Posted on 09/15/2007 5:55:45 PM PDT by Lorianne
STAMFORD, Conn. This isnt how Simon and Jennifer Morris envisioned married life sharing a charity-subsidized suite with four other hard-up families, abiding by a curfew and other rules that make them feel they are back in high school.
But for a working-class couple with two small children, trying to stick it out in their pricey hometown, housing options are few.
They abandoned their previous one-bedroom apartment when the rent rose from $1,200 to $1,425. Public housing has long waiting lists, so they moved into a shelter for dislocated families in a converted YMCA. The goal: Save enough money to move south and buy a home where costs are lower.
Around them, southwestern Connecticuts Fairfield County is booming, due partly to an influx of investment banks. New housing projects routinely cater to the affluent.
But everybody forgets the poor guy the one who pumps your gas, who builds your hotel, who bags your groceries, said Simon Morris, a 35-year-old carpenter. The cost of living is driving us out.
On both coasts of the United States and many cities in between, hundreds of thousands of renters face comparable plights. The home mortgage crisis has received far more notice, but experts say the ranks of renters with dire housing problems are growing faster than the ranks of defaulting homeowners.
The Center for Housing Policy reports that the number of working-family renters paying more than half their income for housing has soared from 1 million to 2.1 million since 1997. Overall, advocacy groups say there are 9 million low-income renter households and only 6.2 million units they can reasonably afford.
These people spend huge portions of their income on their housing, said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. They dont do things that we all would like to do save money to buy a house, or for college or retirement. Its a very day-to-day existence.
In the Stamford area, a breadwinner needs to earn more than $30 an hour to afford the rent of a typical two-bedroom apartment, the highest figure in the nation. San Francisco ranks a close second placing immense burdens on residents such as schoolteacher Meagan Devine and retiree Jose Morales.
Devine, 30, lives with her sister, who is eight months pregnant, and brother-in-law in a one-bedroom apartment in San Franciscos Sunset district. She sleeps on the couch and spends weekends at her parents house in a distant suburb, where she keeps her clothes and books.
In October, shell begin house-sitting for family friends in Berkeley who will be on sabbatical until Jan. 1. After that? She isnt sure.
Devine isnt an itinerant hippie or recent college graduate trying to map a career path. Shes a professional with a masters degree in math and likely could command a six-figure salary at a Silicon Valley engineering firm.
But since college, she has yearned to be a teacher. After getting her masters degree, she taught the children of crop pickers.
Since 2002, shes been a math instructor at Balboa High School, once a hardscrabble school on the citys south side. Test scores and morale are on the rise, and Devine feels shes making a big difference by teaching pre-calculus and algebra to the diverse student body.
I dont ever want to leave Balboa Id love to retire from here, Devine said as she stacked papers following the afternoon bell. The only problem is I cant afford to live here on a teachers salary.
After taxes and a $350 deposit into a retirement fund, she takes home about $2,500 per month. One-bedroom apartments in desirable neighborhoods near friends and public transit start around $2,000 per month. Studios start around $1,500.
Devine said shell likely settle for roommates a fate she didnt envision for herself after college, and a far cry from her dream of home ownership.
Technically, she could afford her own modest apartment but she wants to heed the standard advice and not spend more than a third of her income on housing. Thats not easy; experts say nearly a quarter of San Francisco renters spend more than 50 percent of their household earnings on rent, and the market has grown tighter as the mortgage crisis deters some young adults from home-buying.
Devine rarely goes out to eat or buys new clothes but despite a frugal lifestyle has been unable to whittle down $3,000 in credit card debt.
You have to make big sacrifices not just whether to buy a house or not, said Devine. I want to have kids but what would I do with them? I cant even afford my own place.
Devine works at least 50 hours a week, including several hours each weekend grading quizzes. Some of her colleagues moonlight as waitresses, bartenders and weekend nannies.
One option would be moving to a suburban school district, where pay scales range up to $10,000 higher than in San Francisco. A public school teacher in the city starts at $43,000.
Losing teachers like Devine should be a top concern for residents, said Matthew Hardy of the United Educators San Francisco. Teachers who stay have to be either crazy or dedicated, he said.
Jose Morales, now 78, moved into a modest Victorian house in San Franciscos working-class Mission District in 1965, shortly after emigrating from Peru. The rent was $80 a month, and he used leftover earnings to travel, buy nice clothes and eat well.
The rent is now $864 a bargain by local standards but an unmanageable fortune for Morales. A former tennis instructor, he hurt his back last year and now relies entirely on a Social Security payment of $900 per month.
After paying the rent, he has $36 a month for expenses, including food and medications. He eats at city-sponsored senior centers, which charge $1.50 per meal, buys cut-rate produce from local bodegas and takes freebies from friends.
He never travels. He doesnt own a television or radio. Among his few new clothes are tennis sweatshirts that pro shops sell him at a discount.
Im skin and bones its a miracle Im still here, said Morales, whos lost 20 pounds since last year and developed osteoporosis.
Stooped but sinewy, with wavy white hair and vintage Wilson sneakers, Morales has received numerous eviction notices from a landlord hoping to convert the two-unit flat into a luxury house. Morales refuses to leave; a court showdown is imminent.
If more people dont try to fight for their rights, then only rich people would live in this city, he says.
Morales apartment is ramshackle. Doorframes lean at improbable angles. Paint peels from walls, and a gaping crack splits the kitchen ceiling.
But the beautifully restored Victorian next door has golden cornices and fresh paint, and other nearby homes are getting high-end renovations. The neighborhood is rife with homeless people and illegal immigrants, but white-collar workers are moving in to commute to lucrative jobs in Silicon Valley or downtown.
Morales knows he might live better in Peru, where relatives could help and the cost of living is a fraction of Californias. But that would end his quest for American citizenship.
I came here because the U.S. was a great country, Morales said. But housing has become a big injustice. ... The story of my apartment is the story of my block and the story of my city and the story of all of California and the United States. You have to fight for it, and thats what I will do all the way to the end.
Back in Stamford, Simon and Jennifer Morris have seen the citys economic boom firsthand but, like many working-class families, havent shared its fruits.
Simon Morris has irregular earnings as a carpenter; he can make $1,000 in a good week but often has no work at all. Jennifer Morris, 27, worked in the past at local pet stores but took time off this year following the birth of Layla, whos now 7 months old. Their other child, Ethan, is 3.
Since February, theyve been living in a family emergency shelter on the edge of downtown, part of a multipurpose social-service center run by St. Lukes LifeWorks.
They have two bedrooms of their own but share bathrooms and a combination kitchen-common room with four other families in a setup resembling a college dorm. Theres an 11 p.m. curfew on weeknights, no drinking or smoking in the unit and a rotation of chores for each family.
After living on your own, where you can come and go, you can feel a little claustrophobic, Jennifer Morris said. Youve got to coexist with everyone. Sometimes I feel like Im back in high school.
For Simon Morris, the biggest downside is lack of privacy.
Theres good days and bad days, he said. People notice when Im grumpy, and sometimes I just want to be left alone.
But overall, the Morrises are grateful. They can stay up to two years at the shelter, far longer than at many similar facilities, and they expect to be able to save money for the first time in their married life due to a cost-sharing formula that leaves them paying St. Lukes about $250 a month.
If the savings materialize, they plan to head south, seeking a community where homes are within reach of a family like theirs.
Stamford forgot about the poor people, said Simon Morris, who, like his wife, grew up here. All these new apartments are great for the city, but some of the one-bedrooms are $3,000 a month. ... Its a businessmans town now.
The executive director of St. Lukes LifeWorks, the Rev. Dick Schuster, says Stamford and boomtowns like it should tackle the housing crisis out of self-interest.
The people who are working in your restaurants, your fire and police departments, are all of a sudden finding they can no longer afford to live in the community where they work, he said. And those who do choose to live in the community become the true working poor, hanging on by their thumbs.
David Crary reported from Stamford and Rachel Konrad from San Francisco.
You pay your money and make your choices.
This is an incredibly stupid story about people who CHOOSE to live the way they do - no one is forcing them to do anything other than what they want to do!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yep. I paid $50,000 for my three bedroom ranch home on 2 acres of land. In RURAL GEORGIA. That’s my choice. I could live on the northside of Atlanta and pay $200,000 for a 2 bedroom condo. Or $200,000 for the same size home (albeit ‘nicer’ neighborhood) with a postage stamp amount of land to go with it. But I chose substance for my money and instead pay the dollars to commute. I MOVED from the ‘big city’. Darn, what a concept!
My neighbors have been leasing a home and faithfully paying the $2,800 per month payments. They’ve been there over a year and just renewed their lease. Unknown to them, however, is that the owners have been pocketing the lease payments and not paying the mortgage and are now in foreclosure. What a bummer.
This is just a hit piece to create guilt. The folks featured in the article want to live in an area that is beyond their means...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Landlords are jumping, most all are raising their rents.
We live in a free market society. We know lots of people who have left CA and found the same or lower pay elsewhere, but much lower housing costs, better schools and lower taxes. There is no way govt can FIX this problem.
Once the business’s and schools no longer can find lower level employees..pay will have to rise. Unless you can be replaced by illegals living 29 to a bedroom.
Yes it does, goldstategop, but people also have to face reality - reality that real estate prices are not the same as they were when we were kids, and neither are income levels either. You know as well as I do that things are going to change, and reading articles like these that focus on all the hardships people face ... can't these people accept the limitations their own choices have made them? Government should not help them ... sorry for my rant.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
talk about title vs. article disconnect...
Me too. So what is with your Freep Name?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
that’s great...but this particular couple lived in CT.
And additional 225 bucks a month takes you out of an apartment and into the YMCA ?
something is really missing in this story.
Apparently, she hasn't figured out that maybe getting MARRIED before having the kids would help?
Devine works at least 50 hours a week, including several hours each weekend grading quizzes. Some of her colleagues moonlight as waitresses, bartenders and weekend nannies.
Cry me a river, honey! I was a teacher for 19 years, worked a second job, and went to grad school 3 nights a week for several years. Then I went into high-tech, and finally managed to buy a house when I was 45 years old. This chick needs to quit whining.
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