The endangered western home - Special Report

Sunset, May, 1993 by Peter Fish, Daniel Gregory

There was a dream, and it went something like this. Five P.M., in a tranquil suburb, on a quiet street named for the trees that shade it. Pine. Or Oak. Near the street's end stands a handsome home. Somehow, every aspect of the house--every window, every door, every shingle, every nail--bespeaks stability, happiness, and peace. Across the newly mowed lawn two children romp under the watchful eye of their mother. All three smile as they hear the thrum of a well-tuned V-8 and see a large American sedan glide into the driveway. Dad is home, and all is right with the world.

In 1993, many of us might challenge--might hoot at--any number of details of this dream. But something at its heart still draws us: the idea of home.

For baby-boomers now nearing middle age, dreams of home are colored by memories of the places that sheltered them as children. Some of the places are real: Bellevue, Lake Oswego, San Mateo, Woodland Hills. Some are television never-never lands: 4222 Clinton Way (the Brady house), 211 Pine Street (Beaver Cleaver's), even 17230 Valley Spring Lane (Mister Ed's). All exert a powerful pull.

But in 1993 the dream of homeownership seems, well, shaky. In the 1980s, much of the Pacific West--and especially California--saw home prices spiral upward so fast that many young families felt permanently locked out of the market. Now prices are dropping again, though just a little. That news is a silver lining for aspiring buyers, a dark cloud for recession-battered sellers. Interest rates have dropped as low as they've been in decades--but how long will they stay that way? Is a deed a ticket to riches or an invitation to bankruptcy court? If the idea of homeownership could be multiple-listed, it would have to be classified as a fixer-upper in a transitional neighborhood.

To look at the status of the Western home, circa 1993, just head northeast on the Antelope Valley Freeway late any weekday afternoon. Here, 40 miles outside Los Angeles, the landscape steps straight out of the old, wild West, with gorges and rock outcrops that were the stamping grounds of 19th-century bandit Tiburcio Vasquez. But the freeway itself is pure late 20th century. Taillights chase taillights, and the only outlaws in evidence are commuters doing 70 in the fast lane.

What's the rush, and to where? Crest Soledad Pass and you'll see. Below you stretches Palmdale-Lancaster, a sea of rooftops flooding out into the Mojave Desert. A few blinks of an eye ago, it seems, these twin cities were desert outposts best known for their proximity to Edwards Air Force Base. Today they form a 170,000-person metropolitan area. The billboards advertising new subdivisions along Avenue S tell part of the story--three-bedroom, two-bath, $130,000, low down--but not all. Last year, foreclosures were up 65 percent in Los Angeles County, and Palmdale-Lancaster has been hit especially hard.

For another vantage point, head to Sparks, Nevada, in the eastern shadow of the Sierra. Between 1980 and 1990, the Reno-Sparks area added 46,000 new residents; for the last two years, the state of Nevada has been the fastest-growing in the nation. One big reason for the growth is a median home price some $100,000 less than in neighboring California.

Or look at St. George, Utah. For decades this was a quiet, mainly Mormon town in Utah's "Dixie," a place you stopped on your way to Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks. No more. St. George has become a new promised land for retirees, golfers, and lots of other people who appreciate blue skies and red rock scenery--and housing prices that average about $100,000. The town has grown from 11,350 in 1980 to more than 28,500 today, making residents wonder just how long it will be before St. George loses the small-town charm that attracted so many newcomers there in the first place.

Finally, visit one of those close-in urban neighborhoods that yuppies and others discovered in the 1980s: West Adams in Los Angeles, Potrero Hill in San Francisco, Central District in Seattle. Priced out of the suburbs of their youth, baby-boom buyers flocked to these districts in the 1980s, attracted by interesting architecture and a reasonable commute. Now these same homeowners are raising families--and having to cope with urban problems like struggling school districts and crime. Flee or fight? Yet another quandary for Western homeowners.

In this article, when we talk about "home," we're talking about a detached single-family dwelling. Despite the growing presence of condominiums and townhouses, this type of house remains Westerners' overwhelming preference. (Last year in California, 77 percent of first-time buyers purchased detached single-family homes.)

In terms of percentages, fewer Westerners own homes than do people in other parts of the country, though the figures are pulled down by the low rate of ownership in our populous coastal states. According to the 1990 census, 64.2 percent of Americans nationwide lived in their own homes: in California, that rate is 55.6 percent. (Western states where the rate of homeownership is higher than the national average are Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.) In the 1980s, the rate of homeownership declined in every Western state except Hawaii.