A shocking 71% of respondents said the quality of life in the greater Bay Area is worse now compared to five years ago. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they are considering leaving in the next five years — including 53% of respondents who work in the tech sector.

Russell Hancock, President and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, told reporters during a press conference that “it’s the cost of living, high housing costs. I think that is the dominant thing.”

The poll’s findings seem to support Hancock’s theory. Most respondents (77%) indicated that high housing costs, along with cost of living (84%), are motivating them to get out while the getting’s good. However, “homelessness, wildfires and drought were also issues respondents considered,” according to SFGate.

In the poll, Hancock writes:

We’ve long been a high-stress region. Staggering housing prices, rising homelessness, a stark income divide and a host of sustainability challenges have had us on edge for some time.

He added: “But when you toss a highly infectious disease into the mix, you get a smothering amount of anxiety.”

The study also revealed that participants were split on the direction of the region, with 48% saying it is headed in the right direction and 52% saying it is headed in the wrong direction.

The poll’s findings are about as shocking as finding a crack pipe under Hunter Biden’s couch. The Bay Area has gone through a radical – and disgusting – transformation over the past decade. Under ultra-progressive governance, the area has become a haven for drug-addicted homeless individuals and forced businesses to shut down due to its lax crime policies.

Walgreens announced on Tuesday that it would be closing another five stores in San Francisco due to skyrocketing crime rates and theft happening in their locations. A spokesperson for the company told Fox Business that “[d]ue to ongoing organized retail crime, we have made the difficult decision to close five stores across San Francisco.”

The spokesperson also explained that “organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that.”

He continued: (emphasis mine)

Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average. During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment.

This announcement comes after the company was forced to shut down 10 stores in San Francisco since 2019. The California Retailers Association reported that San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento have the highest levels of organized retail crime in the country.

These issues, combined with high housing costs, would make any sane person want to leave the Bay Area. The bottom line is that progressive policies are destructive. They do far more harm than good. But what’s worse is the fact that those pushing these types of policies don’t seem to care about the folks they are harming.

Hard leftists are more than willing to enact measures that are obviously deleterious in the name of promoting “equity” or whatever other cause they are championing. The “Defund the Police” campaign is a prime example. As long as they know they won’t have to deal with the consequences of their crappy policies, they are fine with these devastating outcomes. More people will continue to flee blue areas and blue states in the years to come. This is especially true of California, which continues to lurch further and further to the left as time goes on.

Will there ever be a time when the people will become fed up with the Marxists who run the Golden State? Or will there continue to be a mass exodus? Only time will tell.