Why I’m Moving Away From the City I Love

I was ten years old when I first fell in love with The City.

My dad and stepmom and I had traveled across the country in a Toyota Corolla without air-conditioning from our home in the tiny town of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to this glorious place. They let me out of the car and as I looked around I thought I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life as San Francisco with its hills and views and sparkling bay. I looked around again and thought to my little self, “When I get big I am going to move here.”

When I was 19, I did move here, as excited and happy as I’ve ever been. Every day off I explored a different neighborhood and was filled with joy at the surprising, panoramic views and charming homes. Each day I expressed gratitude for being here.

I used to say that if San Francisco were a person, I’d marry it.

Many years passed and I moved to other places in California; Emeryville, Oakland, Benicia, San Rafael, San Carlos, Aptos, Santa Cruz, Malibu, Santa Monica, and Apple Valley. But my soul always wanted to be in the city of effervescence, the city of that clear blue light.

I was living in Santa Monica when I was diagnosed and so I bribed myself, “If you get through this, you can move back to San Francisco.” That promise helped me through the near-death experience of chemo.

You cannot imagine what it was like trying to find an apartment during the week that the housing market collapsed in 2007. With every homebuyer falling out of escrow, the competition was intense. We were lucky enough to find this magnificent place in the Outer Richmond, a full top-floor flat with coved ceilings, hardwood floors, a little view of the ocean, and a view into Golden Gate Park. It was my dream apartment, by far the nicest place I’d ever lived. I looked around and after having moved 42 times, thought to myself, “I’m going to live here for the rest of my life.”

For the first time I didn’t have in the back of my mind that I’d have to pack more boxes and move soon; I even began to buy small appliances. A food dehydrator, a small food processor. A spiralizer. I bought lamps, which I had never done before because movers always destroy them. Slowly, I allowed myself to feel as though I had a home.

I raised my daughter here. I woke up every day grateful for my beautiful home. Even during the recession when gas was almost 5.50 a gallon and I, a retail commissioned salesperson, was barely earning enough to pay the rent each month (There was one month when I couldn’t afford to buy toothpaste and had to use plain baking soda instead. This is before it was cool.) I was grateful to be here.

My car was always on fumes and some warning light was always coming on on the dashboard. I lived in fear of my car breaking down for good. I tried to take the bus home from work but one night it took and hour and a half to travel the 5.5 miles home. Public transportation is not this town’s strong suit.

We regularly had to go two months without paying our PG&E bills, our phone bills. We paid them either right before or right after they were shut off. We sold my partner’s deceased father’s watch to pay the rent one month. It was really, really hard.

On my days off, broke, I was thrilled by the simple joy of being able to walk around North Beach, see the view from Coit Tower, or walk along Crissy Field. These were free activities that could bring me bliss.

The joy of living here wasn’t limited to the experiences of the City. Over the years we as a little family would go on trips to Yosemite, to Muir Woods, to Carmel and Monterey, to Samuel P. Taylor State Park, Point Reyes. We never ran out of fun things to do.

And then, last year, my dad died. I was beside myself. My parents had engaged in a 9-year custody battle over me when I was a child, and I couldn’t spent as much time with my father as I would have liked and now we never would have another minute together. In my grief over his death, and searching for connections, I thought I should go to the tiny town in North Holland to see if I could find any living relatives, anything I could do that would help me feel connected to my father in a deeper way. I did find some relatives, but that’s a longer story. I also studied painting while I was in Europe, and in general, felt I was honoring my father, the artist’s, memory.

One day, while still a couple of weeks from coming home, I got a frantic text message from my daughter. “We just got this letter. It says we are being evicted.”

She texted it to me. I sat down, read the letter, and froze. Our landlord of almost ten years is evicting us because, he says, his wife wants to move into our apartment so that she can have visits from her grandchildren.

My heart broke. It felt as stressful as my cancer diagnosis had, but in a different way. I asked myself why this was happening. We had never been late on our rent. We were quiet, respectful tenants. We maintained the property. Why were they kicking us out?

From 5,500 miles away it’s difficult to make sense of information like this. At first I thought it was an Ellis eviction, and that at least we’d be entitled to decent compensation, but upon my return home (not to be my home much longer, I thought) I learned it was an “Owner-Move-In” and that after talking to seven attorneys, attending three legal clinics and doing tons of research online, I learned that we basically have no rights in this situation. They’ll throw a few thousand dollars at us and then we have to give up our home of almost ten years.

Every morning my first thought upon waking was, “We’re being evicted.” I felt shame. I felt dirty, like I’d done something wrong. I didn’t want to tell my friends and family, for fear they’d think I wasn’t a good person. But I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I had to keep reminding myself of that. But the shame stuck to me.

Every day I looked online at apartment listings, sometimes for hours and hours at a time, toggling between Zillow and Apartments.com and Craigslist. I couldn’t find a single place even half the size as ours for around the same rent, that wasn’t in a shitty neighborhood or had no parking, or wasn’t in the flight path of the airport. The situation was getting uglier and uglier. Not only was I being kicked out of my home, but I wouldn’t even be able to afford to live with my daughter anymore.

After a meeting with my landlord in which I begged for more time, I got in my car to do errands and crashed into a tour bus. After the bus driver and I exchanged information, I drove home in tears. Preparing dinner that night, I cut the tip of my finger off (as I stumbled around bleeding and crying the dining room looked like a murder scene) and ended up spending the rest of the evening in the emergency room. I don’t know how to deal with being evicted.

Even though I am angry and distraught, some part of me wants to make lemonade out of these rotten lemons. Can I snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, as my mother used to say?

I thought about living in other places in the US to save money, but then I would still be far from my daughter. Then I remembered how in France rents are so much less expensive than here, and wondered if I would be able to tolerate being so far from my daughter. No! I won’t be separated from her!

But the more I thought about spending $45,000 a year on rent, and how that would doom me to living the rest of my life in rentals and never getting ahead, I decided that it would be the best thing to do. But every time I thought that, I thought of how much I’d miss my daughter, and I would feel like crying. I feel angry and sad that another human being has the power to break apart our little family.

But on the other hand, it’s the logical thing to do, for me to move to France. Here are the ten reasons why.

  1. Cost of rent here is stupid high. Why keep making other people rich?
  2. My daughter is still in school and I want to help her complete her education.
  3. Parking is ridiculous. I never go anywhere anymore because I dread having to find somewhere to park, and then when I do park I worry whether my car will be broken into or damaged by someone who uses it to help them get into a parking space.
  4. I’m always cold here. Even in my house. Last December it was so cold in my living room I could see my breath. Turn on the heat, you say? Unbeknownst to me my landlord had commingled my gas and electric lines with those of the illegal in-law he built downstairs and so for almost eight years I was paying their bill in addition to mine. No wonder my bills were so high. Since confronted about it two months ago, my landlord had the lines separated and my bill has gone down 30.00 per month. So that’s good, but besides that, it’s cold and windy ten months of the year in this neighborhood and I cannot afford to move to the Mission, where it’s warmer.
  5. Our downstairs neighbors suck. They are loud (waking us up most mornings), entitled, inconsiderate, and rude. Also, patholological liars, for some reason. We’ve tried to make peace with them but it is not happening. Some people are just not happy.
  6. Earthquakes. I know, we act all brave and whatnot, but how many of you lived through the Loma Prieta quake? I lived in the Marina District when it happened and after having seen the deaths and horrors of the Cypress Structure in Oakland and in my own neighborhood, I still have PTSD from it. I am not speaking of PTSD metaphorically, either. Whenever there is the slightest shaking, I am instantly overwhelmed by fear and sadness and I begin crying immediately. I even begin reacting this way when a big truck rumbles by. When I go to bed at night, one of my last thoughts is fear that a quake will hit while I’m sleeping. It’s bad. I won’t miss that feeling at all.
  7. The rent for a small house in the gorgeous countryside of the southwest of France is $800.00 per month, including all utilities and internet. You read that right. If I decide I want to move to Paris, it’s about $2,000.00 per month for a really nice two bedroom in one of the best arrondisements. I will live in the country to save money so I can buy a small house and never be evicted again. A small house in Sarlat-la-Caneda, a gorgeous medieval town, runs about $72,000.00. After two years renting in the countryside, what I save by not renting in San Francisco will pay cash for a little house in the French countryside. CASH.
  8. I’ll be able to improve my French, which is a goal.
  9. I’ll have time to paint and write, two of my favorite things to do, because I won’t have to spend all my time worrying about making enough money to pay my bills. Proximity to Paris (four and a half hours by train) means I can study the paintings at the Louvre over a weekend. Being in France also means I could pop over to Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, just for a weekend to study at their museums.
  10. Since people in France spend an average of 19% of their income on housing, they don’t have to work all the time and so have the mental space and time to spend with their friends. This lifestyle of getting together with friends after work every day is very civilized. If friendships lead to happiness, it’s no wonder the French seem happier than we are.
  11. The Trump administration is an embarrassment and a disgrace to the ideals of my beloved country. I just can’t anymore.

I know I will miss my daughter terribly, and I am deeply conflicted about leaving for this reason. But in order to build a more secure future for her, I am willing to make these changes, and we can visit each other a few times a year.

And as sad as she is at the prospect of us not living together, ultimately, I think she will love the security of knowing that there’s a little house in the countryside in France that she can call her own and from which no one will ever be able to evict us.

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade