Here are a few thoughts about leaving San Francisco…(in the form of an essay.) after a long blogging hiatus!!!! (creak!!!!!)
The Bug is lounging in bed one recent morning when she asks a curve-ball question about our upcoming cross-country move.
“So will we come back to Sanchez Street?” she asks, in her matter of fact way.
Translation: Kate thinks that when we move to Boston in June it will be temporary and we will return to our San Francisco apartment.
“Honey it’s not a visit,” I tell her. “We’re going to live there for good.”
“So who’s going to live in our house?” she asks.
“Well, someone else will move into our place. And we will move to our new house in Boston.”
She pauses. I’m not sure if she understands it’s not a vacation.
Two days later I get my answer.
“When will we go back to Sanchez Street after Boston?” she asks.
Hmmmm. This is going to be tougher than I thought.
The thing about leaving this place after nine years is that I, like Kate, am in denial.
I love my neighbors. We share a book club. I swap babysitting duties with Gerry next door. No one goes crazy decorating on Halloween each year like our Noe Valley block and our Fourth of July bicycle and pet parade is downright charming. And I can’t think of anything more breathtaking than the walks I’ve taken through the city’s hills.
I keep fantasizing that if Kate goes to college at Berkeley in 14 years my husband and I will sneak into her luggage and come back with her.
In Boston, I will tell people I meet that I used to live in San Francisco. We left, I will say, because it was too hard to stay for our family so many reasons – the obscene housing prices, the unpredictable public school lottery, the fact that our aging parents are 3,000 miles away.
Yet we aren’t alone in leaving. As income levels and housing prices rose and the public school quality continued to decline between 1995 and 2000, the number of families with children 5 and under here dropped 15 percent.
And the truth is that we’ve been thinking about a move for awhile. My doubts flared up after reading an October 2005 article in San Francisco Magazine that nailed why middle class parents like us give up on the city.
In the article, which I’ve kept stashed for years under our hallway table, a former city resident describes San Francisco as a super model who’s nice to look at but ultimately too big of a pain to live with. I’ve thought about that quote a lot since because it’s true.
To stay here, I knew I’d need to do what so many families do to pay a fat mortgage: work full-time to double our income. But that option left me conflicted. I want to pick my daughter up after school every day, watch her learn to ride her bike and make my family dinner some nights without freaking out about how crazy my life is. So working part time, renting an apartment and considering public school was my compromise.
Trouble is, when I turned 40 last year I suddenly wanted more. I wanted a taste of what my neighbors have: a house of my own. On most days, I walk down my street dodging construction crews building new garages that will house shiny Audi TTs and BMW performance vehicles under remodeled $2 million Victorians. The neighbors’ nannies pass by, pushing twins in Macclaren strollers. Housekeepers haul vacuum cleaners and supplies from their beat up Toyotas up steep stairs.
We can’t compete with this sort of wealth on one salary, or two for that matter, I think, which is why for awhile I’d looked over in the East Bay for a house.
In the end, we settled on Brookline, Mass,. because the Bay Area, no matter how lovely, can’t compete with the $544,000 we paid for a spacious three-bedroom condo just minutes by train from Boston. My parents think we’re crazy, but we found the price of our new urban place completely reasonable – and the fact that Kate can attend a great public school just a block away even better.
Before we leave, I considered sending Gavin Newsom a call to ask him what ideas his Policy Council on Children, Youth and Families, created in 2005 to examine why families leave, came up with for keeping more of us around. But the idea seems pointless when the market – as it does in the most desirable cities like New York, L.A. and London — largely sets the price of real estate, which for us is about a million for a crummy 2-bedroom fixer upper.
And increasingly, the city has become a playground for the rich, ironically coming to reflect our years under the Bush administration. SF’s median income jumped 22 percent between 1990 and 2000; the proportion of families earning $100,000 also rising, while income statewide dipped an overall 2 percent. The underclass that serves these rich families – cleaning their houses, watching their children, tending their gardens and overseeing their home remodels – has flourished.
Yes, the economy here is different; immune from downturns aside from the random post-earthquake price drops. Yes, there’s a price for living in paradise. I just wish that it wasn’t so high for so many people who would, on most days, rather stay with the supermodel than dump her for something easier.
Unsharpened pencil to mark the reopening of our neighborhood library.
