I haven't mentioned it on my blog yet, but we are probably moving, probably soon. We don't have a place to live yet, but we will likely put our house on the market in a few weeks. It will undoubtedly sell quickly, which is a blessing that portends a curse. The DC housing market is hot right now (it seems to never cool off), so selling will be easy and profitable, and buying will be difficult and expensive. I'd prefer not to move, truth be told, but S has been agitating about it for over a year, and I've put her off as long as I possibly can. And if we are going to do it, then we have to take the plunge at some point. I mean, it's not going to be any easier five years from now.
As an alternative we could renovate our current house, but it's not conducive to renovation -- at least not for the things S wants.* It would be a lot of money, and I just don't think it would be worth it. Also, it wouldn't solve one of our biggest problems, which is schools. Our sons currently go to a public charter, which we are happy with, but we only like the elementary school. The middle school is not as good, and it's in an inconvenient location. Our neighborhood middle school and high school are even worse. S has never liked them, and I was like: Give them a chance. Different kids thrive in different types of environments. The "best" schools aren't the best for everybody... But then I went online and actually researched them, and I must admit it was a big turnoff. They pretty much underperform across the board, and like half the people on their administration boards are labeled "interim," which doesn't exactly instill confidence.
*And I don't mean for it come off as if S is being unreasonable or overly demanding or selfish or anything like that -- she's not. In fact, two of the things she wants most are a better public school for our kids and a room on the first floor for her parents to stay when they visit because her mom isn't great with stairs.
This is how it goes in DC. People live in one neighborhood and send their kids to school in a different one, if they can. Matthew Yglesias of The Weeds was talking about this on a recent podcast. He lives in the Shaw neighborhood in DC, and he summarized it by saying his white liberal neighbors, although they claim to be progressive, won't send their kids to schools with a bunch of minority children. Maybe that's the case for him, but that has not been my experience. Here's what I think is really going on: Parents of all races look at the ratings for their neighborhood school, and if they are low, then they try to send them somewhere they are high. That's it. If the metrics (graduation rate, reading proficiency, college acceptance, etc.) of the schools in Shaw were good, then I bet all the white liberal johnnies-come-lately would send their kids to them even if they were overwhelming nonwhite.
And it's not just white parents who behave this way -- it's everybody who can. My wife isn't white, and she's way more worried about "good" schools than I am. DC charters are filled with minority children whose parents don't want them to go to their neighborhood schools. Just this past weekend we had dinner with a family who moved across the DC-Maryland border, and our friend, who's black, told us it was largely because the schools in their old DC neighborhood are low-performing, and then she said of her decision to move her kids to a better school, "Maybe it's a woman of color thing, but I don't care, I'll own it." But it's not. Like I said, it's an all people of all color thing.
I don't think this is a good system, by the way. I'm not defending it. I think it's an awful system, but it's understandable from the point of view of the parents, which is exactly what makes it so awful. It is a situation in which the rational best move for the individual hurts the collective good. When that happens the solution is to fix the system, not expect each individual to "fix" themselves. I can't think of a single notable collective-action problem that was solved by everybody deciding en masse to go against their own best interest for the greater good. That's not how humans operate. The real problem is not that faux-progressive parents are unwilling to send their kids to underperforming schools, it's that so many public schools in DC are underperforming. And this is a whole other topic for a whole different post that I'm not going to get into now.
Actually, I will say one thing. I was ambivalent about charter schools, but I'm starting to think they are more bad than good. They are the main way parents can bypass their neighborhood schools. Gentrification is happening all over DC, and one of the supposed upsides is that when rich(er) people move to a new neighborhood public services improve. But with charter schools, this doesn't have to be the case with perhaps the most important public service, neighborhood schools. If gentrifying parents had to send their kids to the neighborhood school (most people, even those who are relatively well-off, can't afford DC private school) then it would have more resources and would likely improve. But the flip-side is that charter schools already exist and help a lot of low-income students (those lucky enough to win the entrance lottery). So, what do you do? I don't know. But it's hard to see how sending my kids to a struggling school will help anything.
So, that brings me back to the move. We want to go somewhere that's zoned for better public schools. As you might guess, houses are very expensive in such places. Any money we make off selling our current house will be used as a down payment, and even then we're less than breaking even. It makes me a bit nervous -- I think I lean more towards the risk-averse end of the spectrum -- but buying a house you plan to live in long-term seems to be one of the safest investments you can make. If something happens and you can no longer afford the mortgage, you can sell it, and if the housing market tanks, it doesn't really effect you if you can still pay your mortgage. The only way you can really end up underwater is if the market tanks and you suddenly can't afford it. That's very unlikely. I mean, everything in life has some risk associated with it. There's no such thing as playing it safe. As Jim Carrey once said, "you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love." It's not perfectly apt, but it's close enough.
More worrisome (to me) than the financial commitment is the actually finding of a house. It's so stressful, and you constantly second-guess yourself over everything -- should we put in a bid, should we offer more, should we walk away, should we negotiate, should we this, should we that? It's enough that I've thought on several occasions: Screw it! We're moving to the suburbs! But then I'd just be miserable. I could live in the suburbs if I already had a social network in place -- like, if I was living near family and friends, I would perfectly content in the suburbs. But moving to Rockville, Maryland or something like that as a fortysomething family man, with nothing much to do outside of the house, that's not for me (nor S). I probably don't "use the city" as often as I should, but the times I do are very important for my quality of life.
So, there you have it. We are very likely moving. I'll keep you all posted on our progress.
Until next time...
As an alternative we could renovate our current house, but it's not conducive to renovation -- at least not for the things S wants.* It would be a lot of money, and I just don't think it would be worth it. Also, it wouldn't solve one of our biggest problems, which is schools. Our sons currently go to a public charter, which we are happy with, but we only like the elementary school. The middle school is not as good, and it's in an inconvenient location. Our neighborhood middle school and high school are even worse. S has never liked them, and I was like: Give them a chance. Different kids thrive in different types of environments. The "best" schools aren't the best for everybody... But then I went online and actually researched them, and I must admit it was a big turnoff. They pretty much underperform across the board, and like half the people on their administration boards are labeled "interim," which doesn't exactly instill confidence.
*And I don't mean for it come off as if S is being unreasonable or overly demanding or selfish or anything like that -- she's not. In fact, two of the things she wants most are a better public school for our kids and a room on the first floor for her parents to stay when they visit because her mom isn't great with stairs.
This is how it goes in DC. People live in one neighborhood and send their kids to school in a different one, if they can. Matthew Yglesias of The Weeds was talking about this on a recent podcast. He lives in the Shaw neighborhood in DC, and he summarized it by saying his white liberal neighbors, although they claim to be progressive, won't send their kids to schools with a bunch of minority children. Maybe that's the case for him, but that has not been my experience. Here's what I think is really going on: Parents of all races look at the ratings for their neighborhood school, and if they are low, then they try to send them somewhere they are high. That's it. If the metrics (graduation rate, reading proficiency, college acceptance, etc.) of the schools in Shaw were good, then I bet all the white liberal johnnies-come-lately would send their kids to them even if they were overwhelming nonwhite.
And it's not just white parents who behave this way -- it's everybody who can. My wife isn't white, and she's way more worried about "good" schools than I am. DC charters are filled with minority children whose parents don't want them to go to their neighborhood schools. Just this past weekend we had dinner with a family who moved across the DC-Maryland border, and our friend, who's black, told us it was largely because the schools in their old DC neighborhood are low-performing, and then she said of her decision to move her kids to a better school, "Maybe it's a woman of color thing, but I don't care, I'll own it." But it's not. Like I said, it's an all people of all color thing.
I don't think this is a good system, by the way. I'm not defending it. I think it's an awful system, but it's understandable from the point of view of the parents, which is exactly what makes it so awful. It is a situation in which the rational best move for the individual hurts the collective good. When that happens the solution is to fix the system, not expect each individual to "fix" themselves. I can't think of a single notable collective-action problem that was solved by everybody deciding en masse to go against their own best interest for the greater good. That's not how humans operate. The real problem is not that faux-progressive parents are unwilling to send their kids to underperforming schools, it's that so many public schools in DC are underperforming. And this is a whole other topic for a whole different post that I'm not going to get into now.
Actually, I will say one thing. I was ambivalent about charter schools, but I'm starting to think they are more bad than good. They are the main way parents can bypass their neighborhood schools. Gentrification is happening all over DC, and one of the supposed upsides is that when rich(er) people move to a new neighborhood public services improve. But with charter schools, this doesn't have to be the case with perhaps the most important public service, neighborhood schools. If gentrifying parents had to send their kids to the neighborhood school (most people, even those who are relatively well-off, can't afford DC private school) then it would have more resources and would likely improve. But the flip-side is that charter schools already exist and help a lot of low-income students (those lucky enough to win the entrance lottery). So, what do you do? I don't know. But it's hard to see how sending my kids to a struggling school will help anything.
So, that brings me back to the move. We want to go somewhere that's zoned for better public schools. As you might guess, houses are very expensive in such places. Any money we make off selling our current house will be used as a down payment, and even then we're less than breaking even. It makes me a bit nervous -- I think I lean more towards the risk-averse end of the spectrum -- but buying a house you plan to live in long-term seems to be one of the safest investments you can make. If something happens and you can no longer afford the mortgage, you can sell it, and if the housing market tanks, it doesn't really effect you if you can still pay your mortgage. The only way you can really end up underwater is if the market tanks and you suddenly can't afford it. That's very unlikely. I mean, everything in life has some risk associated with it. There's no such thing as playing it safe. As Jim Carrey once said, "you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love." It's not perfectly apt, but it's close enough.
More worrisome (to me) than the financial commitment is the actually finding of a house. It's so stressful, and you constantly second-guess yourself over everything -- should we put in a bid, should we offer more, should we walk away, should we negotiate, should we this, should we that? It's enough that I've thought on several occasions: Screw it! We're moving to the suburbs! But then I'd just be miserable. I could live in the suburbs if I already had a social network in place -- like, if I was living near family and friends, I would perfectly content in the suburbs. But moving to Rockville, Maryland or something like that as a fortysomething family man, with nothing much to do outside of the house, that's not for me (nor S). I probably don't "use the city" as often as I should, but the times I do are very important for my quality of life.
So, there you have it. We are very likely moving. I'll keep you all posted on our progress.
Until next time...
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