If we didn’t need to stay close to raise our granddaughter we’d be gone.
Same here but I've got four. Ten years till the youngest is 18.
Our situation is caring for my wife's elderly mom (in her mid-90s with dementia), besides babysitting a granddaughter. Our eldest daughter and her husband and kids left SF for Iowa. She said it was too expensive here, and her husband was homesick for Des Moines where he was raised. She had a good job here, making over $150G and gave it up. In Des Moines they bought a run-down mansion for $80G, owning it outright now, and remodeled it into what would be a luxury home in SF. Easy going life now, no congestion, friendly people, with a lake, parks, museums, library, schools and cafes within walking distance. Plenty of normal folks there. That's where my wife and I will probably move. A younger daughter of ours lived in Austin Texas for some years, but came back here to the SF Bay Area. She missed the cosmopolitan stuff of the Bay Area (Austin is a dead zone in comparison). Higher costs but she has a good-paying job. It isn't all bad here, if you can afford it, because there is a lot to offer in California if you ignore the liberals and live in pockets of conservative areas.