Because of the high cost of living in San Francisco, a man spends 4 hours going to work and back from another city

Danny Finley, 30, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. every day to get to work on time—his office is 70 miles (113 km) from his home, so the commute takes about two hours each way.

Фото: Depositphotos

The man has been living like this for almost a year: every morning he goes to work in San Francisco from the small town of Dixon (California), where he lives with his wife Mireya, writes CNBC.

He used to get to the office for two hours, because he worked in Auckland, now he has a new job with an office in San Francisco.

Finley usually leaves home on 5: 10, there is usually no traffic jams at such an earlier time, although as traffic approaches San Francisco, traffic starts to thicken.

He doesn't always drive all the way in his car.

On days when he feels tired, he prefers public transport.

“I usually go to Fairfield, which is about 20 minutes from Dixon, then take the bus and 45 minutes later I’m in El Cerrito,” the man said.

From there, he also takes 45 minutes by train to San Francisco, his company’s office is located 10 minutes from the station.

On some days, he travels from Dixon to Pleasant Hill, and then takes the train to San Francisco.

He quits his job at 16: 00 and returns home around 18: 00.

In total, its daily route takes four hours and covers more than 140 miles (225 km). With a five-day work week, he spends about 1000 hours per year on the road, or about 43 full days.

Housing in San Francisco is too expensive

Finley makes this tremendous way to work every day because of the exorbitant housing prices in San Francisco. According to him, this city provides many opportunities for getting a job, but the cost of living there is too high.

According to the SmartAsset financial website, the cost of living in San Francisco is higher than the U.S. average of 62%. The average rent in the city is 4 500 dollars.

In New York, by comparison, the average rent is $2. In Boston, it is $950. In Washington, D.C. and Miami, the average rent is $2 and $750, respectively. And nationwide, the average rent is $2, which is almost three times less than in San Francisco.

RENTCafé lists the average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco as $3; two-bedroom - $261; with three bedrooms - $4.

If we talk about buying a home, the numbers are shocking even more: the average price of housing in San Francisco is more than 1 million dollars. Unison Investment Company has calculated that in order to buy a house in San Francisco, a person must have a salary of 349 650 dollars a year. For those who receive an average salary in the US, it will take 20 years to set aside 10% on the down payment for housing in San Francisco.

Such prices are observed not only in the city itself, but throughout the entire bay. For example, in Saratoga the average home price is over $3 million, in Palo Alto it's about $3,3 million, in Los Altos it's over $3,6 million, and in Atherton the average home will cost you almost $7 million .

Even for highly paid employees of Silicon Valley tech giants Facebook and Twitter, it's not always possible to afford housing in San Francisco.

Therefore, many sleep in their cars or leave the region.

In cities as distant from San Francisco as Dixon, you can still buy housing

Finley, a native of Dixon, lived in Los Angeles while attending college and stayed to work there after graduation. But after he got married, he and his wife decided to buy a house, and they chose Dickson, in which they both were born, and also because they could afford housing there.

Now they have a three-bedroom house with a pool, they pay 1600 dollars a month on the mortgage.

The cost of getting to work is also small. Finley spends less than 150 dollars a week on gasoline and public transport.

However, such long daily journeys have their drawbacks. For example, public transport is not always reliable.

“The other day it took me 3,5 hours to get home because there was an accident on the freeway and the bus never showed up,” Finley said.

And even when he returns home at his usual time, he doesn’t have enough time to rest and do something around the house, because he needs to go to bed early in order to leave for work on time.

“By the time I get home, I'm already pretty tired and there's a limited amount of time I can spend doing anything. I have to make a choice every day: would I rather watch TV tonight or go to the gym? Am I going for a run or walking the dog?” the man said.

Long trips to work are becoming increasingly popular in the US

Highly professional jobs are concentrated in several large cities with high housing prices, this creates problems for workers, and they are increasingly forced to get to the office for a long time from the cheaper for the life of human settlements.

On average, the US 1 of 36 passengers spend every day on a trip to the office and back 90 minutes. And this figure is growing. In 2005, there were 3,1 million people traveling to and from work for more than 90 minutes every day; they accounted for about 2,4% of all public transport passengers. In 2016, there were already 4 million, or almost 3% of the total number of passengers.

Of the ten largest cities with the largest proportion of people traveling long distances to offices, five are in California. This trend has also spread to the East Coast.

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