Here's a story that cuts against the dominant narrative — the one where everyone's fleeing San Francisco for cheaper pastures and better vibes.

A 37-year-old woman who's called SF home for 15 years recently found herself approved for an apartment in Oakland's Adam's Point neighborhood. Twice the square footage of her Rincon Hill junior one-bedroom. Parking included. Eight hundred and fifty dollars cheaper per month. On paper, the math was obvious.

Then she was sitting in Berkeley eating mochi donuts, looked across the water at the city skyline, and started crying.

She turned down the apartment. She's staying.

Now, before you roll your eyes — yes, this is sentimental. And yes, at The Dissent we spend a lot of time talking about how San Francisco's cost of living is absurd, how City Hall hemorrhages money on programs that don't work, and how too many residents are priced out by policies that restrict housing supply and drive up rents. All of that is true.

But here's the thing: the reason San Francisco is expensive is because people actually want to live here. Demand is the compliment nobody wants to pay. And individual choices about where to spend your money are the purest expression of economic liberty there is. This woman ran the numbers, weighed them against her own happiness, and made a free, informed decision. That's not irrational — that's the market working exactly as it should.

The real question city leaders should be asking is: why does choosing to stay in SF require an $850-a-month sacrifice in the first place? Why is a junior one-bedroom in Rincon Hill so expensive that a corporate employee with 15 years of Bay Area tenure has to agonize over it?

The answer, as always, is supply. Decades of restrictive zoning, Byzantine permitting, and neighborhood opposition to new housing have made staying in San Francisco a luxury decision rather than a normal one.

As one local put it, reflecting on their own love for the city: "Yes, things are expensive here, but your love of San Francisco makes those of us who also moved to the Bay Area love it more and know it is worth living here."

That's a beautiful sentiment. But sentimentality shouldn't be a prerequisite for affording your apartment. San Francisco should be a city where loving it and living comfortably in it aren't mutually exclusive — where you don't have to choose between your happiness and your savings account.

The $850 question isn't really about one woman's rent. It's about a city that keeps making it harder for the people who love it most to stay.