If things are bad enough in southern California, I can see it playing out that refugee outflow from there doesn't manage to constitute a wave, at least not by the time it would be getting to the San Francisco area. Probably spells the doom of intact communities closer in to the LA/San Diego metroplex that might have, left to their own devices, survived.
I think the biggest foundational impediment to resettlement programs that repurpose surplus labor from urban areas into agricultural field hands will be people wrapping their head around that being the extent of government help. Initially, the logic of insisting the government should provide such assistance as is needed for someone to be able to keep their home, some semblance of their lifestyle, etc., will probably keep voluntary enrollment low. As people get hungry this will change. It's probably not a smooth transition at all, even in places where it works -- I'd expect rioting and turmoil, in suburbs as well as the more stereotypical inner city areas. Maybe even more unrest in the suburbs as members of the middle class with completely irrelevant job skills stare at the prospects of being turned into farm field hands at the bottom of the new pecking order.
At the same time, I expect that many will get onboard with the new scheme of things when the alternative is simply starving and watching their families starve. By 2000, in a lot of places, all this drama will have played out a couple years earlier, during the first post-nuke winter and subsequent planting season.
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