Valoria Russell-Benson was born and raised in San Francisco, but when she couldn’t afford to raise a family there, she moved across the bay to San Leandro. When her landlord converted her apartment into a condo, the nurse’s assistant moved to Vacaville.
Russell-Benson still visits her hometown five days per week, when she climbs into her 21-year-old Honda Accord and drives nearly two hours to her job at Laguna Honda Hospital.
She’s part of the diaspora of low- to middle-income ex-San Franciscans whose stories illustrate how their hometown has changed. It’s not only expensive to live in San Francisco, it’s getting harder to commute to work there.
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