Not quite ready to commit to any physical activity, I remain in bed. To avoid rising with the sun the blinds are drawn. It would take a quick pull on the cord, but that, too, requires more energy than I can assign. Beyond the shuttered window I imagine Santa Barbara pushed close to the ocean by its imposing mountain range. I stir with remnants of an ordeal that nearly pushed me out.
The phone stall near the San Zaccaria stop overlooks prime real estate that attracts throngs of visitors. From the train station I hopped on a vaporetto for a trip through the Giudecca backwaters, a journey more utilitarian than spectacular, if one is permitted to denigrate floating public transit in a transcendent floating city. Santa Maria della Salute and the Accademia stand on opposite side of the Canale Grande, gleaming under the afternoon sun. Tourists from every nation corner the Palazzo Ducale and gape at Piazza San Marco.
Slightly hyper, I fish out my Italia Telecom card to surprise Elisabeth back home. She first visited Venice when I last saw the city.
“ ’Giorno! Sai dov’è sono?”
Instead of complimenting me on my impressive command of the language (!), she announces that our landlord wants us out by early July to turn the place over to her son.
Back in the United States two weeks later my research uncovers the only protection afforded renters in my home state, save for those who live in a handful of rent control communities. I transform the 30-day notice into a 60-day reprieve. Because it was improperly served, it buys us another month.
The unpleasant but momentary – I imagined - disruption to find a new place to live quickly degenerated into a toxic trudge through the renter minefield.
Not just because since I last checked into those details, the cost of renting has skyrocketed. Like home prices, it bears no relation to people’s actual income. Below $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom, you are taking chances.
Not just because real estate also suffers from language inflation. Free online posts (which pain newspapers to no end, accustomed as they were to the monopoly on expensive classified ads) squash the need for the abbreviations of old. “Chrmng 1 br, ½ ba, nu paint, air con, xlt loc, mst see” has been replaced with a new eloquence, if not sincerity. But ancient pitfalls lurk on. “Convenient to freeway” indicates an apartment from which you will be able to give traffic report. The words “charming” and “unique“ are shorthand when there is something wrong with the property. “NS, NP” shows up as a condition in most listings. I pity those who do smoke or have a pet.
Not just because the definition of what passes for adequate living space aims for the lowest common denominator. In my price range, renters are not expected to need a kitchen (“There’s a microwave”), to desire space for more than bed alone in the bedroom (“You don’t spend too much time in it anyways”), to want a heater (“It never gets cold in Santa Barbara”). Pathetic apartments, even tool sheds, seek occupants without the least embarrassment.
Not just because vultures are poised to feed on the carcass of your dreams.
Property management companies control a substantial share of the rental pool. To select the tenant most likely to pay the rent, they run credit checks, which cost each applicant $15 to $20. Pay to play. Whether a good credit score is relevant to renting a home is debatable. If property management companies think it is, isn’t it, then, the cost of doing business?
Not just because dodging the many scams saps energy.
A three-bedroom for under a grand a month? The foreclosure frenzy attracts another breed of vultures hawking too-good-to-be-true deals.
Clever swindlers post ads with a description tailored to the geography of a local market. They add photographs for greater authenticity. But their specificity falls short of divulging the location of the rental. For that, applicants have to submit their credit score, again to weed out the undesirables. Follow the provided link to get yours.
I performed a search on an e-mail address that came with a link. It brought up three other listings in Manhattan, San Diego and Los Angeles with an identical narrative, except for local references, and with the same pictures. Amazing coincidence!
What to do? Clearly I do not earn enough to have a shot at anything other than substandard housing. But who does? The per capita income in Santa Barbara is not that much greater than the U.S. average, but the cost of living is much higher. A county report two years back showed that 94 per cent of South Coast residents cannot afford to live here.
A retired friend qualified for a mortgage on a home in the early 1960s when he was a young postal service employee. Today, we accept that such worker will never be in a position to make house payments and gain from the hosts of benefits owning a home confers. The reasoning elevates Santa Barbara to the rank of paradise, with a hefty (and secretly justified) cost of admission.
Is it time to relocate, if only to sidestep homelessness? Without a job in a new city I am not sure how long I would last. Even homes in plain Santa Maria and Lompoc, the traditional safety valve for South Coast denizens not ready to ditch the dream of home ownership even if it comes with a nightmarish commute of 225 kms, nudge the half-million dollar mark. That insanity can no longer be the remedy. In each of California’s 58 counties, residents with median incomes cannot afford the cost of a median house. Public policy bows to the whims of speculative interests, a trend that the unprecedented rash of foreclosures is unlikely to alter. 
The uncertainty over whether I will have a roof provoked restless nights. Radical plans took shape: all promised major disruption. After six consuming weeks, we found a new place, a bright and airy little cottage on the side of a hill with a view like in the glory days of Bernal Heights in San Francisco, the Northside in Santa Fe and this very same Riviera neighborhood 20 years ago. Our new digs are a few meters from Hacienda Escondida, for those who remember it. Far enough from the beach, we escape much of the fog that visits almost daily in spring and summer. With no adjacent neighbors, we rely on the bells of the nearby Santa Barbara Mission to mark time and provide a solitary auditory distraction. The commotion of the Mission Creek frogs is gone, replaced by joyous birds and quiet butterflies.
Across the garden and below us, the main house on the property bears a striking resemblance to the Gamble House, a National Historic Landmark in Pasadena and a famed 1909 example of the Arts and Craft style of architecture. Designers Charles and Henry Greene delivered a Santa Barbara version with slight Japanese touches three years later. The exterior of the cottage matches the main house. The entrance does not face east, but I was not going to let this feng shui detail deter me, especially as the house enjoys a warm southern exposure. Appliances, cabinets, tiles in the kitchen, living room and bathroom, and carpeting in the bedroom are all new.
To fit her prized possessions into a house with far less storage space, Elisabeth underwent a (much welcome) “ownership readjustment.” By the dozen, 125-liter bags filled with clothes and boxes topped with shoes relocated to a Goodwill store overwhelmed by the sudden influx. After several days shuttling boxes and bags, we rented a truck for the furniture. Michael and Joey, Judy, Stephanie, Susan, Anthony and Barbara, and Brett lent muscle support to an operation that took just a few hours. Three weeks later, the initial momentum to finish off the move has abated. Three stubborn boxes remain. The house is functional even if we have not yet repositioned all belongings. And more of it, rediscovered since the trouble.
The frustrations of the experiment recede but I have a headache.
The house needs to be a pu’uhonua, a place of refuge, free of contrivances, an ever-renewed exile from the present.
Without Elisabeth’s uncle and my mom’s help this respite might not have been. Not yet ready to draw the blinds and let even a pretty view rush in, I push aside notions of extreme measures for the moment. I toss contently in a night shirt that declares a time out.
“Laissez-moi dormir en paix,” Snoopy tries to say before he falls asleep.
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