Fears that heavy housing costs could undercut Silicon Valley and the Bay Area’s economy have grown steadily in recent years as gains in wages have been outstripped by soaring rents and home prices.

Now a poll of 1,568 registered voters in the region done on behalf of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Bay Area News Group paints one of the starkest pictures yet of public dissatisfaction.

Those polled were nine times as likely to say life in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley had gotten worse over the past five years than to say it had gotten better. Forty-four percent of respondents said they wanted to move out of the region because of housing costs, bad traffic and declining quality of life; 6 percent intended to leave in the next year. African-Americans and Latinos were those most likely to want to move elsewhere.

But even 64 percent of homeowners – normally much more content than others in surveys on life satisfaction – said their lives had gotten worse.

The results produced yet another warning from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which has cautioned for years that the region will struggle to attract workers for tech and blue-collar jobs alike unless housing costs stop spiraling upward. The group’s CEO, Carl Guardino, told the San Jose Mercury-News that “not working at our weaknesses will come at our own peril.”

School districts launch own projects

Most of the cities in the region haven’t come close to meeting state goals for either affordable or market-rate housing. Recent new state laws meant to spur more housing construction have yet to pay off.

Meanwhile, school districts in and near San Francisco and Silicon Valley are increasingly impatient with the status quo and open to new approaches. Three districts which struggle to keep teachers from leaving for cheaper communities are going into the housing business to ensure teachers have affordable rents.

In Mountain View, the city plans to meet its state affordable-housing mandates by working with Los Gatos-based developer FortBay to build a 144-unit subsidized apartment building for use by Whisman School District teachers and other employees.

The Whisman district’s board backed a $56 million agreement that commits the district to lease the building for at least 55 years. The project could be finished by the end of 2021, depending on the pace of city approvals and other factors. Long-term funding options include bonds or certificates of participation (bond-like measures that don’t require voter approval).

District Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph has also voiced the hope that substantial gifts from philanthropic groups could reduce the cost to Whisman.

In Daly City, the Jefferson Union High School District is using a $33 million voter-approved bond to build 116 apartments for teachers and other employers.

The Palo Alto Unified School District is evaluating how to fund a 120-unit project for its employees.

Legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016 allows the districts to give housing preferences to their employees. It also gives them access to state and federal low-income housing credits.

Can districts afford housing subsidies?

A recent UC Berkeley study of teacher housing issues in Berkeley Unified showed strong support from employees for a similar approach in their district. More than half reported difficulty paying rent.

But to date, no study has examined the long-term financial feasibility of having districts provide subsidized housing, as is contemplated by the three districts pursuing construction plans.

Employee compensation already consumes 85 percent or more of most school districts’ general fund budgets. With districts’ pension contribution rates more than doubling from 2014 to 2020 as part of the bailout of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, dozens of districts are pleading poverty.

A new report on U.S. census data reinforces fears among Silicon Valley watchers that the world’s tech capital will struggle to maintain its prominence as it tries to attract and retain workers despite extremely high housing costs.

The Wall Street Journal report found that from July 2016 to July 2017, nearly 24,000 more people moved out of the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area than moved in from the rest of California and the United States. This is only a tiny fraction of the 4.7 million people who live in the region, but the exodus is nearly twice the size of what was seen in 2015-16. And as the Journal noted, it wasn’t long ago – in 2013-14 – that net U.S. migration in the area was plus 15,000.

The recent population declines came as Silicon Valley and the Bay Area experienced heavy growth. Normally such economic booms create so many well-paying jobs that it overcomes housing scarcity issues. That’s what has happened in North Dakota because of the fracking boom, but it’s no longer the case in Northern California.

This issue is why the San Jose-based Silicon Valley Leadership Group in February released a report that said the region was unlikely to continue to lead the U.S. in creating tech jobs without a big change in the housing status quo. If an infusion of new units didn’t happen, the report warned that $3,000-a-month rents and $2 million tabs for tract homes would become a daunting long-term obstacle for the region – not just because of the difficulty of competing for workers with other tech hubs like Seattle, Boston and Austin but because Silicon Valley would be unable to attract workers for regular jobs like teachers, police officers and grocery clerks. Housing prices were estimated to be twice as high in Silicon Valley as in Seattle and Boston and four times as high as in Austin.

‘It’s surprising how long the party has continued’

An official with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group was among those interviewed by the Journal. “In some ways, given house prices, it’s surprising how long the party has continued,” Brian Brennan said. Not only is it “hard to get the best talent outside of this region to come here and stay here,” he said, but Silicon Valley’s cost of living may be “driving out all those people who don’t have those kind of skills.”

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s data bears out the region’s weak record on adding housing. While there was a 29 percent increase in payroll jobs from 2010 to 2016 in the region, housing stock only increased by 4 percent. While it is difficult to pin how much of an increase in “extreme commuting” – 90 minutes or more each way – that Silicon Valley is seeing, it’s estimated that average commutes were nearly 20 percent longer in 2016 than in 2010, and have likely gotten worse since 2016.

Census Bureau data released in recent weeks also showed the contrast between Silicon Valley and other parts of California.

While Southern California also has a housing crisis caused by high costs and scarcity, its population grew from July 2016 to July 2017 – particularly in two counties. Riverside County added 37,000 residents and San Bernardino added 20,000 residents, both among the higher gains of any U.S. county.

In the more populated counties of Los Angeles and Orange, residents increased about 13,000 each – a much lower percentage of growth than seen in the Inland Empire.

A recent Los Angeles News Group review of population forecasts from another source – the California Department of Finance – included predictions that may surprise residents who think that Los Angeles County and Orange County will be “built out” and unable to grow more before too long.

Instead, the Finance Department predicts that Los Angele County’s population won’t peak until 2052 – when it reaches 11.28 million – and that Orange County’s population won’t peak until 2055, which it reaches 3.62 million.

Three times in the past 18 months, prominent journalistic organizations have questioned whether Silicon Valley has peaked. Leading off the bad-mouthing was the hometown San Jose Mercury News, which

That was followed by the London Guardian reporting in May 2017 that start-ups were increasingly likely to fail as the tech venture-capital model struggled, and by Bloomberg News reporting in September 2017 that the high cost of housing was leaving thousands of jobs unfilled.

This month, the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project, which is headed by the San Jose-based Silicon Valley Leadership Group, released a report on the region that was at least as bleak as the media accounts. It said Silicon Valley was still thriving and a global leader – but that it was unlikely to maintain its status as the U.S. pace-setter in creating tech jobs unless housing construction sharply increased, to end the upward spiral in rent and mortgage payments. A modest tract house can fetch more than $1 million in San Jose and triple that in wealthier suburbs. Rental costs, even in less affluent neighborhoods, are among the nation’s highest.

“The gap between job and housing growth is large and widening,” stated the report, which defined Silicon Valley as including the city-county of San Francisco, Santa Clara County and San Mateo County.

Many of the key findings were based on comparisons of where Silicon Valley stood in 2010 versus 2016. The study noted there was a 29 percent increase in payroll jobs during that span, but only a 4 percent increase in total housing units. As more people were forced to commute to Silicon Valley, the average commute lengthened by 18.9 percent over the six years.

“An average Silicon Valley commuter now spends 72 minutes commuting per day, round trip. This figure has grown marginally since last year and remains second only to the commute time of New York City workers, who spend 74 minutes commuting,” the report noted.

Region’s population fell despite economic boom

Silicon Valley saw another negative landmark in 2016. Despite a booming economy, the report cited U.S. Census Bureau population estimates showing the region had a slight decline in population.

The downbeat report came as no surprise to one former Silicon Valley resident: Santa Cruz attorney Kate Downing, who resigned from the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission and moved from the city in 2016 because her family could no longer handle Palo Alto’s housing costs. She told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We’re just not building enough housing. More correctly, cities are not permitting developers to build enough housing. … I think more affordable housing would have kept us in Silicon Valley.”

Lawmakers from the region have had some success in trying to make it easier to build homes in California. State Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, was the lead author of a bill enacted in 2017 that limits cities with bad records on new housing from preventing new projects that meet basic zoning rules.

This year, Weiner and co-authors Senator Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, have introduced Senate Bill 827. With exceptions, it would make it far easier to build small apartment-condo buildings up to 85 feet in height within a half-mile of a transit center.