Young Shut Out by Rental Prices

Mike Carr would like to move out of his parents’ house in Thousand Oaks--badly. But there is no way the 21-year-old, who attends Moorpark College, can afford to rent anything decent in east Ventura County.

Twenty-four-year-old Matt Elkins, unwilling to work two jobs just to make rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Ventura, is couch-surfing with friends this summer until he can figure out what to do.

Melissa Blank, 21, a recent graduate of Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, three times has wanted to give notice on the room she’s renting as she continues on a seemingly hopeless search for a one-bedroom place close to her job in Simi Valley at Countrywide Credit Industries Inc.

They are among thousands of Ventura County’s single twentysomethings who are increasingly frustrated, cramped and cash-strapped in their quest for this most basic need: shelter.

And the situation will only get worse as local rents continue to climb and new apartment construction remains at a standstill, said Mark Schniepp, director of the Center for Regional Economic Research in Santa Barbara.

“We’re encroaching upon some of the highest rents in California, and we’re moving in the direction of places like San Francisco,” he said. “It continues to be a real problem.”

It’s also one not easily solved, officials say, particularly in a county with some of the tightest growth-control laws in the nation and with voters not keen on building apartment complexes in their neighborhoods.

“We’re creating all kinds of jobs with all levels of incomes, yet we’re only building high-end single-family homes,” said Bill Fulton, a Ventura-based regional planning expert. There has been almost no new apartment construction in the county in the last 15 years, he said. “Of course, there’s a disconnect there.”

Meanwhile, for those single twenty- and thirtysomething residents--corporate professionals, office assistants, bartenders and schoolteachers--the hunt goes on.

The monthly rent on an average apartment in Ventura County--including one-, two- and three-bedroom units--has soared in the last two years from about $890 in January 1999 to nearly $1,100 this year, said Dawn Dyer of Dyer Sheehan Group, which tracks rents quarterly at 17,000 apartment complexes countywide.

Across the county from Thousand Oaks to Ventura, many one-bedroom apartments are now renting for more than $1,000 a month.

Predictably, high rents hit hardest among Ventura County’s poor--from struggling single mothers to farm workers supporting families.

But sometimes forgotten are those young adults who may have just graduated from college and landed their first well-paying jobs but still can’t manage to get out on their own.

Share the Rent or Move Back Home

For them, there have been two typical solutions: double up with roommates--no matter how tight the living space--or move back in with their families. For many independent young adults, neither is very appealing.

“It’s pretty depressing,” said Carr, who lives with his folks in Thousand Oaks and has pretty much given up on his apartment search. “The last thing I want to do is stay there, but it’s just too expensive. It’s ridiculous.”

Barbara Piper, 21, returned home to her parents in Ventura instead of finding an apartment when she finished culinary school in Los Angeles. After being away for a few years, she said she was astonished that the rents were about as steep as in L.A., where she was forced to share a bedroom.

“You look around Ventura and you’re thinking, ‘Why is it so much money to live here?’ ” she said.

Dyer said she knows several families in the county who are boarding their adult children who have college degrees and jobs that pay decently.

Though it’s certainly nothing new to see grown-up children moving back home, it usually happens during tough economic times, Dyer said. The phenomenon is an anomaly in Ventura County in 2001, considering the job base and personal income levels continue to expand, she said.

The housing crunch will cause more and more adults who have already been out on their own to return to the family home, Schniepp said. And younger adults will stay under their parents’ roof for much longer than children 10 or 15 years ago did.

“We’re seeing socio-demographics being shaped by the housing crisis,” he said.

Elkins, who lives in Ventura, is doing all he can to avoid having to move in with his parents in Oxnard--including being without his own place for a while.

A bartender at a downtown restaurant and a “working musician,” he was sharing a one-bedroom place with his girlfriend. When things didn’t work out, he found himself unable to afford anything on his own without taking on a second job. It didn’t seem worth it for an apartment, so he’s resorted to staying with various friends for as long as he can.

“It’s a little uncomfortable, and I have to put all my stuff in storage,” he said. “I have no real options right now.”

The apartment hunt can be most difficult for those who move to Ventura County from other states to take jobs. That’s because they usually have no base of friends who could be roommates and nowhere to stay while they search.

Brandee Freeman, 28, relocated to Ventura County two months ago from Washington, D.C.--which has long had a tight housing market where fierce competition for an apartment is the norm.

When she decided to move to Ventura, which to her seemed like a sleepy town, she thought she’d have a breezy apartment search that could land her a nice two-bedroom apartment close to her new job downtown at Solimar Research Group.

She quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen.

“I found one-bedrooms for $1,400, and that’s crazy,” she said. “That’s more than my parents pay in mortgage on the house.”

She was lucky enough to eventually find a one-bedroom apartment downtown for a reasonable price, but she had to wait two months for it to become available. In the meantime, she bounced back and forth between her boyfriend’s place in Camarillo and her parents’ house in Los Angeles.

Blank, the Cal Lutheran grad originally from Orange County, said she always thought that when she became a full-time professional she could get her own place, and maybe even a puppy. By renting a room in someone else’s house, she said she doesn’t feel completely free or independent.

“I wanted to move out so badly,” Blank said. “You dream about getting out on your own, but it’s like, I just can’t do that.”

With apartment vacancy rates countywide hovering around 1.9%--with 3% to 5% considered a healthy rate--and getting even tighter during the summer months, finding a place to live can be more difficult than actually affording one.

That’s certainly true for Heather Steele, 33, an executive at Kinko’s corporate headquarters in Ventura. She earns enough to afford up to $1,000 a month, which led her to believe she wouldn’t have a problem renting a one-bedroom place.

She spent four months looking. And on three occasions, just as she was prepared to move in, the tenants renting the advertised apartment changed their minds and didn’t move out.

“I can’t help but wonder if they started looking and realized how hard it was,” she said.

Now, she’s crashing in a one-bedroom-plus-loft apartment at Hollywood Beach near Oxnard with a friend who is having a hard time making her own rent of $1,450 a month.

Steele said she’s not sure if she’ll ever get her own place in Ventura, especially if she can continue to stay with friends who are overextended with steep rents.

“It really is insane,” Steele said. “In some ways, I’ve given up. I’m so slammed with work, I just don’t have the 30 hours a week it takes to find a decent place.”

Tight Market Has Many Consequences

The abnormal vacancy rate has several consequences, Dyer said.

One is that apartment owners don’t have time between tenants to make normal upgrades, especially when 50 to 100 people are on waiting lists to move in.

“You may have not carpeted or painted for 10 years, but when people are banging down your door to pay more rent than the last guy, you lose your incentive,” Dyer said.

The forces of supply and demand cause prices to escalate quickly. With each new tenant, the rents rise--as much as $300 at a time.

There are greater economic consequences, as well, officials said.

As more young singles fork over up to 60% of their monthly disposable income to landlords, they have less cash to circulate in the local economy, Dyer said.

Also, employers’ ability to hire and retain good employees is affected.

Gary Wartik, economic development director for the city of Thousand Oaks, said he meets with the area’s largest employers regularly, and the housing issue invariably comes up.

“It will start to impact the ability of employers to grow,” he said.

A smaller percentage of people in their 20s and early 30s live in Ventura County than in other parts of the region, state and nation, according to the 2000 census. The scant availability of affordable housing can’t be discounted as a reason, officials say.

Among those young adults who do live here, most either grew up in Ventura County or relocated here for work.

Either way, they’re having a hard time staying.

Jennifer La Regina, 26, a chef working at Trader Joe’s in Thousand Oaks, is one who won’t bother. She said she’s so tired of the high rents that she plans to leave California altogether, despite being raised here.

“I love it here, but it’s getting way too expensive,” she said. “By the time they want first and last months’ rent and a deposit, a 26-year-old has to come up with $3,000 just to live in an apartment.”