<story><title>California population declines for first time in more than a century</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-population-declines-for-first-time-in-more-than-a-century-11620416887</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>linguae</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a lifelong Californian whose lived in Santa Cruz County for nearly nine out of the past 11 years, and as someone who wants to become a CS professor at a teaching university one day, I feel the exact same way.  I love California and I don&amp;#x27;t want to leave the state.  However, the housing prices signal to me that if I want to buy a house, I need to have a very high income and maintain it during the length of a 30-year mortgage.  Professors are paid well compared to the average Californian, but professors&amp;#x27; salaries are generally not enough to afford to purchase a place in the Bay Area or much of Southern California without involving mega-commutes from exurbia (and, thanks to the WFH boom, these exurbs have gone up in price dramatically).  There&amp;#x27;s still some parts of the Central Valley that are affordable for professors and that are too far for Bay Area&amp;#x2F;Los Angeles mega-commuters, but the nature of academic hiring means that there&amp;#x27;s no guarantee a position at a place like UC Merced or Fresno State would open when it&amp;#x27;s time for me to apply for assistant professor jobs.&lt;p&gt;If I can&amp;#x27;t find a place in the next few years that is affordable on an $80,000&amp;#x2F;year salary in California, then I have to move.  I&amp;#x27;d like to move to a place where a 3-bedroom house in a safe neighborhood costs no more than $400,000, and where there is a diverse population.  Ideally I&amp;#x27;d like to live in a place that doesn&amp;#x27;t get too cold in the winter; I&amp;#x27;d rather deal with very hot summers (I grew up in Sacramento where it regularly gets above 100 in the summer) than to deal with cold winters.</text></item><item><author>gautamcgoel</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a PhD student at Caltech. I&amp;#x27;d love to stay in CA and become a prof at one of the world-renown universities in the state. The cost for a nice house is &amp;gt; $800K in all of the cities hosting these universities; on top of that, the state income tax on a prof&amp;#x27;s salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>8bitsrule</author><text>Cause of problem: Missing Middle Housing. Not everyone needs the concrete beehives or the single-family-home. But there&amp;#x27;s been very little built in-between in recent decades. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Missing_middle_housing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Missing_middle_housing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could live in very little space. Not into owning a lotta stuff, entertaining crowds. 15x25 is more than enough. Noone&amp;#x27;s building cottages these days. Let alone on nice streets with trees, away from traffic, walkable. A couple of US cities have opened that up. Neither is in CA. My family of 4 was once quite comfortable in one apt. in a quadplex. We did this to ourselves, and invested in a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of infrastructure to be locked into.</text></comment>
<story><title>California population declines for first time in more than a century</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-population-declines-for-first-time-in-more-than-a-century-11620416887</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>linguae</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a lifelong Californian whose lived in Santa Cruz County for nearly nine out of the past 11 years, and as someone who wants to become a CS professor at a teaching university one day, I feel the exact same way.  I love California and I don&amp;#x27;t want to leave the state.  However, the housing prices signal to me that if I want to buy a house, I need to have a very high income and maintain it during the length of a 30-year mortgage.  Professors are paid well compared to the average Californian, but professors&amp;#x27; salaries are generally not enough to afford to purchase a place in the Bay Area or much of Southern California without involving mega-commutes from exurbia (and, thanks to the WFH boom, these exurbs have gone up in price dramatically).  There&amp;#x27;s still some parts of the Central Valley that are affordable for professors and that are too far for Bay Area&amp;#x2F;Los Angeles mega-commuters, but the nature of academic hiring means that there&amp;#x27;s no guarantee a position at a place like UC Merced or Fresno State would open when it&amp;#x27;s time for me to apply for assistant professor jobs.&lt;p&gt;If I can&amp;#x27;t find a place in the next few years that is affordable on an $80,000&amp;#x2F;year salary in California, then I have to move.  I&amp;#x27;d like to move to a place where a 3-bedroom house in a safe neighborhood costs no more than $400,000, and where there is a diverse population.  Ideally I&amp;#x27;d like to live in a place that doesn&amp;#x27;t get too cold in the winter; I&amp;#x27;d rather deal with very hot summers (I grew up in Sacramento where it regularly gets above 100 in the summer) than to deal with cold winters.</text></item><item><author>gautamcgoel</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a PhD student at Caltech. I&amp;#x27;d love to stay in CA and become a prof at one of the world-renown universities in the state. The cost for a nice house is &amp;gt; $800K in all of the cities hosting these universities; on top of that, the state income tax on a prof&amp;#x27;s salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nradov</author><text>I wish you luck but even in CS there aren&amp;#x27;t many tenure track positions open. You might have to move to another state to pursue your career, regardless of housing costs.</text></comment>