Priced Out of the Promised Land

Jordana Willner

Originally published San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday July 30, 2000

The water cooler is a depressing place lately. Gone are the days of dot-com envy, protein-diet success stories, and travel logs from the new Ikea. They are yesterday's buzz, made obsolete by the trauma of the current housing market and the frustration it breeds in hard-working, respectably earning Bay Area residents.

When you earn enough money, require the space, and seek the tax benefits and privacy associated with the American Dream, a house seems a logical acquisition, right between a decent car and a decent crib. But the bewildered faces of Bay Area neighbors and colleagues indicate that the puzzle before us is anything but logical. In other professional climates, competitive salaries correlate with the means to buy quality housing. This is hardly the case here, however, and the wear and tear of being priced out of our own lifestyles is beginning to show.

Wherever people gather, the talk seems to hover around three distinct housing scenarios: people who can't afford to buy but can't afford not to, people who buy houses and the sacrifices they make, and people who strike gold by simply posting a ``For Sale'' sign outside their most humble of abodes. From the home-ownership-challenged to the homeowners themselves, horror stories circulate of depressing house-hunts, outrageous prices, marathon bidding, and the utter lack of quality house to which it all leads.

But then the talk changes. As the hopes of finding good deals on local houses ebb, there is a dreamlike, almost spooky quality to the tales that we formerly smug, self-satisfied Northern Californians now tell one another. In a string of too-good-to-be-true reports, we announce that the promised land of affordable quality living is actually . . . somewhere else.

Somewhere, beyond the Bay Area's borders, people are reputed to work eight-hour days, own houses with yards and actually visit those yards now and then because they only work eight-hour days. Somewhere, out in that vast country that we usually consider California garnish, a renter is someone who is saving money for a dream house he or she will actually be able to afford, and ``house poor'' is not the automatic default circumstance of the average home owner. Did you know, we taunt each other, that you can buy a seven-bedroom suburban masterpiece in Maryland for $198,000? Or that $250,000 buys you an entire city block in Maine? Who knows if it's true -- the fact that our interest is piqued and that those of us who fled the East Coast might actually consider returning speaks volumes for the dissatisfaction breeding on our local grounds.

Remember back when Northern California was the promised land?

No more. When you work so hard to achieve and maintain a certain quality of life that you have no quality of life, it may be time to get out. That's certainly what my friends and colleagues are saying. Sure, the region is diverse, sunny and mild, friendly and liberal, but is it worth the sacrifices and frustration? They think not.

Colleen is getting out. She and her partner plan to save enough California-salary cash for a down payment that will buy them a real house -- you know, the hearty, suburban kind with a garage and everything -- back home in the East.

Thomas is getting out. He plans to make himself so vital to his company that they will invite him to telecommute full time -- from a sprawling ranch in Montana.

Michelle's getting out. When her significant other moved out of state, she considered ending the relationship. But when she visited him and saw the hunk of house she could acquire for the cost of a San Francisco bathtub, her love suddenly knew no bounds.

Me, I flirt with the idea. I didn't move back to California looking for a bargain, but I did expect that hard work would equal the means for a decent living situation. Feeling the odds so stacked against that outcome now, I have to wonder if investing in a life here is the most sensible choice for my long-range plans of financial independence and relative freedom and mobility.

Perhaps it is indeed time to pioneer in reverse toward communities that are actually livable. Trouble is, other places are not the Bay Area. They lack the open minds, rich diversity, idyllic weather, picturesque vistas, and -- let's face it -- they lack the glamour. They're not the best place on Earth, they are just part of the scenery.

Yet, faced with the alternative of a self-perpetuating local work-and-spend cycle, the lunchroom lips wonder seriously how much of the Bay Area could only exist here, and how much we could resurrect elsewhere.

Talk is the only cheap thing left in the Bay Area. But if the talkers back their verbal investments with action, no real estate boom will compensate for the record losses we will suffer. I wonder who among us will be left to notice.

--Jordana Willner wrote a monthly "Next Generation" column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999, 2000, and 2001