Ah, yes. I remember it well: My mother landing a job at the business office of the apartment development where we lived in San Francisco: Park Merced. It was a pretty place to live — even a beautiful place: upper-middle class, with handsome, modernistic high-rise apartments and sweet little garden apartments. Priced on the high side of San Francisco’s ever-pricey middle range. My father agreed to let us live there while he went back to sea, pretty much as a reward to my mother for spending ten years in the Hell-hole that was Saudi Arabia.
He was a cheapskate of the first water, though. Resented having to spend any of his (truly!) hard-earned cash on much of anything. And so, though I never heard them arguing about it (they didn’t argue in front of the brat), I’m sure he objected to the cost of the rent there.
No doubt feeling guilty (if not bored), my mother took a job in the development’s rental office, as a receptionist.
She earned $300 a month…and was downright awed! “Such good pay for a woman!” she crowed.
My father was less impressed. As a sea captain, he earned a living wage and then some. There really was no need for her to go to work, and the peanuts they paid her made little or no difference to our living standard. That, in general, was true of what most women were paid, back in the Day.
But y’know…this afternoon I had cause to reflect that even today I would have serious trouble living on what I could earn, with a Ph.D., a string of published books, and a track record of university-level academic jobs.
I happened to peruse real estate ads in our neighborhood. And…
hooooleee shee-ut!
Prices have gone through the proverbial roof!
The first place I bought here, about a block to the north and a block to the west of the present Funny Farm, cost a hundred grand. That amount equaled the my father’s lifetime goal for the savings he figured he would need to retire on. Just for the house alone!
- Not for a car.
- Not for living expenses.
- Not for taxes.
- Not for locking myself away in a nursing home when I get too decrepit to take care of myself.
My house is now paid off, over my financial advisor’s objections. And I think there’s enough left in savings to support me until they cart me off to a nursing home.
But…
But…….
Meanwhile, the alleged value of this house has gone SOOOO high that frankly, I’m not sure I can pay the taxes on it. Real estate prices have Californicated madly. Realtor.com thinks my house is worth $528,700. Redfin begs to differ, pegging the reasonable price at $629,873.
You understand: I paid an even $100,000 to get into this neighborhood — in a house that is the same model as this one. And thought that was ridiculous. It’s less than 1900 square feet. It’s magnificently crime-ridden, thanks to the slums just to the north of us. And if you give a damn about your kids’ education — and would just as soon not have them tripping over a dead body on way into the local school (yes!!) — you would put your kid in a private or parochial school.
And supposedly this place is worth almost SIX TIMES what I paid for it????
SDXB moved to Sun City partly to get away from Tony the Romanian Landlord (a threat who lived right next-door to him at the time), but partly to escape the soaring property taxes in this area.
Prices have shot up over in Sun City, too, but not into the stratosphere….largely, I think, because most people in our generation don’t relish living in a ghetto for old folks. Plus it’s pretty remote from the central part of the city, where those things that are of interest in these parts take place.
If in fact this house is worth what the real estate sites claim, when I croak over my son will inherit assets totaling well over a million dollars. And that doesn’t count the value of his house. Or the amount his dad will leave him.
If he sells both places, he can move to Colorado and live like a king — secretly, he’d like to retire to Grand Junction, whence his grandparents came. He not only will get the value of my house and his, he also will get whatever remains in my investment accounts. Plus whatever his dad leaves him.
{chortle!} The kid will be a freakin’ millionaire.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean what it used to. It may not mean very much, come to think of it. But…better than a hit on the head, I guess.
Real estate values in Grand Junction aren’t much less than they are here. In fact, some of them by comparison are outright crazy. Right: to live out in the middle of fu**in’ nowhere!
Come to think of it, though…. Given a choice between Sun City and Grand Junction, I’d take Grand Junction any day.
Mercifully, that is not I choice I have to make. Not at the time being, anyway.
*****
Eeek! We’re looking at a serious storm a-rollin’ in, right this minute. Wunderground expects our lovely weather to chill down from the present 106 degrees to a crisp 86, with thunderstorms, a few of which may be “severe.”