Affordable Housing Then and Now

When I stepped off the plane from New York in August, 1968 my second husband and I were in Phoenix to look for an apartment and meet my new boss, John Hardaway. I had just finished my PhD at Syracuse, where 100 inches of snow had fallen the winter before and thus I applied to Phoenix College, in a place where there was no snow. John hired me through the mail, sight unseen. The doctorate was my selling point.

I had told my husband I’d accompany him to Phoenix for a year to see what it was like. Phoenix then was a frontier town with a population of only 600,000. The airport terminal was outdoors.

The flight attendant opened the airplane door and I walked out into an inferno.

The trip got worse from there, as I sampled Mexican food for the first time and promptly got sick. I couldn’t believe anyone lived in these conditions. But we rented an apartment on 40th Street and Camelback Road. And thus began my romance with Phoenix. One year became my adult life.

I read an article today about how people don’t move much anymore. That author never lived in Phoenix.

A month after that baptism by fire we drove across the country in a 57 Chevy with a friend, our German shepherd, and all our worldlies. Two months later we were evicted from that first apartment because the German shepherd ate his way out of the bathroom one night when we were out to dinner. After Buddy tore down the door, we came to the conclusion that apartments weren’t for us. Although I had never lived in a single-family house before, this was the beginning of my romance with houses.

First we rented a house at 3944 E. Cheery Lynn Drive, on the outskirts of the city. The neighborhood was strictly residential, and the block had coyotes and mice. Nothing could be further from Manhattan. A city girl, I found the desert alien and frightening. All the plants seemed to have spikes on them, like a sci-fi movie where they might reach out and devour me.

We moved again, this time to 326 W. Roma, which was closer to the middle of the city and didn’t frighten me as much. It had grass in the backyard. I lived there until the marriage broke apart. By that time I was pregnant with John Hardaway’s baby.

That made it difficult to go back to New York.

John and I decided to build a house. This was bat shit crazy, but I was young and I reasoned that even though we were two professors, if we built a house without a mortgage we could afford to play tennis at the country club John already belonged to, pay his child support, and still feed the baby. With my savings of $2500 I bought a lot on the side of a mountain in Sunnyslope, in the desert north of Phoenix. At the time, things I didn’t consider included scorpions coming off mountains, the need for septic tanks, and an unpaved driveway.

Our divorces took a long time. Maybe two years. I moved to 1215 E.Kaler Drive, a shack that was soon torn down to be replaced by the Pointe Squaw Peak. We used all our spare time and money to build the house, whose base was a pair of geodesic domes sold to us in a kit.

The house, 1758 E. Sunnyslope Lane still exists more than fifty years later, although now it’s an Air BnB. It still has its original plumbing and wiring, too. It’s historic! As am I.

I lived there for ten years punctuated by one scorpion bite, one rattler in the washing machine, and one car that rolled itself down the driveway into a mailbox. That house had a solar hot water heater, solar oven, and no telephone. It taught me to plumb and wire, pour concrete, carry boulders, and play the “dumb chick” for housing inspectors so they would explain to me how to do things correctly without flagging our project.

Ten years of geodesic dome living, two daughters and 3 dogs later I bought a condo at Pointe Tapatio, a planned community the exact opposite of my hippie domes. We lived there while I built another house at 9031 N. 15th St.

By this time I was in business, making money, and feeling as if I should splurge on a house. That meant I was only the general contractor, and not also the labor. I also had a new husband. I can’t even tell you how long I lived in that house, because it included another divorce and a recession. Maybe another ten years?

But the inevitable happened. Real estate tanked, and with it my business. The house payment became a liability.

Then I met a man who fell in love with me, and told me I had to marry him. He had a home in the Arizona Biltmore, and he moved me in with him. By this time, both of my children were in college. Arizona was going through the real estate recession of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I was happy to dump my house and move to 2412 E. Luke, in Taliverde. I seemed to be failing upward, a concept that has since become quite popular.

But life being life, that didn’t last long.

The man who loved me died, and his children sought to settle the estate quickly. They offered to sell me the house, but I couldn’t afford it, so I hastily bought a patio home in another new community under construction. By this time, I had three foster kids and a chow-chow. This was my first foray into the world of HOAs. I painted my door an unapproved color and paid for an expensive lesson.

But I didn’t learn. Dogs, foster kids and all I bought into the first luxury high rise apartment building at 24th St. and Camelback. It was even fancier than where I lived in the Biltmore. I would have loved it except I still had the chow-chow and I had to go up and down the service elevator four times a day to walk him. That got old after about a year and a half, so I bought a house in the neighborhood just to the south. No service elevator and no HOA. A yard for the dog. I learned to remodel.

Then I bought the house across the street and remodeled it as well. It was the glory days of “fix and flip” and I had quite a bit of experience with houses by that time. I was poised to move back to the Biltmore, to a condo development under construction on the golf course, but my spidey sense detected another recession on the way..

Instead, I rented a house from a friend, planning to sit it out until the market turned around. It had a huge back yard and I lived there for the next twelve years, with a parade of dogs. I was perfectly happy to live there forever, but she decided she wanted to sell the place.

Another opportunity to buy a house! I found one in an old neighborhood, no HOA, canal to walk on and yard for the dogs, and here I still reside.

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