The Bay Area exodus has come to Mexico — is it hurting locals?

Published July 21, 2022

by Ariana Bindman, SFGATE

When 42-year-old Eden Reilly visited Mexico in November 2020 — the year the world changed and the event industry collapsed — she didn’t anticipate eventually leaving behind everything she knew in Oakland and living on a farm in San Miguel de Allende, a city in the state of Guanajuato three hours north of Mexico City. But nearly two years later, she still hasn’t returned to California, nor have many other Bay Area tech workers and restaurateurs who crossed the border and started a new life there.

While conservative outlets have explicitly blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom and inflation for this so-called exodus, former Bay Area residents like Reilly fled to Mexico for cultural, political and financial reasons. But, ironically, locals fear that young and wealthy Americans might already be gentrifying the area and bringing the housing crisis with them as a result.

“As of right now, I don’t feel any desire to be in the Bay Area or the United States,” Reilly says, citing the ongoing slew of mass shootings, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the relentless housing crisis.

Aside from having to work day and night to survive, Reilly says she left Oakland because living in the “shadow of Silicon Valley” and seeing the homelessness crisis firsthand felt shameful. According to data released in February 2022, the city’s reported population of unsheltered residents rose to 3,337, while more than 7,000 residents are unsheltered in Alameda County. “It was an issue for me, like it weighed on me,” she says. “This isn’t something that I could just walk by every day and not think about.”

Since giving up her $100,000 salary and moving to San Miguel, a colonial city in Guanajuato, she says life has become significantly easier — and comparable in terms of quality.

Instead of working full-time as a general manager at event production company Outstanding in the Field, she freelances and takes on gigs all over the world. Sometimes, she’ll pack up her stuff and spend a week exploring port cities like Veracruz. Or, she’ll buy a nice dinner for $25 that would cost nearly $100 in the U.S. She also now lives in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit with a washer and dryer in San Miguel’s downtown area for just 700 U.S. dollars – meanwhile, Reilly had been living in a rent-controlled apartment in Oakland for $1,100 before that.

“The quality of life that I’m able to have there is amazing,” she says. “I don’t have to work to live, you know? I can have more balance in my life.”

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