Myles Hannan considers himself a happy guy. He likes his job as an EMT for an ambulance company in Alameda County. He loves his fiancée.
But with the Bay Area’s notoriously high cost of living, he’s putting what he considers the most important things in life — marriage and children — on hold. The couple is “constantly smashing the piggy bank” to keep up with their bills instead. If they could afford a wedding, they’d be married by now.
Linsey Dinh, 24, and her fiancé, Myles Hannan, 25, sit on the couch while watching television in their apartment in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. Myles and Linsey live in a 750-square-foot apartment and have put off their wedding for another year because of the expense of living in the Bay Area. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
And kids?
“Children are definitely on the back burner,” he said. “All the questions we have and concerns we have, all come down to that — we pretty much just cannot afford another person.”
Delaying marriage and children is one of many ways Bay Area residents are adjusting their lives to compensate for the region’s outsized expenses — everything from housing to electricity seems to cost more here than almost anywhere else.
A new survey conducted by the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a regional economic think tank based in San Jose, found that nearly a third of respondents say they have delayed starting a family because of financial pressures.
Another 44% say they have skipped or delayed medical care because of high costs, and just as many say they are working extra hours or taking on additional jobs to make ends meet. One in four say they started doing gig work, such as driving for Lyft or delivering groceries, and one in three say they have taken on roommates or moved in with relatives.
“We’re not talking about people converting to 1% milk over 2% milk because it’s a few pennies cheaper,” said Russell Hancock, Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s president and CEO. “We’re talking about people making major life decisions that impact the quality of the lives that we lead.”
Asked what increased most in cost over the past year, nearly two out of three said groceries, half said housing and a third utilities, the poll found. Restaurants and entertainment, taxes, health care and insurance also ranked high. Inflation rose 1.5% in the Bay Area over the past year, with similar increases in rent seen in several Bay Area counties, while the region’s median home price in August was up 2.8% over a year earlier. With prices already high, those upticks are keenly felt.
Many in the Bay Area are coping with the cost of living by eating out less. Also, 64% of poll respondents say they are cutting back on groceries and other necessities. Above, a woman shops for bread at a grocery store in Alameda. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The most obvious effect of the Bay Area’s high cost of living — homelessness — is in plain sight and remains the subject of relentless political handwringing and billions in spending. But this survey of 1,743 adults in the Bay Area counties of Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and San Francisco, conducted in mid-August, lays bare the daily travails of those with a roof over their heads who are barely making it here despite their hard work.
“We live in a strange world where the economy is booming, but not all of the people here are fully participating or feeling better off,” Hancock said. “This is a place that’s hard to live. The costs are prohibitive, and it means that people are constantly going to be asking, is it in my interest to stay here?”
Hancock’s three children, all in their 30s, have been asking themselves the same thing: his daughter and son-in-law moved to Utah last year to afford a house; his son and daughter-in-law in the health care industry are living in an ADU and getting a rent break by helping an elderly couple living in the main house; and his eldest daughter and son-in-law with high-paying tech jobs and four children are “living on top of each other” in a rental.
Linsey Dinh, 24, wipes down the kitchen table after dinner in the Oakland apartment she shares with her fiancee, Myles. The cost of housing in the Bay Area is just one of the many financial pressures that have forced the couple to delay their wedding for another year. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Hannan, 25, the EMT who lives in West Oakland with his fiancée, Linsey Dinh, considers their studio apartment a “great deal” at $2,000 a month. Last year, he worked three jobs before he signed on with the ambulance company, and is working 60-hour weeks with extra shifts to make ends meet. Dinh is working in research and paying off her student loans from her UC Berkeley master’s degree. The couple makes about $120,000 a year combined. But he’s still paying off the $2,000 engagement ring.
“It feels like everything is like, you have to fight for,” Hannan said, “and you have to work extra, extra hard to secure jobs, let alone hit our goals in life.”
As the poll suggests, the financial stresses are shared around the Bay Area and affect numerous demographics: from teachers to tech workers, single parents to married couples, those just starting out and those nearing retirement.
Nearly half of those surveyed in the poll, which has a margin of error of 2.6% percentage points, say they have settled for smaller or lower-quality housing than they wanted.
David Stolowitz, a 42-year-old comedian and entertainer who is barely getting by putting on trivia nights and doing odd gardening jobs, is living with his disabled partner on ranch property in South San Jose’s Coyote Valley, renting a plot for a rundown trailer they are still paying off.
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“Everything is constantly breaking all the time, the lights, the USB connections, the power, the fans,” he said. “At least I can still make people laugh. That makes me happy. It doesn’t really pay the bills, but it’s good for my mental health.”
Dorrie Lane, 73, a semi-retired women’s health educator who was evicted from the San Francisco apartment she once shared with her family when a new owner took over, is struggling to afford a one-bedroom apartment in an affordable housing complex in Oakland.
“I am happy and I’m grateful that I found a place, but I hate it,” Lane said. “It’s like, you don’t get to live in a neighborhood that isn’t next to a freeway.”
Even with Medicare benefits, the longtime smoker skipped an annual CT scan of her lungs because she can’t afford the $200 co-pay.
Andrew Vierra, 21, a West Valley student who lives with his grandfather and bikes to his full-time job at Ace Hardware because his car broke down, struggled to decide whether to proceed with a dental implant on his front tooth that would cost him $6,000 out of pocket.
“It set me back quite a ways,” Vierra said. “But it was kind of like that or a new car.”
For Amy Savage, a 59-year-old Piedmont Unified school teacher, retirement may be further off than she and her husband had planned. The couple makes about $180,000 annually — a solid income, it seems, just about anywhere but the Bay Area. They have two sons in their 20s, and her family’s health insurance cost is doubling to $900 a month. Despite a low mortgage rate, they struggle with property taxes and home repairs. She’s driving a 13-year-old car and has prolonged the time between haircuts, and hasn’t had a facial or manicure and pedicure “in I can’t remember when.”
She’s taking every extra tutoring job she can land to help.
“We never go out to eat,” Savage said. “I’m a really big cook, but now I travel to two to three different grocery stores because I am trying to get the best price on everything. I’m close to 60 years old. I just didn’t expect it to be this hard.”
Nonetheless, Savage’s lifestyle — owning a home and raising two children — is the envy of the Bay Area’s next generation.
Hannan and Dinh, who have lived in studio apartments together around the East Bay for the past four years, worry that by the time they can afford to have children, they might have trouble conceiving, like some of their friends in their 30s.
“It just seems unattainable, like we can afford to support ourselves and our two cats and that’s fine,” Dinh said, “but adding a child into it seems much more difficult.”
But this is home. Hannan grew up here, and when Dinh first visited UC Berkeley from her home in San Bernardino, she thought, “Oh my God, I’m going to live here forever.”
So far, they haven’t changed their minds.
