There’s definitely an element of frog boiling but I also think the jolt of the pandemic forced people to reevaluate their situations.

BTW SF was itself a gold rush town, and its tolerance for weirdness* is often attributed to that.

* said tolerance for weirdness has seriously declined over the last couple of decades as people moved in for reasons other than that variety.

I'm not sure about the numbers but I would guess that the sf evacuation is worse than the rest of the valley. It's just from what I've heard and not sure about how well it holds true for everyone that has left but have heard that people mainly lived there for convenience to be close to work or because they liked having fun at bars and stuff. Bars are tame now and this probably sounds bad but it's become more sketchy with the large homeless population in some areas and some areas are an open restroom and not sure of anyone that wants to live in an area like that. I'm not sure how to properly help the homeless population but the current status quo doesn't seem tenable.