Home Sick : Anxiety: Many Southland renters are experiencing physical symptoms due to the stress of not being able to afford to buy a house, even in today’s softer market.
It’s both a major investment of a lifetime and the most basic of human needs. A home of your own, the American dream. But for many Southern Californians, it’s hardly a dream.
“For me it’s the American nightmare,” said Janet Williamson, a videotape editor, speaking from the Hollywood apartment that she shares with her husband, Kevin, who works in retail.
“It’s just so out of reach right now and we just sometimes feel we’ll never be able to put away enough money fast enough. . . . I don’t know what else we have to give up except eating.
“I sometimes get so tense and just have headaches, and my neck muscles would tighten up and there would be a stress between us, too, because we would feel cheated or left out where we think we should be going by now in our lives.”
The Williamsons are not alone. Far from it.
More and more wanna-be homeowners in the Southland are feeling the symptoms of what might be called “real estate anxiety”--a state of uneasiness that has people worrying that they may never be able to afford a house in Los Angeles, even in today’s “buyer’s market.”
The stress is especially strong in Los Angeles County, where only 15% of residents can afford the $215,029 median-priced home, and Orange County, where the median price is $247,078, and 15% of residents there can afford such houses, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.
“It makes me feel like a failure. I feel inadequate of my earning power,” said Lorien Cook, 33-year-old party planner, children’s show performer and drama teacher, who has been saving up $12,000 for a down payment since 1982.
“You pay all this rent and you have nothing to show for it,” continued Cook, who pays $1,300 a month with a roommate to rent a three-bedroom house in Culver City. “It’s not counting for anything. . . . It turns into a real emptiness.”
Like other maladies, real estate anxiety and its attendant demoralization can spill over into other areas of people’s lives, such as relationships and career, said Mark Goulston, psychiatrist and professor at UCLA.
“(Sufferers) become irritable in their relationships and negative because there is a feeling of disappointment that they can’t accept,” he said.
“You can have a lot of muscular tension, restlessness, tiredness, upset stomach, headaches, appetite and sleep problems--anything that can be a result of stress,” added Goulston, a specialist in psychiatric problems of fast-track parents and families.
“Any time you hear of a peer getting in when you didn’t, you can get all kinds of physical experiences associated with anxiety, like having trouble concentrating or falling asleep.”
Santa Monica realtor Elaine Golden-Gealer, who teaches a class entitled “How To Buy Your First Home or Condo” at several area colleges, notices that many renters “feel a lot of frustration and anger.”
“They feel sad because they can’t put down roots,” she said. “Their parents own a house, they grew up in a house. There is a biological feeling, ‘Well, my parents had a house when they first got married and here I am in an apartment.’ ”
Added USC urban anthropologist Andrei Simic:
“I think a house is a kind of chronological marker, a symbol of success you expect to reach at certain points in your life. (Not owning a home) gives people a sense of failure and that creates stress.
“I think there’s kind of a sad resignation about it. There’s a kind of void that they’d like to fill. I think people feel they’re not living up to what life owes them.’
Lisa Rezowalli, a camera operator who rents a Santa Monica townhouse with her husband, Robert Dean, a TV producer, knows such feelings.
“We’re both professionals, we’ve gone to college, and you have a hard time saving the money for a down payment. The scariest part is, if we don’t do it now or pretty soon, forget it, we’re never going to get in. We’ll be renters forever.”
Eric Selcov, 31, a computer software marketer, also has real estate anxiety.
“I missed the boat four to five years ago. (Owning a home) might mean leaving L.A., which is a sad thing because this is my home. But there’s no choice.. ..
“To feel I can’t afford to continue to stay in this city to live what I think is just a normal American life is very upsetting,” said Selcov, noting that he just wants a small, simple house in a decent area.
“You want to get that part of your life going and it hasn’t. So it’s like you lose some of the fulfillment of moving on with your life.”
Although 1990 is a buyer’s market, many wanna-be homeowners wonder just whom that terminology is kidding, with bleak fixer-uppers starting at $200,000 in many areas.
As house hunters scrimp and sacrifice, scan real estate classified ads and scramble from one tiny, overpriced house to another, a home of their own seems out of the question for many.
And the ranks of renters in Los Angeles are swelling. In 1980, 60% of city residents rented, but now the city Community Development Department estimates that 67% of L.A. residents rent. (This figure is based on Department of Water and Power statistics from March, 1990, which also indicate that L.A. has one of the highest populations of renters.)
Few renters will make that leap into the housing market, according to Alan Kreditor, dean of the USC School of Urban Planning and Development.
“It’s accepting a reality that not all people will fit into the buying market,” he said. ‘The truth is, probably many, if not most, renters will never own.”
If Kreditor is right, people will have to learn to adapt (See accompanying story) or real estate anxiety will become even more widespread.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Jim Powell, a Wisconsin transplant who has lived in L.A. for six years. “You finally just resolve in your mind ‘Yes, it’s very expensive.’ But there’s not much you can do about it. . . . You do feel cheated out of the golden life and the Golden State.”
“You feel helpless and hopeless,” said his wife, Lynn. “You feel like there is a big part of life you can’t have despite what you’re doing. We both work. We both get home late at night after putting in our all. We’re making the biggest effort that we can, and that’s still not the kind of money that can pay a mortgage of the kind of house you grew up in.”
While the “cocooning” ’90s have attached more importance to home and hearth, perhaps as an escape from achievement-driven, high-stress urban living, never before has a home seemed so hard to obtain, creating some intergenerational upset.
“People are resentful of older people because they feel they had it better,” said Irene Goldenberg, family psychologist and UCLA professor. “It was more manageable to buy a house, more possible before. I think people are extending their dependence on parents.”
“I don’t feel like any other generation had to make quite the sacrifice we do,” said Lynn Powell. “Both partners work full time and that’s not enough. You’re doing twice what your parents did and that’s not enough even to get into, virtually, a hovel. . . .”
“It’s so different from when our parents were our age. Things were almost guaranteed to them,” said videotape editor Williamson, 25. “Our generation is kind of losing out. There is a lot more that we have to give up or work harder for than I think our parents did.”
Added psychiatrist Goulston:
“Probably the greatest source of anxiety and disappointment is the idea that saving money doesn’t keep up with the increased cost of the house. All the money that you saved to afford a house is not enough to make up for the increased price of a house.”
In previous generations, owning a house seemed to be taken for granted, a rite of passage that would, naturally, come in time. Nowadays, working people unable to afford a house may feel deprived or shortchanged, especially when hearing about how vastly other people’s homes are appreciating.
“Some friends of ours bought a place in the early ‘80s and are now going to sell it for almost a million dollars,” said Robert Dean. “That’s depressing.”
Dean, 36, and his wife, Lisa Rezowalli, 35, now have $30,000 saved for a down payment and have been looking for real estate for almost a year. Although they wanted to live on the Westside, they are now considering Whittier, Eagle Rock and Highland Park instead.
“The monumental task of finding a realtor you like, looking around every weekend, getting the financing together, cutting the best deal for yourself, escrow closing, all that, does seem pretty overwhelming,” Dean said.
Added his wife, “I’m worried, gee, ‘How are we going to afford it?’ ‘Are we making the right decision,’ ‘Do we have the right realtor?’ We better stay informed.”
The couple pays more than $975 a month in rent for a two-bedroom townhouse in Santa Monica.
“I think of the money we’re wasting. We’ll probably have to find something smaller than we have now.” Rezowalli said. “It’s very stressful to think we’re putting in every penny we have for this tiny, tiny little house. It’s ridiculous.”
(Since they were interviewed for this article, Rezowalli and Dean have opened escrow on a $167,000 two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot house in Whittier.)
Lynn and Jim Powell have been looking at houses for the last year, often going out one day a weekend (“That’s all we really had the stomach for,” says Lynn), and recovering the next day. Now they say they have reached buyer’s burnout.
“There just came a point where we could not physically look any more,” said Lynn, a newspaper advertising sales rep. “It was just too devastating.”
“You get sick to your stomach just physically affecting you to the point where you can’t go out. You get headaches, upset stomach--the classic stress syndrome.”
The Powells, both in their 30s, have a combined income of about $75,000, and have been saving for a down payment for the last five to seven years, accumulating about $85,000. Though they can afford the average home in Los Angeles, they just don’t like most of what they see.
“We don’t feel what we’ve seen is worthy of the investment,” Jim said. “Until we get to the point where we can afford a house on the Westside for half a million, we’ve resolved in our minds we’d be happier living somewhere else. And it’s unfortunate, because I love Los Angeles.”
The housing predicament also dictates some of life’s major decisions. Several couples interviewed say they have postponed having children until they buy a house.
“I’d like to know that we can handle mortgage payments and we’ve got the whole house situation in control before we take on another enormous responsibility,” said Jim Powell. “Home ownership is part of life and you need to do that. It’s an important obligation to be able to handle before having children.”
“I wouldn’t bring up children in an apartment. That’s too depressing,” said Williamson, echoing the sentiments of many others interviewed. “We want a house first. I figure once we have children, they’re so expensive, we’ll never be able to afford a house.”
The desire to own can also put a crimp in one’s life style as renters, doing their best to qualify for a loan, feel the pressure to work at the same job, live in the same place and save all the money possible.
“You’re afraid to move, you’re afraid to take a new job because all this stability stuff is so important when you’re being considered for a loan,” said Williamson, who noted that months of Times’ Real Estate sections are stacked in the corner of their apartment.
“It affects your social life,” she said. “You feel like if you go out and you spend any money or have any kind of fun, that you should be putting that away for your house.”
Some locked-out buyers may compensate in other ways, USC anthropologist Simic said.
“Many people seem to be saying, ‘If I can’t buy a home, than I’m going to spend the money in other ways. I’m going to enjoy life more, I’m going to buy a bigger, more expensive car, take an expensive vacation.’ ”
Williamson agrees:
“With the housing prices going up the way they are . . . you don’t even think of socking away that money because ‘what use is it?’ . . . So you do something else. I’ll travel instead, make my life worthwhile.”
