California man commutes 4 hours daily to save 4,500-USD rent in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 21 (NsNsNewsWire) — A young man living in northern California commutes about four hours and 224 km to and from work every day to save an exorbitant rent in San Francisco that amounts to as high as 4,500 U.S. dollars a month, a report of the CNBC news outlet said Monday, reports Xinhua
The 30-year-old man, Danny Finlay, gets up at 4:30 a.m every morning and sets out on a two-hour journey to public relations firm SutherlandGold in San Francisco where he works as an account executive.
He usually leaves work at 4:00 p.m. and gets home at about 6:00 p.m. at the end of work on each five-day workday.
Finlay is one of many super commuters in the Bay Area who are scared away by the skyrocketing housing prices in San Francisco, where the total cost of living is more than 62 percent higher than the national average in the United States, the CNBC report said.
The median rent in San Francisco is 4,500 dollars and the housing in the city is nearly three times more expensive than in other U.S. cities, according to the Council for Community and Economic Research.
The crazy housing prices have make it hard for people like Finlay to afford an apartment in San Francisco, which is full of job opportunities but hardly a home for Finlay and his peers.
Finlay pends about 1,000 hours commuting each year, or about 43 full days on the road. Given the unaffordable housing in San Francisco, where median home prices costs well over 1 million dollars, Finlay was forced to settle down in the rural town of Dixon, about 100 km northeast of San Francisco.
A report of home investment firm Unison said in April this year that the San Francisco metro area is the “least affordable in the country, with an annual salary of 231,216 dollars needed to buy the median home.”
Anyone who wants to buy a home in the city itself needs to make an average salary of 349,650 dollars every year, said the Unison report.  Enditem