Sf is dense but SF is and has been for 70 years about 800k people. The bay area overall is around 7.7 million and the greater bay area is 10 million. Places like San Jose which take up a lot of the bay area are almost all suburb. That means even with long commutes to those high paying jobs houses are still 2+ million.
dredmorbius|3 years ago
SF hit 5000k in the 1920 census (506,676), 634k in 1930 and 1940, 775k in 1950k, which was its peak until the 2000 census, at 776k.
The first census besting 800k was 2010, and as of 2020, 873k.
Wikipedia shows the 2021 population as 815,201, a loss of 58,764 (6.72%). I'd heard the population had dropped, but that's a pretty significant town's worth of exits. The city of San Rafael in Marin Country, for example had 61,271 residents --- SF lost very nearly that.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco>