For most people, living in San Francisco means making the choice to spend a sizable chunk of your income on rent. It also means when you find a great apartment or room that you can actually afford, you hold onto that place for dear life. But what happens when you fall in love and are thinking about living together? For many of us, as Facebook says, it’s complicated.
When my boyfriend of two-and-a-half years and I started to explore the possibility of cohabitation, it was not without giving it serious thought. We waited until we were sure that our relationship was secure – for the obvious emotional reasons and because we knew navigating our way into a new place wouldn’t be easy financially. The best way to go about it, we figured, would be to move me into his Mission District one bedroom.
But then, a few days later he called to tell me that something had happened. “It’s bad,” he said. “Come over.” When I arrived, he showed me the attorney-written Ellis Act eviction letter he had found in his mailbox after coming home from his job as a high school teacher. The letter stated that he had four months to vacate the home he had lived in for the past decade. Everyone in his building had received the same letter. Suddenly, not only was he and six other residents about to be displaced, but our moving in together was going to have to wait indefinitely – not to mention potentially become much more expensive. As for my place, I have two roommates, so that’s not an option for us either.
With every Craigslist scouring session and high-priced-yet-cardboard-box-sized-apartment visit, it feels like there are so many expanding hurdles to pass through before we can move into the next phase of our relationship together.
With every Craigslist scouring session and high-priced-yet-cardboard-box-sized-apartment visit, it feels like there are so many expanding hurdles to pass through before we can move into the next phase of our relationship together.
Unfortunately, I’m not alone in my rental-relationship woes. We all know it’s a tough rental market out there, but one thing we aren't talking about enough is the fact that the expense of living in San Francisco isn’t solely financial. We are having to delay moving in together when we’re in love, limit the number of kids we have (or hold off entirely), and if everything falls apart, we're often stuck in the same cell for weeks and months after we break up.
The fear of leaving one’s rent-controlled apartment for love is intense, and for good reason. Nadya Roman,* a tech employee from San Francisco, and her boyfriend, a civil engineer from Oakland, recently made the decision to move in together. She had been living in a small rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment in Lower Pac Heights, and he was in a one-bedroom in Oakland. They looked together in San Francisco for months, but were unable to find a two-bedroom apartment in a BART-accessible neighborhood for less than $4,000 a month – more than twice what they both had been paying individually.
“I didn’t understand it. I do well financially,” says Nadya, “but apparently for San Francisco, it still wasn’t enough.”
Eventually the two settled on an affordable part of Oakland – but the place still requires a lot of sacrifices on the couple’s part.
“The commute to the peninsula is hard,” says Nadya. ”It takes me nearly three hours a day to [get] back and forth to work. Every day I feel like I have to choose between my personal and professional lives. It’s taken a toll on my sleep and my fitness, as I often don’t have time to work out. We have a lovely apartment and it’s great to live together, but the commute is a drag.”
“I offered to leave, since it was his place to begin with,” says Daniel. “But honestly, neither of us could afford to live anywhere else, not to mention the costs of moving."
Love brings us under the same roof, but sometimes the rental market is what keeps us there, long after we’d rather be apart. Daniel Benton, a freelance graphic designer, and Michael Templeton, a project manager, identify with Nadya’s feeling of stuck-ness. Two years ago, Daniel moved into Michael’s Hayes Valley studio after the two had been together for a year. Eight months ago, they broke up, but neither moved out. “I offered to leave, since it was his place to begin with,” says Daniel. “But honestly, neither of us could afford to live anywhere else, not to mention the costs of moving. We still really care about each other, but the relationship just wasn’t working out.” He adds that it’s very hard to move on when you’re in the same room as your ex, night after night. “I certainly can’t have dates come over,” says Daniel, “and neither can he. For the immediate future anyway, we’re bound together by our financial situation and it sucks.”
For most people, wedded bliss means finally having your own place. But for Kate and Aaron Filbert, who have been married for almost three years, things are a little bit different. She works for a startup, and he practices environmental law. They have lived in their North Beach two-bedroom apartment for nearly four years with their tabby cat Neko, their pug Chandler, and their roommate Steve.
“When we first moved in, Aaron was with a big law firm, making a lot more money,” says Kate. “My company was still in beta and I was being paid mostly in equity. Even so, with his paycheck, our rent was manageable. But when he decided to leave his firm to pursue environmental law, which is where his heart really is, suddenly things got a lot tighter. Like, every month I wondered if we were going to be able to make rent. Then we found out that our friend Steve was looking for a place and we had a bedroom that was technically available – at the time it was functioning as an office and storage room – so we made him an offer.”
It’s like, we’re married which is supposed to be this adult thing, but we’re still living in this weird shared housing college-y arrangement. We clearly can’t bring a kid into the situation any time soon.
Asked how living with a roommate affects her relationship with Aaron, Kate says, “Well, we’re never really alone. It’s a tiny apartment, so we’re really all right on top of each other if we’re not in our respective rooms. If Steve has a girl or a buddy over it feels super crowded, not to mention not very grown-up. It’s like, we’re married which is supposed to be this adult thing, but we’re still living in this weird shared housing college-y arrangement. We clearly can’t bring a kid into the situation any time soon, if for no reason other than the fact that whoever lives in that second bedroom needs to be able to contribute to our housing expenses if we are going to continue living here.”
For many, the rental market functions as a forced family-planning system. Rhea St. Julien, a freelance writer, and her husband Joel, a social worker and musician, already have a kid – a young daughter, and they are desperate to stay in San Francisco, even if that means restricting their family size. Says Rhea, “My husband and I are not having more kids until we can move out of our rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment. We have been over and over all the options and it seems like what we keep coming to is some kind of SF-housing-crisis-induced-family-planning situation.” Rhea and Joel don’t want to choose between the city they love and expanding their family, but so far, it feels like their only choice is to delay having another child.
“The bottom line,” says Jennifer Cust of Eviction Free San Francisco, a group whose mission is to help stop the wave of evictions in the city, “is that in San Francisco, your choices are very limited unless you are very wealthy. You have to kind of barely hang on to be able to stay in the city if you’re not a millionaire. If you want to have children, for most people, the reality of that means choosing between moving outside the city or living in a cramped space.”
San Francisco has always been an unconventional city, resplendent with counterculture and independent ideas about relationships and family. So perhaps part of the received wisdom here is that in order to continue to thrive in the city we fell in love with, we now must think of cohabitating with partners, building families, and making homes in that same unconventional spirit. How exactly that plays out for couples like my boyfriend and me, though, I still don’t know. Here’s hoping we can think of something sooner rather than later.
*Some last names have been changed