I just read in the paper this morning that Santa Barbara, California is considering offering low income housing to folks earning only $160,000...evidently not enough to afford the average $1.2M house there.

In 1989 I was offered a job transfer from southern California to the San Jose area, with th 30% pay raise. It turns out I would have needed a 50% pay raise just to break even on the cost of housing there. I did look around, the last house that the realtor showed me was $500K, (remember, this was before the prices started going WAY up!) and I didn't even want to get out of the car to look at it. I decided to take the layoff instead of the transfer, and was even happier about that decision when I heard my coworkers who did take the tranfer were immediately hit with a two-year pay freeze, and were working 10-12 hour days, 6 and 7 days a week.

Dennis