Eric Swalwell: “The bay area is a beautiful place to live. It is 80 degrees there this week. It is one of the most educated places in…”

“The bay area is a beautiful place to live. It is 80 degrees there this week. It is one of the most educated places in the world. It has an innovation economy that is charting the course for the new American economy and is really defining how the American worker is going to work going forward. But the biggest downfall, the downside, if there is any in the bay area right now, is the cost of living. It costs so much to own a house. It costs so much for health care and starting a business. There are so many costs to be in the bay area today that it is pricing out young people. So if you go to a good school, you are qualified, you make it to a good school, you take on the student loan debt, and you want to go into the workforce, with the debt that you carry, first, chances are you are not going to be able to live anywhere near where you are going to work because you are not going to be able to afford it. I had the California Association of Realtors in my office today. Our local rep, Otto Catrina, was telling me how hard it is for him. He told me the story today of somebody who works at one of the largest tech companies in America. This person makes, he said, over $100,000 a year. And because of the student loan debt that she has, she is having a very, very difficult time buying a house. That is somebody who makes over $100,000 a year, and that is in the upper echelon of incomes in our country.…”