About 7.6% of San Francisco residents and 7.2% of Seattle residents said they're considering moving to a different city next year, the highest figures in the 15 largest metropolitan areas, according to data from the San Francisco Chronicle.
The survey, the largest regular national housing sample survey in the U.S. conducted once every two years by the Census Bureau, found that Democratic-led cities had the largest number of residents saying they wanted to move to another city.
Washington, D.C., was third at 6.8%, Detroit fifth at 6.6%, Atlanta sixth at 6.4% and Los Angeles eighth at 5.8%.
Crime in San Francisco skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with spikes in burglaries and motor vehicle thefts. The city reported 56 homicides in 2021, an increase from 2018 and 2019.
Crime in Seattle was up 20% in 2021, according to the Seattle Police Department, with 5,340 reports of violent crime compared to 4,466 in 2020. There were 42,049 reports of property crime in 2021, a 9% increase from 2020's 38,714.
So far this year, there have been 3,887 violent crime reports in Seattle, including 39 homicides; there were 42 last year.
San Francisco lost nearly 55,000 people (6.3% of its population) from July 2020 to July 2021, many because of the city's unsafe streets and rampant homelessness.
"San Francisco is at a tipping point, where public safety, the cleanliness of our streets, and the overall quality of life have become the paramount concerns," Presidio Bay Ventures founder K. Cyrus Sanandaji said in an essay published last month. "Like many, I am worried about its future."