My adult children can’t afford to live on their own in St. George

Note to readers: We know that the lack of affordable housing is a top concern for Washington County residents, according to a survey The Southern Utah Tribune took before we launched this newspaper. We reached out to survey respondents to see if they would share their housing stories with us. Here is one of those stories. If you want to share yours, email hmay@sltrib.com.

Arlene Trani has watched St. George shift from a place where a divorced mother of five could survive on one income to one where her adult children can’t afford to buy a home.

Trani, now 62, is a former retail customer service worker who has lived in St. George for nearly 20 years. When she first moved here in 2006, she lived with her parents in a two-bedroom condo and rent was between $800 and $900 per month.

“Don’t ask me how I got five children in there, but we tend to work miracles around here,” Trani said. “At that time I could maintain and afford that, and we didn’t have any luxuries. We didn’t have cable TV, we didn’t have streaming services the way we have now, and we maintained a used car or we walked everywhere so we kept the bills relatively low.”

Trani moved into her current home in 2019. She had a son who died and she became guardian of his children, and she said it’s because of their survivor benefit she was able to afford her home. She said the house cost $179,000 and is around 1,110 square feet, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

“We’ve only been here [in this house] seven years now, and my house is already valued anywhere between [$]250,000 and [$]300,000,” she said. “And not much has changed in our neighborhood other than more strip mall businesses have opened, and there’s more housing. But it’s not individual family houses. It’s more like multifamily condo apartment type buildings.”

She said rental rates for those condos are around $1,200 to $2,000 a month — more than she pays for a mortgage on her detached home.

“St. George was a beautiful town to live in, to raise a family and the crime is still relatively low, but it’s not the pretty little town that I fell in love with and wanted to stay forever,” Trani said. “I’m stuck staying forever now, but I see a lot of changes that just don’t make this, to me, a very attractive town anymore.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe the housing market when you first arrived in St. George compared to now?

When I first arrived, the economy was slightly different too, but a three-bedroom house was probably closer to [$80,000], $90,000 for just a small functional unit. I think $100,000 was probably the high point for big neighborhoods.

I was seeing houses being built for $150,000 at the time that were considered almost mansions, and I am talking [about] an area around here called Washington Fields. It was impossible for me to even look at any of those houses because it took me a while to get a job. I ended up in retail and I had five young children at the time too. So trying to take care of five children, trying to afford a home, newly divorced, not a lot went my way.

I’m seeing multigenerational people out here more often. It used to be the elderly families with the children nearby, and I started seeing more elderly parents take in their children, or have they have to take in grandchildren. [Housing is] affecting family dynamics in that way, but in some ways that’s positive because the children benefit from having that close [knit] family.

You mentioned that you don’t work anymore, how do you afford to live in St. George?

Faith and a prayer mostly. My disability insurance pays me a little over [$1,200] a month and then I still have a survivor benefit with one of my grandsons that lives with me and his pays a little over $1,100 a month also. So between him and me, we would be able to barely squeak by with the mortgage alone and unfortunately, I have an HOA payment too. And then the adult son that lives with me, he said, “I can pay at least 300 extra a month.” He also helps with utility and internet bills.

What challenges did your adult children face that made it impossible for them to afford housing?

I have a 28 year-old son that lives with me still, partly because he cannot afford to live on his own. He was working warehouse loading jobs in Salt Lake City, but then the pandemic hit and he ended up having to move back here because of the way the economy shifted at that time with business closing down, and jobs becoming more scarce, people having to stay home.

He actually pays some rent to help me maintain the mortgage here but beyond that he’s tried branching out and tried finding other jobs away from the food service [industry], and he can’t find too many that will call him back. He does not have anything beyond a high school education and some jobs requiring upper management want more than just high school education. He tried college and it wasn’t for him.

My son did have a few friends that said, “Let’s get a place we can rent together,” which was common [because] it’s a college town. But then the college expanded too and all the housing with more college students coming in, that went up too. So you know now three young men cannot even afford a home together without all of them having jobs that pay more than $20 an hour, and around here there are not too many jobs that pay $20 an hour.

How have job opportunities in the area changed during your time in St. George?

I’ve seen more retail businesses rather than high-end industry businesses. The specialized office jobs that are here are mainly government legal jobs, or you have to be upper management for one of those distribution center warehouse jobs.

The warehouse jobs pay about $18 an hour, and he [my son] gets paid about $13 or $15 an hour. I think he said he’s been with his company a little over four years now. He said he ran across a friend of his not too long ago, who is the manager at a retail store in the local mall, and as a manager he’s getting paid less than my son.

There’s a lot of competition, like I said it’s a college town too, so you’ve got college kids that are trying to have pocket money between their classes. When there’s no college classes going on, you have more need for people [willing to work for lower wages] to fill in empty spots. But when college starts [back up], those jobs are gone.

What do you believe needs to happen so that people can stay living in St. George and can afford housing?

They actually need to stop the growth of the multifamily housing units and focus more on the jobs and the infrastructure to maintain those homes.

Where are these people [going to] work when these houses are built? Wildlife is being pushed out, the resources are being stretched and yet the cities continue to say, “We need more families. We need more homes,” but we don’t have a way of sustaining the people that move into these homes. How are they [going to] keep these homes if they don’t have better job opportunities outside of $15 an hour retail or $20 an hour management?

I think the only way that it would be feasible for younger families to afford their housing is if they start saving in their high school years and put together a fund where they say, “This is strictly for my future home.”

I know a young man [who] graduated about two or three years ago. He lives [out of state] right now. His [parent] is a police officer out here in St. George [and has] been a family friend for years. This young man bought his home a little over a year ago and he and his partner are now expecting their first baby together. For somebody that fresh out of high school to be able to afford a home, I’m bugged about it because, wow if [he] had stayed out here, that never would’ve been possible for him.