Living paycheck to paycheck, Fruita teacher struggles in cutthroat housing market

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FRUITA, Colo. Following a divorce from her husband 11 months ago, Sarah McNamara and her daughter, Leilani, were looking to relocate from their home in Texas to a place closer to family. They ended up in Fruita, near McNamara's parents. 

McNamara, who is an English teacher with Mesa County Valley School District 51, had heard of the horrors that some teachers had to go through in order to secure housing in Colorado. Still, she was surprised by the cutthroat market when looking for a place she and her daughter could rent.

According to Bestplaces.net, just 1.2% of houses and apartments in Fruita are available for rent. McNamara's father Tom, who is a former member of Fruita Livability Commission and a 23-year resident, presented this case to Fruita City Council in early February. 

“District 51, the Fruita Chamber of Commerce — they all realized that this huge gap exists between the affordable home and the unaffordable home,” Tom told council members. “That gap has actually closed now: there is no affordable housing.” 

Knowing that McNamara would be in for a tough fight with the rental market, her parents graciously took her and her daughter in while McNamara combed the market for options around the valley. What she quickly discovered was that she would be paying more for less compared to her place in Texas. Just getting in to see the rentals was a challenge. 

"There was this other place just around the corner that I actually did get to tour, but I was coming home from work one day to meet the realtor and I was five minutes late and she left,” McNamara explained. “I tried calling her, and calling her, and calling her, and no answer.”

After repeated calls to the realtor, McNamara finally got an answer from an office assistant. However, the conversation wasn’t very assuring. Realtors don’t make as much money from rentals as they do from home sales, if any at all. Because of this, there is often little financial incentive for a realtor to wait around for a late applicant, especially if there are others in line to submit an application.

“It's greed,” Tom declared.

“Realtors are not interested in helping people find properties to rent. If a realtor can spend their time making $40, $50, $60,000 at six percent on the sale of a home, why should they bother helping somebody find a rental unit when they don’t get paid for it? And I was as much told this by two different realtors in town whom I know personally.”

Determined as ever, McNamara narrowed her search to places close to Fruita Monument High School, where her daughter would soon be attending. She knew she wanted a two-bedroom home with a garage that was within walking distance of the school for her family, and knew she had to work the system to get what she wanted.  

McNamara's current home she is renting in Fruita.

McNamara was able to land her current home with a "sight-unseen agreement," meaning she had not seen the property in-person before signing her lease. This strategy, combined with tugging the heartstrings of the owner, gave her the advantage she needed to finally secure a temporary home.

“I got desperate,” McNamara said. “I put on the application that I was a teacher and that I was a single mom and it worked. I explained to him how I got poor credit when I got divorced, and that I was stuck in a house that I couldn’t afford, and he was open to that story.”

After putting money down and closing her application, McNamara was able to see the property the next day. She had found a reasonably-priced home for rent that wouldn’t run her bank account dry — immediately, that is.

To make ends meet, McNamara started driving for DoorDash to supplement her school district salary — she says she's paid "pretty well" by the district — and child support money. Still, typically runs out of money by the third week of the month.

“People say, 'I live paycheck to paycheck.' I live paycheck to ten days before my next paycheck,” McNamara explained. “I started DoorDashing in Texas when I lived there, so I transferred my account to Grand Junction.”

At first, it was a viable outlet to earn some extra cash when money was tight, but recently, McNamara hasn’t been able to land a shift.

“There’s so many people DoorDashing now that I kind of got pushed out of the market,” she said. “I don’t know why I can't get a shift anymore unless it’s 1 a.m. on a Saturday night.”

McNamara said she knows that she isn't the only one in this kind of predicament. Housing disparity around the state has only increased in recent years, and in Fruita, the story is much of the same. According to a study done by Economic and Planning Systems, home prices in Fruita have risen to an estimated $67,000 more than what a median wage earner can afford.

According to Tom, home values and rental prices have been driven by a new development focus on single-family homes, which made up 97% of new construction in Fruita from 2010 to 2018. The average price for a single-family home built there in 2018 is estimated at $455,200, according to the "Fruita In Motion" Comprehensive Plan.

Affordability for renters is a problem as well, with about half of all renters in Fruita paying more than 30% of their income towards housing costs. This is what the U.S. Department of Housing and Development has defined as being cost-burdened, wherein a household is paying too much towards housing.

“It's not cheap living in Colorado,” McNamara said, “Texas is a lot more reasonable.”


Matt Thornton is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. He is based in Grand Junction. You can contact him at matthewthornton@rmpbs.org.