Some thoughts on why we stay in the Bay Area, despite the high cost of living:

**This** is why I love the Bay Area.

The longer you live here the better it gets because Berkeley and its environs constitute a real community (with the best weather). I've lived here 30 years and so have many other people older, younger, and the same age as I am. And we say hello to each other, and remember each other, and plan to grow old together, (hoping I can always afford to live here and can at least rent out rooms in my house to students and squat in my garage if all else fails). I know at least two people who work at Andronico's who either worked at COOP and now there so I know them for 30 years! Many community activists used to be called 'transients' 30 years ago, as opposed to 'citizens' or 'residents' yet most are still here...how transient is that?

So one of the reasons I stay is that I think this area emobodies the Platonic ideal of the POLIS; a real community in every sense of the word. Of course we can always make it better and most of us try.

PS: I do feel sorry for the many low-income people who have been displaced by gentrification. The answer is to work for better educational and job opportunities for all.

Why do I live here? Well, I actually moved away to reduce our cost of living, but I actually ended up spending a lot more. My husband and I moved to Redding thinking that we might be happier somewhere where we did not have to spend a fortune for everything in life. We bought a beautiful 4 bedroom house for $135,000. We could not even afford a one bedroom house in the East Bay. My husband kept his job in the Bay Area because he travels a lot, so he just kept on traveling but just flew out of Redding or Sacramento. I had a part-time job in Walnut Creek and thought that I could find one in Redding. Well, that's where it started. I signed up with a job bank through EDD and the only job offers I would get would be as a full-charge bookkeeper making $6.50 per hour. Since I am not even a full-charge bookkeeper, my chances of making anything more, even slightly, were non-existent. On top of that, I still would have to put my son in day-care, which cost anywhere from $2.50 to $4.00 per hour, depending on the kind of care. I signed up at a temp-agency asking for $10 per hour, but needless to say I did not get (m)any offers. Since I could not, with a good conscience, put my son in day care to make a few louse bucks, I ended up not working at all. I did not make a whole lot to begin with, but it did help pay for a whole lot of extra things that make life happy.

Of course this is just my personal opinion, but things looked very bleak and depressing in Redding. There were plenty of smoking and drinking people, and lots of very bored teenagers getting in all sorts of trouble, because there was nothing else to do, especially during the rain and the hot summer months. All one could do was sit in your air-conditioned house (which I was lucky enough to have) and play inside; even the shaded backyard was often to hot. The people in Redding were generally nice, but I missed the diversity and the culture from the Bay Area. And oh' did I miss the food. I looked high and low for a place that would sell organic fruit and vegetables, but could not find it. And the restaurants I would go to were Marie Calendars and Red Robin, where you paid more money than one of the wonderful little places in Berkeley, and the food was not even half as good.

Well, to make a long story short. My son and I came back together. My husband and I did not make it through this testing time. I now have to work full time, making a very meager salary as an administrative assistant. I pay more than $800 a month for my son's day-care in San Francisco. I pay a ton of money for a tiny one bedroom apartment in the East Bay. Our house in Redding just went into escrow. When it is sold, I will have another few thousand added to my debt, since we had to significantly reduce the asking price of our house. Houses in Redding do not sell very quickly, and the competition is fierce because they are cranking out new houses every week, and who wants to buy a one year old house when you can buy a brand new one (that is what we did) for the same price or a little more.

But, despite all of this, I have never been happier in my life. I love it here in the beautiful Bay Area. I will never leave, not in a million years. My son and I go to Tilden Park, ride our bikes at Point Isabel, and we love to shop at the Berkeley Bowl, and numerous other activities that I used to take for granted before. We do not have much in terms of money, but we are so grateful for the things we do have. There is not a day that goes by without me feeling so lucky that I got out when I did. Redding is (almost) a blur of the past. I still have to drive my son half-way to Redding every other week, but once the house is sold that will stop, because my son's father has also decided that Redding is just not it.

Maybe others will be extremely happy in Redding, or a place like that, so please accept my story at face value. Your experience might be very different, but this is mine.

I love living in the East Bay because it is the only other place besides my native New York City where you can arrange your life so as not to need to use a car for days a time, and yet your life can still be rich,