But this isn’t so.
Just because it's been said before doesn't make it untrue. San Francisco is in fact not an easy or great place for those with children but not wealth.
I think what makes San Francisco a target is that it isn't a great place for those without children who would be classified as wealthy in any other part of the country.
You can probably find a path to home ownership in a safe neighborhood with decent services in any city in the country if you are in the upper quartile of incomes for that area.
The housing prices in San Francisco are such that most incomes even in the upper quartile would take a decade to save for a downpayment. You need two incomes (Two working parents) in the upper quartile of incomes in the area to get you to home ownership in a good neighborhood.
I don't follow.
As you said yourself, in most places in the U.S., a middle or upper-middle class family can afford to live in a home big enough for a family (which by global standards, is likely big enough for two or three families). And the home's in a safe neighborhood. What prevents this scenario from being great?
But the 80s and 90s -- through the first Dotcom crash -- were also a different era. The Economist considered the US the #1 country to be born in 1988, and only #16 in 2013. This is reflected in the fall in the number of good middle-class jobs, housing affordability, health care costs, traffic and infrastructure, and overall declining quality of factors.