Majority in poll say they're likely to move away from California's Bay Area in the coming few years

A bit more than half of respondents (56%) in a poll indicated that they are likely to leave California's Bay Area during the coming few years.

A whopping 30% agreed strongly with the sentence, "I am likely to move out of the Bay Area in the next few years," while 25% somewhat agreed, 19% somewhat disagreed, and 25% strongly disagreed.

For the people likely to leave the region, 84% indicated that the overall cost of living represents a major factor in why they would consider departing, while 77% indicated high housing costs represent a major reason, and 62% indicated quality of life represents a major reason.

But even among the minority of individuals unlikely to exit the area in the coming years, 14% desire to move but cannot do so.

A strong majority believe that the issue of homelessness has worsened in their area in the last year, with 46% indicating that it is much worse and 27% saying that the issue has grown somewhat worse.

The poll found that 37% viewed crime as an extremely serious problem in their area, while 27% consider it a very serious problem.

The cost of housing (76%), cost of living (68%), and homelessness (66%) were ranked as extremely serious issues.

"The Silicon Valley Poll is a survey of 1,610 registered voters in five Bay Area counties (Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Costa)," the poll explains. "The survey was placed in the field September 21-26, 2021 by Embold Research, a division of Change Research Inc., on behalf of Joint Venture Silicon Valley and its research arm, the Institute for Regional Studies."

"It's housing, stupid," president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley Russell Hancock said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "That is driving almost all of the results we see in this poll."

Walgreens is planning to close down five more of its San Francisco store locations next month because of "organized retail crime."

"Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that," a Walgreens spokesperson noted in a statement, according to Fox Business. "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."