Wow, California Housing Is Expensive

Which U.S. city has the highest rents? San Francisco, right? Maybe New York? Ummm, no.

San Ramon is an affluent (median household income: $151,327)1519243952024 San Francisco suburb of 75,639 that's probably best known outside the Bay Area as the headquarters of oil and gas giant Chevron Corp. I grew up a few miles away, in Lafayette, which is too small for the Census Bureau to provide single-year estimates but had a median gross rent of $1,816 from 2012 through 2016.

I dug up this data, which is derived from the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey and is available on the American FactFinder website, while working on my column last Thursday about housing in New York City. I was curious how rents in New York City compared with those nationwide. New York City's median gross rent of $1,351 in 2016 was indeed well higher than the national median of $981, but that ranked the city only 145th among the 599 cities, towns and census-designated places1519650793754 of around 65,000 people or more1519414689849 for which the Census Bureau released rent data for 2016. San Francisco -- median gross rent: $1,784 -- was much higher, but still only 37th nationwide.