It's easy to confuse our own personal bubbles with the general population. There's nothing inconsistent about you living in an area with low life satisfaction and a poll that says 60% of people across the entire country have high life satisfaction.
The way you describe your home town sounds depressing and it's easy to believe that they wouldn't be part of the 60% of Americans rating themselves as thriving in this poll. However, what you're describing is very far from the norm for towns in America. Occurs too often, yes, but it's not what life in the average American city looks like.
> Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job.
The entire Bay Area represents around 2% of the US population. It's not expected that a national poll would reflect the realities of a single geographic region.
That said, I have several friends and extended families starting families in the Bay Area who are very happy with their circumstances.
> Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt.
The poll said 60% of Americans see themselves as "thriving". That doesn't meant that no one is struggling. It's important to look at these polls as ways to get a glimpse of life outside of our own bubbles. It's also important to view them as a distribution rather than a binary outcome.