F I R S TP R E V832NEXTLAST

The Disappearing the Middle Class
Two views of Macy's Union Square on Friday night, a shopper's stretch limo and a man praying for spare change outside the main entrance. These photos didactically demonstrate the stratification of San Francisco social classes. The fact is that low and middle-income residents are steadily leaving the city while in the last four years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the number of households making between $150,000 and $199,999 grew by more than 50 percent and those earning more than $200,000 jumped by more than 40 percent.

And it's not just San Francisco, the Bay Area's number of households with $5 million in liquid wealth that risen 500% in the last 10 years. There are now nearly 300,000 millionaire and 50,000 multi-millionaire households here. While those calculations do not include home values, much of this shift in median wealth is due to the cost of homes. In the city it takes a household annual income of $200,000 just to afford a median-priced home.

It is not hard to imagine the problems it creates when teachers, firemen, and policemen cannot afford to live in the areas that they serve. Another causality of the city's high prices are married couples with children. San Francisco's changing demographics have resulted in the unusual situation of a city where there are more dogs than children.
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