Commentary : Horror of High-Priced Housing

I recently made my first trip back to Southern California after moving from Orange County last October. When I arrived at my hotel room in San Pedro, I opened up the newspaper and read, among other things, that the average rush-hour speed on Los Angeles freeways is 30 m.p.h., that there will be 18 million people in the Los Angeles basin by the year 2010, and the kicker--the average Orange County home price is $175,000, highest in the nation.

Is it no wonder the middle-class dream of owning a home is now out of reach for most young Orange County families?

I’m a case in point. I moved to Huntington Beach four years ago after my company transferred me from the Midwest. I was single, 24, and while I found rents to be nearly double what I spent in St. Louis, I accepted it as part of my career growth.

Four years later, I was married and had two children. Though I’d been promoted twice and supervised a department in a Fortune 500 corporation, my salary was in the low 30s--not exactly home-buying material in Southern California.

My wife had worked when my first son was a baby, but with two children we faced day-care costs of $150 a week. We decided that it would be better for the children if she stayed home.

Before moving last fall, we lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Westminster for $610 a month. In addition to being cramped, we felt unsafe--a stabbing and several robberies had taken place the last few months we were there. We knew we couldn’t afford a home in California for years--and at that, it’d be a townhouse in Garden Grove or a cracker-box tract house in Anaheim.

Last October I accepted a job with a firm in Denver for a substantial pay increase. Within weeks, we moved into a brand new three-bedroom, two-story home. It includes a yard, a full basement, use of a recreation center and a view of the mountains. There is only ranch land south of us, and I have a 20-minute commute to work on a new freeway.

We bought the house for $110,000 at a 7.8% fixed, 30-year mortgage rate. Something similar in a south Orange County development would probably run at least $200,000.

I’m not alone. I know of one large Orange County firm that decided it wouldn’t expand its manufacturing operations further because it couldn’t attract workers to live near the plant. The firm is now expanding in another state.

A staffing manager who recruits professional workers for my new company told me that the richest pool of engineers for his recruiting is in Southern California--it’s easy to lure them away because of the high cost of housing.

My business meeting in San Pedro ended early, so I drove around Palos Verdes on my way to the airport in Los Angeles. It was a warm winter day, 65 degrees, so I pulled off the road. The view was clear to Santa Catalina Island and Malibu; the green hills of Palos Verdes rolled down to the seaside and sailboats and surfers dotted the water below me. I thought of a California that once was, before the crowds, the smog, the traffic.

I got back in the car. At a stoplight on Pacific Coast Highway, the car ahead of me sported a familiar bumper sticker: “Welcome to California, now go home.”

I was glad to comply.