Like keeping a stable home for your kids through high school, like building home equity of your own, like trying to be a contributing part of your community, like wanting to live in a place where everybody knows your name, like getting tired of moving every two years because the rent increases over some leverage deal your landlord got…

I don’t live in Palo Alto and my community is in the Rust Belt where jobs all quietly moved away (except GM; that was pretty violent in 2008) until there is nothing left here but dollar store and distribution jobs. My kids both got college educations but they left after college for opportunity elsewhere and they’re not coming back. My home that was supposed to increase in value and contribute to my retirement (remember that lie 30 yrs ago?) is becoming my coffin as no young couple wants to live in the suburbs… they rather live in the shiny new lofts of Downtown Dayton doing remote work on contacts for companies in Palo Alto, NYC… yeah, move? To where?

Even if I could sell the house that I have 100% equity in, where else could I buy that won’t saddle me with crushing debt for the rest of my life, assuming I could find a company that would hire one aging — albeit wickedly smart and talented — dude when they could hire three young kids who will work all the time and not really need health insurance or even enough to pay the rent because parents are subsidizing the cost of employees now. Especially in startups.

The problems of Palo Alto are not the problems of the Rust Belt (we have TOO much housing …5 houses for sale in my subdivision alone…really, do YOU want to live in Englewood, Ohio? I got a house deal for you!) but this whole “you should stay ahead of the market and move before you are a victim of it” is a big bucket of crap.

We want to live our lives, we don’t want to be constantly daytrading them based on the whims of “the market.”

Sorry JK_Seattle this wasn’t really a rant directed at you personally… it was more directed at that “move before bad things get too bad” meme. Not everyone is a nomad and we were sold a crap American Dream bill of goods 30–40 years ago. We all just tried to do the right thing by our kids and communities.