San Francisco (AFP)

"People are leaving San Francisco, and they take their jobs with them," says Kilby Stenkamp, ​​a real estate agent in the Californian city where we now see more "moving trucks" than "cranes".

The capital of Silicon Valley is changing its face, as many tech workers leave the city for cheaper and larger housing in the north, east and even in other states Americans.

In mid-March, San Francisco was one of the very first American cities to implement partial containment and adopt social distancing measures, to counter the coronavirus pandemic.

Almost 6 months later, many of them are still in place, and some residents have spent the summer wondering: to leave or to stay?

"In another time, we wouldn't have wanted to move because we saw our friends all the time with children of the same age as ours. But now, we are barely in contact with them", says Kyla Brown, while the movers set up his furniture in his new home in El Cerrito, 15 miles northeast of San Francisco.

For this consultant and her husband, a tech engineer, the prolonged closure of schools was a determining factor.

"We both telecommute, and my parents live 10 minutes away ... that allows us to have a babysitting solution nearby."

- Move bytes, not atoms -

San Francisco is home to the headquarters of many technology companies.

In downtown areas, Twitter and Slack (collaborative software for businesses) announced that most of their employees can now work from home indefinitely.

Photo platform Pinterest paid nearly $ 90 million to cancel an office rental lease under construction.

South of the city, Silicon Valley is the realm of tech giants, who have easily implemented teleworking.

At Google and Facebook, the return to Mountain View and Menlo Park won't take place until summer 2021, at best.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg predicts that half of his tens of thousands of employees will be able to work from home permanently within 5 to 10 years.

"Today, it is easier to move bytes than atoms, so I prefer that our teams teleport by video or virtual reality rather than being stuck in traffic polluting the environment", joked the CEO .

Many employees of the social network are indeed delighted to escape the two hours a day in specially chartered buses.

Romain Daubec, a French financial analyst, and his American wife, a Facebook employee, live in the Mission district, ideally located for taking the shuttle.

They got a 13% rent cut during the crisis, but decided to leave anyway.

"The cost of living remains very high, there is not much to do in the city, many of our friends have left ...", lists Romain.

- Shuffle the cards -

The couple set their sights on Denver, Colorado, some 2,000 km away, to "stay in a close time zone", "enjoy the mountains all around", and also save money, by living in a three-room equivalent. , but 30% cheaper.

Ultimately, companies want to adjust wages according to place of residence.

But states like Colorado or Texas, another popular destination that seeks to attract developers, also tax their residents much less.

In San Francisco, in the city center, the exodus of the "techies" results in skyscrapers largely deserted, businesses that do not reopen, and certain streets mainly occupied by the homeless.

For the first time in years, rents have fallen, by an average of 10%.

At the same time, north of the bay, in rural Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties, house prices are rising visibly, according to several real estate agents.

Even the annual fires that plague these areas do not seem to deter demand.

In residential areas of San Francisco, on the other hand, selling prices do not drop much, and traders are not overly concerned.

"The cards are reshuffled", abounds Kilby Stenkamp.

"But now is the time to invest. Because at the end, after the earthquakes, after the internet bubble, people always come back."

© 2020 AFP