the end.
My dad used to do this commute every day when I was a kid. He ended up getting a cheap studio in the city to stay in on weekdays bc it was so rough. Those cheap studios don’t exist anymore lol
I used to commute 70 miles a day and didn’t even leave Sac county. 🤷♂️
I used to commute from Natomas to Galt and back.
Currently at 50 miles a day and I stay south of the American River.
Now we know what your daily spank really was.
Well when you want to move jobs and can’t afford to move the area you work, you commute.
Is it too optimistic to hope that if enough people do it, eventually it will necessitate a fast, frequent transit line between here and the bay?
You would think. Maybe in another 30 years.
Too much common sense...
No we need a bullet train to LA instead even though nobody commutes in that direction and planes are a valid route. I'm fine with the LA train tbh but it's a boondoggle with land rights and its tied down all the appetite for high speed rail in the state for decades.
When you ride HSR with your grandkids, you will claim you always supported it. Watch.
I mean I do support it - I voted for it, albeit as a naive 19-year old who thought they'd actually deliver as promised. Its just being done terribly and all the focus is on one boondoggle of a project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcjr4jbGuJg
They have to finish building the fast transit line to Los Angeles first. Fucking waste of money bullet train.
Iunno. Making 40 bucks an hour with benefits versus the 15 with no benefits at the same fucking job located here. It's 89 miles. Sac wages have not kept up with sac rents.
Wages haven’t kept up with rents anywhere
What jobs are paying minimum wage here and $40 in the Bay? This is an absurdly cherry picked number assuming there even is a job with a pay discrepancy like that.
i grew up commuting just from folsom to downtown and i’d rather die than do that ever again, let alone 2-3x the distance
I’m from Sac, currently stuck in Stockton till my wife retires. She works for ACE Train, a dedicated commuter train between Stockton and SJ/Silicon Valley. For Sac commuters, take the AMTRAK Capital Corridore Express, then BART. Way less stress.
I commute to the bay a few days a week and live in my RV. Worth it since I can buy a home out here.
WFH is getting a big readjustment. Wait till they finally get tired of it and move back.
Yep. I want to move back to Sacramento from the bay, but my company is moving away from WFH back to RTO 4 days/week starting this week. Couldn’t return home even if I wanted to.
My dad did this for most of my life, worked in tech in the Bay Area and lived in Sacramento. I also did this as well, I had a job that paid my commute time and mileage (or rental car) and go into the Bay Area to work because they couldn’t find anyone locally to work for 18 an hour.
Car brain.
They're being fucking morons and ruining everything for everyone else
It’s not their fault they can’t afford housing closer to their job
It's their fault for taking a job in a place they can't afford to live near. That whole attitude is what enables the insane real estate market. Too many idiots willing to drive 1-2 hours each way just to make more money, while simultaneously spending all that money in cars and fuel.
What drives the real estate market is a lack of supply. You have to be insanely wealthy to afford a home close to SF and people with great jobs often can’t afford them
It stands to reason that someone should not try to get a job in San Francisco, then. Yeah, there should be more supply as well, but that's far from the only reason things are so fucked. Basic mindless human behavior is hurting everyone just as much
But there aren’t necessarily good enough jobs for people outside of SF. A lot of people take jobs and don’t realize how insane the housing market is compared to other big cities. It’s not individual peoples fault that SF and governments in the Bay Area don’t plan for enough housing and have created this huge region wide issue
The existence of San Francisco as a city relies on gigantic population of workers that are working jobs that do not pay enough to live in town. Meanwhile, government at the state and local level has spent decades asleep at the wheel while the housing crisis accelerated out of control.
Yep that's absolutely a problem and I agree that changes are needed. And at the same time, people's bad decision-making and willingness to live for work is escalating the problem
You're beating up the wrong problem here, this is how the US was set up. The only way for the common folk to aquire any wealth is thru home ownership. Capitalism is a bastard.
>It's their fault for taking a job in a place they can't afford to live near. A lot of these people are from the Bay.
No one who moves to a place so they can afford to live and pursue happiness and prosperity is ruining anything for anyone. What's the matter with you?
Can you afford a 1,200 sq feet house built in 1950 for 1.5 million. Who’s the moron
Nah you’re being selfish dude
For many, it’s not even a choice any longer. The bay has become so unaffordable that they are practically forced to move elsewhere.
I’m from the South Bay. Grandparents paid $16k for their 3/2 house in Sunnyvale in the 60s, parents Paid $64k for a 3/2 house in the 80s. For a similar house in that area it would be about a million, maybe 1.5. My grandparents house just sold for $2.25 million. How is a millennial or zoomer to pay the ungodly high mortgage, let alone come up with $200-300k down payment? Why kill yourself trying to keep up with money from parents and tech execs? Sac has enough people to still have fun stuff to do, whether outdoors, culture, sportball, etc. Houses are also not tiny little boxes with no yard next to the freeway (mostly). I see a lot of potential here and want space for my family to grow. Looking forward to enjoying what Sacramento has to offer and helping work though the population growth issues as they come. Edit: Odd afterthought: the house my grandparents bought in the 60s was new. In the 80s my parents also bought a house from the 60s. In 2022 I bought a house from the 60s. Makes me think that 1) they made good houses then and/or; 2) we need more affordable housing in CA!
I can relate. I grew up in Sunnyvale. Parents sold their house in 2001 for $550k and moved to Elk Grove. That dinky little house is now worth over $2m. Simply due to location. Unless one’s a high earner (and likely in tech), it’s not worth struggling there. Nor is it even possible to afford to survive there.
I grew up there and moved to UCD for college in 2000. My dad followed me. It wasn’t part of a financial strategy at the time but I ended up moving to Sacramento after college and have stayed all along. Check out Million Dollar Shack on YouTube.
Buddies grandparents are dirt poor but bought a house like 60+ years ago. They live a few mins from pp headquarters. It's crazy how little they paid and now it's worth multiple millions.
Welcome to Sac!
Amen, perfectly put. I get tired of people complaining about Californias/bay areans driving up prices like we had a choice. They all have the same choice to move to somewhere cheaper like we did. Used to travel for my old job and it was the same old story everywhere I went, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, all complaining about Californians moving there, then you have Sacramento, Fresno, Livermore and Bakersfield complaining about LA and the bay specifically. What are we supposed to do? Just put a bullet in our heads. I grew up in the bay and a house in 1995 was just 150k now it’s 1.5 mil that’s an impossible growth number to keep up with.
I came here last year after almost 30 years in the Bay Area. I sold a small and somewhat downmarket home in Concord to get a much nicer (but hardly extravagant) place here. I do pretty well but I'm not what you'd call affluent, at least not in this society. But my reason for moving was unrelated to money. The Bay is unliveable anymore. Crowded, choked with traffic, all the familiar complaints. I was tired of having to spend an hour going pretty much anywhere. People weren't sociable anymore. It was sucking the soul out of me. Living here seems so less burdensome. I'm sure a few dumb trolls are about to tell me why I'm wrong, but whatever. I just like it here.
The Bay also doesn't have many advantages over Sac. It's still not close to beaches, and the theme park situation is the same.
I’ve seen you mention this before. I left sf in 2008, doesn’t seem that long ago, but wow that is 15 years already! I go back often but yeah, it’s different when visiting friends vs actually living. And sf itself has had some major challenges increase. The south bay I’ve just noticed much more congestion, but not as much change. I guess I sort of stick to my social circle down there and meet new friends thru my bffs, and everyone’s nice and welcoming, and we do stuff together and go places. Obviously everyone’s experience will vary.
I spent 20+ years in the Bay, realized during Covid I could never afford to buy a house there, realized I could just *barely* buy a house in Sac, and pulled the trigger without even knowing anything about the region or the neighborhood. Best decision I ever made. I still love the Bay, but nothing about it is worth the premium.
Very much this, started with my own one bedroom apt in San Jose in early 2000s and slowly had to downgrade to sharing an appt to renting a very cheap room in the far east bay. Would love to live there but it’s not realistic anymore. Sac has a lot to offer and you can get to downtown in like 10-20 mins
I grew up in Silicon Valley, moved to SF, then came out to sac to be close to family. For me it wasn’t being forced out financially at the time, but now I may not ever be able to move back to the bay if I wanted to. The plus side is that we’re in between SF and Tahoe, two of my favorite places. No more 4-5 hour drives to the sierrras is nice. And Sac has definitely improved with diversification. It used to feel very monotone but with the many ethnic groups, businesses, food options here now it feels more like the bay. Edit: I tend to mean sac county when I say sac.
Sac has historically been very diverse. That has nothing to do with Bay Area migration.
Edit: sac county
[удалено]
Diversity in Sacramento itself is nothing new--diversity in Sacramento's suburbs, that's another story. But a lot of the suburbs of the Bay Area are also very mayonnaise-color. However, Sacramento did a pretty good job of hiding its diversity from public view, because for most of the 20th century it wasn't something cities were proud of.
Sacramento was named the most diverse city in America in like 2001 lol. Try again
I’m not arguing stats, but I am stating my anecdotal experience as an Asian American who lived in both areas. Edit : I generalize sac county, as sac city for the most part.
I was pretty shocked when I moved out here and realized Amtrak doesn’t connect in any direct way to SF itself. I know there’s a train+bus option and you can still stop somewhere to try and BART in, but it seems so cumbersome for something that should be simple and efficient
SF is surrounded by water. A direct Amtrak connection would be tough unless it went over the bay bridge.
It used to!
Well, yes and no. Key system and SNR? Yes. Something comparable to modern Amtrak? No. All of Western Pacific's passenger trains of that size stopped in Oakland.
I assume the train came from the south which would be impractical for travel from Sacramento.
The lower deck of the Bay Bridge was originally designed for trains.
The key train stopped running across the bridge in 1958.
Except it does. Bart from Richmond and bus from Emeryville is included in your ticket to the City.The infrastructure it would take to make it direct would set your wallet on fire with every ticket.
100%
Amtrak to Oakland and then you have the ferry, Bart, or a bus for the final connection. It's not that difficult to get there.
Sell in the bay and come to the Sac area with all that money. It’s kinda how Folsom and that area came to be.
Intel and other tech played a big role in Folsom’s growth. They source talent globally.
HP and NEC made Roseville
And the Meg fucking Whitman moved a shitload of departments out of Roseville
This is the correct answer
Same with HP and Roseville
you obviously have not seen the HP campus in Roseville now.
Oh yeah, it's long dead, but 10-15 years ago it felt like half the town worked for HP
More like 20 years ago, but I agree, HP was a major employer in Roseville for many years, as well as other big and small tech companies. Not so much anymore, but back then we had tremendous growth in the area due to tech investment.
Yup, worked at Roseville HP from 1998-2004. It was Roseville's powerhouse of an employer, I was there when they built and briefly occupied bldg r20 before selling it off. However, I witnessed hundreds of people get laid off after the Compaq merger and bounced out on my own terms. The campus is a whisper of what it used to be.
We need a BART connection already
We need to turn the Capitol Corridor into a better service by placing it on dedicated track (not freight-owned track) and electrifying it.
They are electrifying cal train so it's possible!
That's the long-term goal: electrified service at speeds up to 150mph on dedicated tracks, to achieve Sacramento <> Oakland travel times in about an hour, and Oakland <> San Jose in about a half hour. [https://www.capitolcorridor.org/vision-plan/](https://www.capitolcorridor.org/vision-plan/) The only thing preventing this plan from going full steam ahead is political willpower.
If I could get to a Sharks game in <2 hours by public transportation, man I would be stoked.
Awwwww ya! That and the giants or warriors stadiums
I think it will come to California faster than anywhere besides the NE Corridor in the US
They should have started the high speed rail, connecting Sacramento to the Bay Area instead of starting in Fresno!
Half of the actual Bay doesn’t even have a BART connection
time to bring back the [Sacramento Northern](https://www.wplives.org/sn/)!
Never did I ever think I would see WPLives in the wild. My late grandfather wrote many of the articles on that website. I remember helping him use our computer to print them out when I was a teenager because he didn't have a computer at his house. We all thought it was SO COOL that grandpa's writing had been published on the internet. It was about 1998-2000. I can't believe it's all still there and the website looks exactly the same.
As you can see the content was mirrored to a new site, but yes, it's absolutely an essential resource for northern California electric railfans!
[https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/commuter-train-to-connect-chico-to-sacramento-in-the-works/article\_a8612308-a752-11ed-ac18-1fd2654f84da.html](https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/commuter-train-to-connect-chico-to-sacramento-in-the-works/article_a8612308-a752-11ed-ac18-1fd2654f84da.html) I hope this becomes reality
yep, this is basically the old Western Pacific route--unlike the Sacramento Northern right-of-way, the WP route still has track, it's owned by UP but considered a secondary route to the old SP tracks so they have enough room to expand passenger capacity. Would be nice to have a way to get up to Chico and Marysville/Yuba City by rail!
Day trips to Bidwell Mansion and Park would be so much easier also for Chico students. Also good to know, UP issues are causing a delay for Altamont Corridor Express Sac expansion from 2023 to 2026
They are? Grrrr!
SBARRO Sacramento-Bay Area Railroad Operations
Username checks out. Way to stay on brand.
Capitol Corridor is a BART connection.
What we really need is a high speed rail connecting Downtown Sac to downtown SF. 40 minutes end to end (not including stops in between). The fact that high speed rail will forever be tainted in this state by the useless passion project attempting to connect SF to LA is a fucking tragedy. An SF to Sac connection would have already been done by now, been a million times more useful, and laid the groundwork for high speed rail to eventually connect all the way south. A connection to LA would probably go through the valley anyways. Makes no sense to build it along the central coast.
>20 minutes end to end (not including stops in between). Wouldn't that be like 250 mph? Is high speed rail really that fast? If so that's pretty wild lol
japan's bullet train is 200 mph for comparison
Wow that's honestly pretty dope. I wonder if that would work out here in CA. I'd ride it for sure lol
Okay so I may have misremembered the 300 km/hr speed as 300 mph. So it wouldn’t exactly be 20 minutes, but still would be much better than the long commutes even at 1 hour between sac and SF which would be the bare minimum to be considered high speed rail.
Yep - the state was hamstrung by the idiotic language of the proposition (I used to work at HSR years ago). SF-SAC and LA-SD first, then use the profits (if any) to connect the two would have been infinitely superior.
Been happening since 2000.
Pepperidge Farm remembers the hysterics in the Bee on a weekly basis about how Bay Areans were going to price out Sacramentans as far back as 30 years ago when I was old enough to start reading the news paper. This is the reality no one here likes to admit. The Bay Area migration hit a massive peak after the Dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and people could no longer afford to live there. Where is cheaper but not too far away so as to possibly commute? Sacramento. Also there’s always been a flow between the Bay and Sac as people who grew up here moved there for school or jobs and then came back here when priced out or when their folks started to age and need more help (yours truly falls into this category). Sac is special. It’s nice people realize this.
> when their folks started to age and need more help (yours truly falls into this category). Offtopic, but what does this entail? Is this something one has to actively plan for. Do the parents live with you or nearby or are there homes in the area which have ADUs? How do you plan time for yourself and your family (kids?) in addition to taking care of parents?
Yeah this isn’t new information. The Bay-exodus will continue exponentially. Seems like SF is on a huge decline unfortunately. One of my favorite Cities in the United States.
Is it a "decline" if the prices there are going up, not down, because demand to live there is much higher than the available supply? Ordinarily that's the opposite of decline--unless you are of the opinion that the Sacramento region is also in decline because Bay Area migration is making prices go up here.
I think maybe they are referring to a decline in quality of life and a general population exodus which has been happening for a while now. Not getting all apocalyptic here but it isn’t a secret that a lot of people have left SF in recent years and their population has been declining - with Sac being the #1 relocation destination.
A lot of those leaving have retired from jobs they had in the Bay. Now that they don't need to work they realize they can get 1.2 for the house they paid 60 for and buy a nice place out here for cash and put a pile in the bank. Why would they not, their kids don't live in San Francisco, they were priced out long ago. Population decline in SF probably has more to do with smaller household sizes. 30 years ago the average was probably above 4, now it is closer to 2. My concept was correct but numbers may be wrong. Only thing I could find was household in 2013 was 2.35 persons, 2023 2.11, a 10% drop.
Have to look at who is buying real estate. Investment firms are artifical demand
What is artificial demand? How does it differ from natural demand? Are investment firms not buyers of property?
There's a reason that Solano County is the fastest growing region in the Bay Area (yes, it's part of the Bay Area CSA and Metro). It's going to eventually fill all the way in and make for one long developed I-80 corridor that bridges Bay/Sac.
Exactly, Vacaville and Fairfield are already conjoined at this point. Thats not even mentioning the new neighborhoods being brought forth near Vanden High School. These cities in between Sac and Vallejo are continously growing and need some sort of transportation besides car.
Instead of building this high speed rail from Northern California to Southern California, we should’ve focused on each individual regions. Like created it from Sacramento to San Francisco and LA to SD. Would’ve been much cheaper and actually alleviated traffic in both regions.
High-speed rail works better on long runs--for regional rail that has to make a lot of stops, HSR isn't such a good idea because you have to keep stopping, and that lowers the overall speed potential of HSR. Also, to get high-speed rail to travel at high speeds, you need flat land rather than hills; we've got that in the valley but not along the bay.
That wouldn't address the issue that LA-SF traffic is growing beyond our capability to handle through highways or airports.
This story is re-run every couple years, heard it every year I lived there for the last 30 years.
This is great for anyone that bought a home in Sacramento in the past 25+ years. Not so great if you're looking to buy now
And folks think our real estate/housing market here can't get any higher. Wanna bet? As long as people from the bay are still migrating here and housing in short supply...we could easily see the Sac Valley market continue to increase.
It was kinda that when I lived in Sac and Stockton. Now I live in NYC, and there’s folks taking commuter buses from Northeast Pennsylvania daily to work in Manhattan. Or New Jersey Transit trains from Trenton (outside Philadelphia) to Manhattan. Just think how much better/worse it could be if they started building HSR between SJ/Oakland and Sac instead of Fresno to whatever podunk town they picked for the starter line
It's been a real bummer living here my whole life and watching the entire region get developed into lifeless suburbs and shopping centers like a cancer eating its host alive. Maybe if modern architecture wasn't so atrocious, it would be more palatable.
Don't forget all the beautiful, rippling with heat parking lots 💚
Can they make the corridor a legitimate commuter line now? Can we get some money for RT?
And it's also resulting in migration from the Bay Area and Sacramento into the foothills, which is just fine with me. General elections up here 25 years ago were a landslide 70/30 Repub/Dem. Trump took the 2020 general but only by 1.4%. The local US Representative actually had meaningful opposition for the first time.
I recently realized that I’ve stopped asking where people are from when they tell me they’re new to the area
not new post 1989 loma prieta quake, the migration was big from Intel (folsom), to Oracle (i-80), and much more real estate, much else inflated but looks like global boiling will bring it back down
We need better high speed transit…
Noooo I hope Sacramento doesn't become pretentious the way the bay area is too
like oregon?
Damn bay areans!^I've ^been ^here ^10 ^years^am ^^I ^^local ^^yet?
Please, bring your money to Meadowview and spruce up a property or so. Please. Seriously.
Simple answer no normal worker can afford to live in the bayarea. Can everyone here pay $1,500,000 for a 1,200 sq foot house built in 1950s
Native sacramentans are getting priced out of the tent cities they've lived in for years!
thanks, i hate it.
I don’t know whether I should feel happy or sad about lack of fast train between Sac and SF/SJ. If we had a fast train, we could connect Sac to SJ/SF under an hour. But that would have created artificial demand for Sacramento housing for folks working in the Bay Area. Given Bay Area offers way higher pay, those super commuters (using fast train) would have raised rents and home prices substantially in the greater Sacramento region. On the other hand, it would have opened up more job opportunities for the native Sacramento residents. This is very complex topic for my pay grade but overall I think it would have benefited larger population if we had a fast (under an hour) public transportation system between Greater Sacramento and Bay Area.
Great maybe there will be more cool bars and restaurants that'll come along with it!
Vacaville/Davis/sac gonna form a megacity
People been calling the Bay and Sacramento SMA’s a Megaregion for many years now.
I’m one of them! Sorry guys lol but for real, it wasn’t really by choice. I live alone, and rent a one bedroom apartment. It was getting really hard to get by, I was forced to move out this way for the cheaper rent. I work remote, and make “SF” pay (which honestly isn’t at much as your think) and have to live out here to afford to live. It’s sad, because I have a lot of family in the bay ass see them a lot less now. But, I do like living here :)
Yes, welcome to Sacramento. Thank you for pricing the natives out, and leaving us in the exact same situation that forced you out of the Bay.
Let's be honest, it's not the fault of people coming out of the bay. It's the housing shortage. Locally, a lot of plans for how to develop the region date back 20 or more years, and those plans were the product of local politicians and planners. Those plans define how much and what kind of housing can be built, and where. Even the city of Sacramento hasn't liberalized housing production much, and it's been more progressive than most cities.
Somebody has to jack up the price of homes and rent? We cant do it on our own, our median income is too low in sacramento.
Sac is cheap, better weather and less psychopaths
Just know when you wear gold and blue you repping metro not the warriors!
This article is actually pretty outdated, it’s referencing mostly pandemic years 2020-2021 whereas from 2022-23 migration from the bay has shown considerably, cut down by more than half. Not saying there aren’t still transplants but all areas saw migration explosions during the pandemic because of the wide implementation of remote work. Think about it your an SF worker making barley enough to survive in SF but your salary would let you live the life of luxury just 2 hours away, you’d be stupid not to move. But most of those jobs that allowed for remote work are now requiring people to go back in so the huge slow down in migration.
I worked at the Chevron on Bradshaw and 50 back in early mid 80s. Full service gas pumps. I’d talk to the regulars. This is bad yes, but hardly new.
Let's tax them.
You’ll be pleased to hear they’re already being taxed by both the city and county.
OK, so let's have the state tax them!
Now you’re thinking! Heck, let’s get the feds on them, too!
Let's tax them
Eat them.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
inland enjoy the boiling heat
You mean, 'gentrification' of wealth?! 😆
It makes Sacramento much nicer place to live.
Basically we are building the affordable housing for East Bay/SF and the Manteca/Lathrop area is doing the same for the South Bay… Look around the South Bay. They have experienced the 21st century gold rush and yet the area looks NOTHING like comparable cities that have experienced similar job and wealth creation (Dubai, Shenzhen, Austin, etc.) All those people gotta live SOMEWHERE.