"I Can't Live Downtown, I Have Children!" (San Francisco: middle-class, best neighborhood)

[mysticaltyger]

I agree with most of your post. The only thing I disagree with is the "coolness trap". The coolness trap is there in the burbs. The thing that changes is the definition of what's "cool".

[wburg]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I agree with most of your post. The only thing I disagree with is the "coolness trap". The coolness trap is there in the burbs. The thing that changes is the definition of what's "cool".

I don't mind being stuck in the coolness trap. Midtown is very very very cool, so I don't plan on leaving even though I am neither gay nor single nor in my twenties.

[Damnitjanet]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

Honestly, I don't know why people think they need 2000 square feet for 4 people. I grew up in a middle/upper middle class family and we had a 1118 square foot house 1 1/2 baths (ok we had a basement, but it was not finished off). We survived.

Generally one of the biggest reasons people get married is to BUY a home and raise children. You argue that a family of four can manage to get by in a home of 1118 sqft. But you are ignoring prices. A home in midtown costs $252 dollars a sqft, that means your 1118 sqft home in midtown costs $281,736. A home in Elk Grove costs $109 a sqft, that means your 1118 sqft home in Elk Grove is going to cost you $121,862. If you want to live in a more upscale neighborhood than Elk Grove, you can move to Folsom where the average cost of a home is $171 a sqft and your 1118 sqft house will cost you $191,178.

If housing size isn't important to you, you can easily save between $90k and a $160k merely by moving into the burbs.

DQNews - Sacramento Bee Zip Code Chart

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I agree with you. We moved from an urban city to the suburbs when I was 6 and I hated it. It was a lot more fun when we lived in the city and I could go outside to play with kids in the street. No pre-planned 'play dates' etc.

But that is one of the many problems right now for families with children that discourages them from living in midtown. Midtown has one of the lowest rates of households with kids in the region. Midtown is exactly the type of neighborhood where you would need to call people to arrange some sort of play dates. In neighborhods like Elk Grove and Folsom, you have a lot more families with kids. There are fewer cars on these streets, there are more children in the neighborhood. Its a much easier and safer place for kids to just go play outside.

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

But I have to admit, the schools in my city of origin really did suck. Even the Catholic schools in the city were not as good as the ones in the suburbs. If I were a parent, I would probably end up in the suburbs, even if I didn't like it.

Right now even though housing is much more expensive on a per sqft basis than either Elk Grove or Folsom, you aren't giving up anything in school quality. Right now the schools in both of these areas are much better than the schools you would send your kids to in midtown. Starting next year you could send your kids to Sacramento Country Day's High School, but that would raise the cost of living in midtown by another $18,700 a year per kid enrolled.

How many families can afford to spend the extra $90,000 to $160,000 on a house in midtown plus pay an extra $18,700 a year for tuition?

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

Davis is not a typical suburb.

Davis may not be a typical suburb, but on a per sqft basis, housing in midtown is still much more expensive than housing in Davis.

[Damnitjanet]

Originally Posted by wburg

I don't mind being stuck in the coolness trap. Midtown is very very very cool, so I don't plan on leaving even though I am neither gay nor single nor in my twenties.

You also don't have kids, so you can afford to get caught up in it. But people who do have kids, have other spending priorities. They need to save money for sending their kids to college. They need to buy clothes, food and pay for braces for their kids. None of that stuff is cheap.

For any given amount of money earned the people without kids, have a much bigger disposable incomes. People without kids worrying about whether their lofts are authentic or not (whatever that means). Families with kids, have more pressing financial issues in their lives.

[Damnitjanet]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

I agree with most of your post. The only thing I disagree with is the "coolness trap". The coolness trap is there in the burbs. The thing that changes is the definition of what's "cool".

The coolness trap is a function of disposable incomes. You need to have a certain amount of disposable income to engage in that type of frivolity. But for any given income level the people without kids have larger disposable incomes than the people with kids.

If as a couple you were making 50k before they had kids, one of them might have been able to accumulate a nice collection of musical equiptment or really nice shoes or handbags, but when the kids come that's an expense they can no longer afford to sustain. Its tough to buy a new guitar or get a new purse for yourself if your kids need new braces.

If you make more money than 50k a year, you have more money to engage in this behavior, but kids suck up a lot of the resources spent on this stuff.

So most peoples experience with the coolness trap as a more pressing problem in the places without kids and generally your experience with it decreases when kids come into the picture. Couples just don't have the resources to spend on it as more kids come into the picture.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Damnitjanet

You also don't have kids, so you can afford to get caught up in it. But people who do have kids, have other spending priorities. They need to save money for sending their kids to college. They need to buy clothes, food and pay for braces for their kids. None of that stuff is cheap.

For any given amount of money earned the people without kids, have a much bigger disposable incomes. People without kids worrying about whether their lofts are authentic or not (whatever that means). Families with kids, have more pressing financial issues in their lives.

DammitJ, I understand that you don't have very much interest in what the central city has to offer, and I consider that a perfectly legitimate reason to not live here. Nobody is saying you have to live here if it holds no appeal for you.

But other couples with kids (and single parents with kids, and gay people with kids) do care, and they do find ways to make the central city work for them. Because our houses are smaller, people tend to become more involved with the neighborhood instead of sequestering themselves in their backyards. This is why there has been such a jump in neighborhood events, especially kid-friendly ones: the increase in interest in the central city has attracted new parents that are advocating and organizing to make central city neighborhoods more kid-friendly without losing the special character of the central city. While some of the energy of the central city is more adult-oriented, plenty of it is not. While I like San Francisco fine, I doubt we're going to see nude parades here anytime soon.

A home in Elk Grove costs a lot less for the house, but commuting from Elk Grove to downtown Sacramento is a 30-40 mile round trip. That adds up to 7500-10,000 miles a year, around $1500-2000 in gas (assuming $3/gallon, 15 MPG minivan.) Add two extra oil changes per year, $100 a month for downtown parking, and an extra 250-300 hours of daycare expenses (going to and from work means it takes extra time to get to the daycare center.) Add Mello-Roos taxes to that. Add it all up, and the cost savings of the cheaper house in the suburbs starts to evaporate. Admittedly, for someone who doesn't work downtown the economics change--but one of the better reasons for living downtown is being close to the workplace (but if someone works in Roseville, it makes more sense to live near Roseville--and so on.)

Now, if someone really likes living in Elk Grove, and it is worth it to them to spend the extra money on commuting and childcare, hey, more power to them. But plenty of people would rather live in the central city with their kids, because for them that is the best of both worlds. And recently it seems that there are enough of them that the central city's reputation as a childless, kid-unfriendly place is finally starting to change. Not everyone will be comfortable with that--but they don't have to be. That's why we have suburbs.

[CityGirl72]

Total Tangent:

It's date night this Saturday for us...got an overnight sitter (grandma) and will be enjoying a B & B and Second Saturday in Midtown, and dinner

As I said Midtown is my choice but I only get it a couple times a year...but I'll be back in 20 years permenantly

[mattinsac]

Wburg the reason I disagree with conclusions here is because I think they are based upon scenarios that just aren't representative of real peoples experiences. Right now more traffic is going eastbound on highway 50 in the morning than westbound into downtown in the morning. (see pg 3 here). Reverse commuting in this area is huge.

http://www.sacog.org/mtp/pdf/MTP2035...0Expansion.pdf

The reason this is happening is because employment in the region is spread out and its continuing to spread out in the region. You have a lot people living in the grid not because of proximity to employment but despite proximity to employment. You have the 27 year old teachers working in Elk Grove but living in the grid because teaching isn't a good place to meet single men or merely because she likes walkable neighborhoods even after she gets a boyfriend. You have the homosexual living in the grid because it feels more welcoming than Roseville. Because these people don't have kids, they have the disposable income to outbid the people with kids for the right to live in the area. Remember 70% of the people midtown are driving to work. Most people who do that have free parking at work. A lot of these people are working outside the grid.

This guy (who has an agenda) claims that just 9.42% of the employment in the region is captured by the central business district, even if we double that and assume that 20% of the local employment in the region is in grid, that still means that each person has an independent 80% chance of finding work in this area outside the grid.

Central Business Districts (CBD): 1990: Employment & Market Share in Major US Metropolitan Areas

For most couples in the region, there is a much better chance than not that one or both aren't going to work in the grid. Odds are neither spouse is going to work in the grid. Even if one of the spouses does work downtown, odds are that his spouse won't. If the husband works for the state downtown and the wife works at Kaiser in Elk Grove as an X ray tech, someone needs to commute between Elk Grove and Downtown, but the choice of housing is basically controlled by whatever location is cheaper to buy a home in. Second, there are much better options to commute from Elk Grove to downtown (so that weighs the decision against the grid). Given that hubby works downtown, he can get a bus pass (subsidized by the state) and wifey can drop him off at the bus stop if necessary in the morning. If her job has more scheduling flexibility, where she is working some nights and weekends, again that means that they may not need to spend that much on day care. So in practice a lot of these cost savings that you are arguing in favor of midtown just don't materialize in practice when you are married and have kids. The determinate factor is that housing prices almost 2.5 times as expensive in midtown 252 sqft vs 109 sqft.

But its not just Elk Grove where this happening. This process is happening in all of these suburban areas. People with kids generally don't live in midtown, because they have different needs and because single, gay people and dinks, value that space more than they do and outbid them for the right to live there.

The issue here isn't merely an issue of reputation or opinion. Factually the grid has the lowest density of people with kids in the region (demonstrated in the census data) and there are substantive reasons why that process has occurred that you are ignoring because you want to believe gentrification is cost free. The people without the kids value this space much more than the people with kids and they have outbid them for the right to live there. As long at that process is at work, the families will be outbid in the neighborhood. The reason you see so few families in the central city is that so few families can afford to live there. Housing costs at 2.5 times the cost per sqft have priced them out of the neighborhood.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by mattinsac

This guy (who has an agenda) claims that just 9.42% of the employment in the region is captured by the central business district, even if we double that and assume that 20% of the local employment in the region is in grid, that still means that each person has an independent 80% chance of finding work in this area outside the grid.

About 5% of the city's population live in the grid. At least 10% of the city's jobs are in the grid. This means there are about twice as many jobs in the grid as there are people. Our jobs/population balance is about as out of whack as many areas that technically don't have a residential population! Part of why downtown Sacramento seems so dead at night is because it has a population of 100,000 during 9-5 hours and 10,000 at night.

As I mentioned above, I think if you live in, say, Roseville, get a job in Roseville. If you live in Elk Grove, get a job in Elk Grove. This is generally impractical because Roseville and Elk Grove don't have nearly enough non-retail/foodservice jobs for their populations. These suburbs are economically dependent on regions that are job centers, like the central city.

I'm not talking about scenarios, nor reputations or opinions. I'm talking about things I see with my own eyes in the central city. I don't deny that the central city can be expensive (although there are ways to minimize that, and consequence costs in the suburbs make it not always that simple.) I don't deny that there are generally more kids in the suburbs. But there are families with kids in the central city, and recently I have seen more kids and more kid-centered activity in my neighborhood--again, not reading about it, but by actually seeing it and knowing the people who are doing it. That's my whole point.

Remember 70% of the people midtown are driving to work. Most people who do that have free parking at work. A lot of these people are working outside the grid.

Not true. Having your employer pay for parking downtown is very rare--I had it once, but only because driving was part of my job. State employees have to wait years on waiting lists for parking spaces in state lots, which they still have to pay for--and the going rate ranges from $50 for the ones under the freeway (where you still have to walk or bus blocks to your office) to $150 for a private garage. There is a thriving "black market" for residential parking permits among people who work downtown, because free parking is pretty much nonexistent. The state subsidizes bus passes in part to reduce the need for state employee parking downtown, which is generally very impacted--primarily because of the massive job-over-resident imbalance of the central city.

Originally Posted by damnitjanet

You need to have a certain amount of disposable income to engage in that type of frivolity.

I don't care for the attitude that caring about things other than child-rearing is "frivolity." It's dismissive and insulting, both to people without kids and to people with kids who have priorities beyond child-rearing.

[moovin]

There's too much discussion here on virtual statistics to support ones predisposition. The bottom line on here is if you have kids and think that the best academically performing schools (based on standardized test scores) is where you want your kids to attend then you'll find those "best" schools are in locations that correlate directly with the locally higher real estate prices. It's like that all over California, at least. I'm sure there are some exceptions to this rule but I'd bet that it applies to 90% of schools.