Kate Warren for The New York Times

Lexa Walsh and Daniel Nelson spent years making a comfortable life in the art community in Oakland, Calif., after meeting at a 2004 New Year’s Eve party hosted by some mutual friends in Berkeley.

“This handsome guy opened the door and said, ‘Hi Lexa. Do you want to have the first kiss at midnight?,’” Ms. Walsh said.

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That kiss eventually led to a June 2009 wedding at the Redwood Grove and Amphitheater at the University of California, Berkeley’s Botanical Garden. Over the years, Ms. Walsh worked as an artist and a personal chef, while Mr. Nelson worked in marketing. And they watched uncomfortably as the city became more expensive and less artistic, especially in the years surrounding the pandemic.

“The tech-ification of the Bay Area was sickening and scraped any bit of joy out of it,” said Ms. Walsh, 58. She was particularly put off, she said, by the so-called “orange skies day” in September 2020, when wildfire smoke mixed with fog and turned the northern California sky an apocalyptic hue.