Economy may cool, poll respondents say

Drought beats housing as top Bay Area concern

Bay Area residents see the region’s economy as robust but may be starting to fear that the boom will start to cool a bit before long, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

“There’s a lot of attention on how hot the tech sector is, but there may be a concern that we are reaching a high water mark here,” said Rufus Jeffris, spokesman for the Bay Area Council, which released the report as part of its 2015 annual poll of residents in the nine-county region.

About 24 percent of Bay Area residents listed the California drought as the top concern for the region, the poll determined.

Other problems related to quality of life were left in the dust, well behind concerns about the drought in the Golden State. A distant No. 2 on the list of concerns was the cost of housing, with 15 percent of respondents listing that as the top problem. No. 3 was the cost of living, with 14 percent listing that as the primary problem, according to the poll.

“Residents may be thinking that something has to give,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council. “Intensifying concerns about the drought, housing crisis and growing traffic may be coloring residents’ economic outlook.”

The poll found that 55 percent of Bay Area residents think the region is on the right track, while 28 percent think it’s headed in the wrong direction. Those numbers were little changed from the results for 2014.

“Bay Area residents remain generally upbeat about the overall direction the Bay Area is heading,” Wunderman said.

A significant change was registered when people were asked about the Bay Area economy compared with six months ago, however.

In the 2015 poll, about 46 percent of Bay Area residents believe the region’s economy is doing better compared with six months ago. In the 2014 poll, that number was 53 percent.

The poll found that 11 percent believe the Bay Area economy is worse off, compared with 8 percent in the 2014 poll.

The outlook for the future is somewhat weaker, the poll found.

The 2015 survey determined that 39 percent of those surveyed think the Bay Area economy will be better off six months from now, while in 2014, that number was 50 percent.

Lower income residents are less optimistic about the Bay Area economy.

While 58 percent of residents from households making $125,000 or more a year think the economy is doing better today than six months ago, only 43 percent of residents from households making $75,000 or less annually think the economy is doing better.

“The concerns about the drought, housing and transportation are something to be aware of from a policy perspective,” Jeffris said. “The poll results create imperatives for addressing these issues.”