Valoria Russell-Benson was born and raised in San Francisco, but when she couldn’t afford to raise a family there, she moved across the bay to San Leandro. When her landlord converted her apartment into a condo, the nurse’s assistant moved to Vacaville.

Russell-Benson still visits her hometown five days per week, when she climbs into her 21-year-old Honda Accord and drives nearly two hours to her job at Laguna Honda Hospital.

She’s part of the diaspora of low- to middle-income ex-San Franciscans whose stories illustrate how their hometown has changed. It’s not only expensive to live in San Francisco, it’s getting harder to commute to work there.

6 miles in 5 years

The median commute distance for people who work in San Francisco and earn less than $40,000 jumped from 9 miles in 2008 to almost 15 miles in 2013, according to a study by Zillow. The commute for those making more than $40,000 remained relatively unchanged over that period.

Commutes are getting so long that fewer low- and middle-wage workers who live outside San Francisco are applying for jobs in the city.

Big drop in applicants

Since March, the number of applicants who live outside of San Francisco has dropped 30 percent on Staffly, a startup that performs job interviews, screenings and background checks for independent retailers in the city. Most jobs listed on Staffly pay between $13 and $21 per hour.

Between the cost of gasoline and parking, people who have to drive into the city for work “don’t make a profit — it’s so expensive,” said Marissa Ovick, Staffly co-founder and chief operating officer.

Back to Gallery Commutes to San Francisco get longer for those earning... 2 1 of 2 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 2 of 2 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle



Such an exodus isn’t economically sustainable as “no city can pretend to have only high-income workers,” said Aaron Terrazas, senior economist at Zillow who conducted the study. “You need workers to do all sorts of jobs from construction to food service to tech. Every functioning economy needs workers at all levels.”

Some of those levels are disappearing.

Between 2009 and 2014, the number of San Francisco households earning $75,000 to $100,000 dropped by 1.2 percentage points, from 11.8 percent of the city to 10.6 percent, according to new census data.

“The nurses that I work with — none live in San Francisco,” Russell-Benson said. “I’m talking all three shifts.”

At 56 years old with her earning power plateauing, she is part of the generation that can never afford to live in San Francisco again.

‘Reach that dream’

She and others moved because “everybody wants a piece of the American dream and the American dream is to own a piece of property. And you can’t do that in San Francisco. You gotta go to other counties and cities to reach that dream. You can’t do that in the city and county where you were born.”

She still doesn’t own property. After raising four children largely on her own — three of whom graduated from college — she lives with her parents, who also fled San Francisco’s high prices. Her parents both worked in the city for 35 years, her father as a longshoreman, her mother a nurse at Laguna Honda.

Russell-Benson wanted to emulate them. But she had to move out of the city in 2004, when she couldn’t find a three-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood where she wanted to raise her kids. She made too much to qualify for federal housing subsidies, but not enough to afford rent.

“You’re trying to be a taxpaying citizen and do your fair share in the community, but …,” she trailed off.

Russell-Benson enjoys her job. And she’s close enough to earning her pension that she stays — even as the cost of keeping her job has increased and become more stressful.

$75 monthly to park

She used to pay nothing to park at the hospital; now it’s $75 a month. While traffic on the Bay Bridge has increased by 11 percent since 2010, at least she doesn’t have to deal with too much of it driving to work. She leaves home at 9 p.m. to arrive on time for her 11 p.m. shift. There’s a bit more traffic when she leaves the hospital at 7:30 a.m.

But she stays because she can’t afford not to stay.

“I’m 56 years old and I’ve got 21 years vested there,” she said. “I don’t want to start all over.”

Joe Garofoli is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli