Shannon Phillips

Here’s a picture of Robin shortly after waking up from a nap. His hair was so tousled and cute that I had to snap a picture. He’s having a snack of bread and butter.

The big news in our family is that my rock-star husband is bringing home a fifteen percent bonus this year (in this economy! I know!) so we suddenly find ourselves with the down payment for a house. We have a real estate agent and we’re going to start looking at properties maybe as soon as tomorrow.

I’m thrilled and scared. It’s a big financial commitment in an uncertain economy…but I think it is actually not too bad a time to buy. We plan to stay in this as-yet-hypothetical house until we die so we don’t really care if prices continue to drop for a while. We need more space; and considering things like the low interest rates and the tax benefits for homeowners, I think we can actually end up with a mortgage that will have lower monthly payments than our current rent. Plus we’ll be doing our little bit for the economy.

We’re looking in Oakland. Prices there have actually dropped to what I consider reasonable levels: there are lovely little bungalows built in the 20s and 30s going for $75,000 to $150,000. (This compared to San Francisco, where $400,000 will just about buy you a one-bedroom condo). It won’t be good for Sam’s commute—we will most likely end up having to buy a car as well—but nowhere else in the Bay Area has, well, suffered enough in the recession for us to be able to buy. (And the economy has put any thoughts of moving away from the Bay Area out of our minds.) On one hand we are sort of like vultures circling over the carcasses of foreclosed homes. But on the other hand we’re exactly the sort of young family that, moving as a group, can help to revitalize a blighted neighborhood.

(Don’t get me started on my “gentrification” rant. Gentrification is good. Urban neighborhoods move in cycles from new prosperity to gradual decay to revitalization, and if you artificially tamper with this cycle you are deliberately engineering slums. There is a large contingent of well-educated, highly-privileged, young white people in San Francisco who consider themselves artists and activists, and who basically fetishize poverty even though they have never really experienced it. The anti-gentrification brigade is largely composed of these types and they drive me absolutely batty.)

Anyway! I’m finding it pretty easy to get psyched up about a move to Oakland. I have this nice article bookmarked.

And I am profoundly mindful that our personal good fortune comes in the midst of so much hardship for so many. I’m proud of Sam’s leet skillz but even more grateful for our simple good luck.