August 28, 2004 ESCAPING PARADISE By RHONDA PARKS MANVILLE
I thought I had landed in heaven when I was hired 14 years ago to be a reporter at the News-Press. The city was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, with its red-tiled roofs, palm tree-lined beaches and brilliant light. Who ever heard of cooking a Thanksgiving turkey in shorts and a tank top, with all of the doors and windows open? Where I grew up, in the Pacific Northwest, we had the fireplace going at that time of year. They say you can't go home again, but that's where I'm headed. Like so many others who have left Santa Barbara, I'm going where houses are cheaper and the commutes are short. My husband, Todd, and I have bought a 2,000-square-foot house on Bainbridge Island, 35 minutes by ferry to downtown Seattle. It's yellow with red shutters, sheltered by a cathedral of tall evergreens, on an acre. There's a 255-acre nature preserve across the street. It's five minutes to beaches in both directions and 10 minutes to my parents' house. And it cost $385,000.
I've been teased for weeks about moving to a place where there's 40 inches of annual rainfall. At my going-away party in the newsroom, my boss made me put on a rain hat and slicker and shoulder a sandbag, as he presented me with the movies "Singing in the Rain," "Rain Man" and "Baby the Rain Must Fall." But I'll trade incessant drizzle any day for an affordable house in a rural setting with the grandparents close by. And yet, I know that my family is one of the lucky ones. At least we own something. Most of my colleagues in the newsroom don't own houses. Sad to say, but if they stay in Santa Barbara, they probably never will. We bought a house in Ventura five years ago, after the rent on our tiny Santa Barbara house rose to $1,550 — which we thought was crazy. Wasn't that a mortgage payment? Well, in Santa Barbara it wasn't. We looked to buy in the greater Santa Barbara area, close to our jobs, but the prices were out of reach, even for two people with a combined income of more than $100,000 a year. We started looking at Santa Barbara condos and were aghast. Dumpy bachelor pads in crowded complexes on TV Hill were going for $275,000, while dated but "spacious" units near the freeway interchange in Goleta were listed at $300,000. Cracker-box houses on busy streets were selling for more than $500,000, and they needed work. After considering commute times and prices, we ended up with a Ventura fixer-upper in foreclosure for $223,000, following a real estate agent's advice to buy the worst house in a good neighborhood. In just a few months, the houses in our Ventura neighborhood were selling for $30,000 more than when we moved in. Todd and I were thrilled by the boost in our equity and then humbled when we realized that if we had waited just a little longer to buy our house, we would have been shut out of the housing market completely. That was my first move away from Santa Barbara. I joined the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Highway 101 in a commute that took about 45 minutes each way, on good days. With a fender bender, it could take an hour and 30 minutes. I tried the bus, but it made my commute an hour and 20 minutes each way, including the drive to the bus depot. The first year, I told myself that the commute was part of my "down time" from the roles of wife, mother and journalist. It was to be my time of rest. But I eventually had a hard time holding onto my sunny view of the drive. It was often stressful and at times grueling. After the Sept. 11 attacks, I was struck by the realization of how far I was from my daughter's Ventura preschool in the event of an emergency. How would I reach her if a disaster struck and the roads were blocked? I was torn between two counties, and it was hard. My town was Santa Barbara, where I had been reporting the news for nearly 10 years. It was my community, where my friends were. But I couldn't live there. I harbored a major resentment over that, but it faded in time. We made new friends, of course, through my daughter's school and our church and its commitment to the poor in Ventura. As the housing prices went up and we benefited from the growing equity in our house, more and more families in Ventura were turning to homeless shelters for help. What irony. We painted and plastered and transformed our house into one of the nicest homes on the block. And then we bumped into a couple who were trading their Ventura beach house for a ranch in Montana. They wanted to be closer to family and raise their children in a more rural environment.
I knew that feeling, and my heart ached with envy. Todd and I started dreaming about what a return to the Pacific Northwest would feel like. We had a chance to test the idea on a vacation trip to visit our family in June, the month the median home price in Santa Barbara topped $1 million. We dug clams and oysters from a Bainbridge Island bay, and feasted with family and friends. We ate fresh cracked crab dipped in butter for breakfast, pulled from crab pots that very morning. We decided to just do it. Just sell and get out. Start over. We made an offer on a Bainbridge Island house we looked at during an open house and pinched ourselves. We were giddy at making such an impulsive and bold move with such utter confidence. We didn't even have jobs! But our inquiries into the job market proved promising, and we knew that even if we had to work two jobs each flipping pancakes, it would all work out. We thought about renting our Ventura house but changed our mind and put it on the market. It sold in two days, for more than the $540,000 asking price. The profit will give us a soft landing on the island and a smaller mortgage. Our adventure is about to begin. But it is bittersweet. We leave wonderful jobs and many dear friends and colleagues. We love the balmy weather here, the trips to warm sandy beaches, the glorious flowers and trees. We truly love Santa Barbara. If only we could afford it. |
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