Reflections on San Francisco Life and Paying Rent
The experience of staying in a unit where the stove is visible from the bed, a unit that could very well be the long-term home of a resident of San Francisco (I myself lived in a place no bigger and a great deal less well appointed and located), reminded me of another reality of life in San Francisco: the sheer enormity of the cost per square foot. San Francisco rates in the top 5 highest rent districts in the nation, higher than New York City in fact. The MEDIAN rent for a two-bedroom unit is over $1,800 per month (our mortgage in Georgia is under $1,300 for 4 bedrooms on one acre for comparison), and MEDIAN of course means that you don’t live in a nice unit in a nice or safe neighborhood, rather it means that exactly half of the residents of the city living in 2 bedroom rentals are paying MORE than the median price and that is frightening. We would pass a fairly large number of realty offices on our walks to and fro, and I was delighted to see numbers in the 600 to 700 thousands, until I discovered that those were condominium prices. Actual buildings started at 1.2 million for a location near our rental with three rental units that would require at least another million to make habitable, coupled with historic preservation and other remodel rules imposed by the City and County of San Francisco. I tried to re-imagine my current life reduced to 2 bedrooms (if I was lucky) or more likely to one bedroom or a studio with one closet. Me, a man with an entire room dedicated to my collection of postage stamps, jigsaw puzzles, and stuffed Giant Microbes. Me, a man with another bedroom used only to store wrapping paper, ribbons, gifts for other people, and formal wear for our next cruise. Me, a man with an entire bedroom converted to a library to house, among other treasures, every book Agatha Christie ever wrote plus almost 300 volumes of the Library of America series. Me, a man with a dining table used solely to fold clothes. Me, a man with a Fiestaware collection so huge that most of it is now housed, due to a LACK OF SPACE, in the attic of this roughly 3,500 square foot house. Where would I put my CLOTHES much less a wood lathe and project wood? And none of that even addresses where I would begin to gather rent that would be more than my gross monthly Social Security Disability income.
As I looked around me, it seemed clear that the population of San Francisco is composed overwhelmingly of two groups: the very youthful and the very elderly. The elderly are protected by long-time resident status with either owned homes or rent-controlled properties. Of course, the elderly can also be trapped by these features as well since a downturn in the real estate market makes it impossible to sell a home and even a rent-controlled and therefore affordable apartment still increases in rent 1% per year, which becomes progressively higher each year since the 1% is calculated not from the BASE rent one started paying, say 30 years ago, but from the increased rent of last year. 1% per year is more than Social Security increases yearly by the way and certainly more than most anyone’s interest bearing investments have increased for several years. Rent control also doesn’t ensure that a formerly safe and secure neighborhood doesn’t become hoodlum hell over time either.
The very youthful, defined by me as those between 18 and 29 (from the perspective of the newly minted 40 year old), don’t have much “stuff” and therefore don’t need much space. They are OK with sharing a bathroom with 4 other people whereas I don’t share with anyone. They don’t mind eating tuna and ramen noodles to save for rent. They don’t need to have enough shirts to forestall laundry for over 6 months. They don’t mind the weekly shlep to the Laundromat to pump quarters into shared machines that shred or discolor clothes. And, they also don’t mind carrying everything they bring home, groceries included, up potentially endless flights of stairs to their walk up apartment on the Xth floor of a building. After all, in the building we stayed in, even though we were on the “ground floor” it was still one flight up from street level and those who lived on the top, or third floor, had no elevator to help with moving in, or out, much less groceries. Oh yes, this is a city for the young or for those with no options, or for those with more money than sense. I think I can comfortably say that I don’t fit any of those profiles, at least not at this stage of my life.