Hi Earthlings,
If you read my last post you are probably aware that I travelled to California recently to visit the beautiful city of Santa Cruz. I ended up extending my stay by an extra two days, and let me tell you, it is quite a time to be there right now. In case you aren’t already aware, there is a graduate student strike happening at the University of California, Santa Cruz, one that has made many headlines. However, I am writing today not to give my opinion on the strike, but to talk about a separate issue that has only gotten worse in California with in the past years. The mention of the graduate strike, however, isn’t completely irrelevant. Both the strike and the issue I plan on talking about highlight the impossibility of being able to afford rent in California due to the high cost of living. I used to live in the Bay Area for quite some time and decided to leave California some 16 years ago due to financial strain. You may be wondering how a God like myself who possesses light speed, the only being on Earth who knows the complete truth of your existence, can experience financial problems, but where I come from, I am an underpaid human-obsessed journalist receiving limited funding for carrying out my travels and observations of your world. In a way, I too identify with the graduate students who are just trying to make ends meet to pursue whatever their passion is. For this reason, I deeply empathize with their circumstances. My recent travels didn’t just stop at Santa Cruz, I ended up extending my stay in the Golden State and explored the entire Bay Area. I visited my old neighborhood, my secret spot where I used to write my weekly reports, the church where I got married. In some ways, it hadn’t changed too much. It still looked similar, enough for me to recognize the places I had regularly visited. In more ways, though, it was completely different. The generations of families I had witnessed grow up were all gone, the ambience had changed. San Francisco isn’t what it used to be. Everything is now overpriced, targeting tourists and residents alike. Back when I first moved there taking a cable car only cost me 25 cents, now they’re 7 dollars. With an average one bedroom apartment costing a whopping $3,700 a month, the only people that can afford to live there anymore are Silicon Valley techies who have taken over the city. Even though San Francisco has probably the worst case of price inflation, sadly it’s extended to the rest of California. This time that I visited happened to overlap with a recent news story that I found from KSBW8, that stated that between the years 2007 and 2016, 5 million residents moved out of California, while 6 million OG Californians moved out. According to the US Census Bureau, the majority of those that moved in make over 200,000 dollars a year. People are being left no other option than to abandon their roots, part ways with their families, and consider futures in other places. It’s a pity that only the wealthy California natives for the most part have the option of staying close to home.
Huck.
The Issue With Your Kind 