With San Francisco’s continuously rising cost of living, it’s hard for ordinary people to afford a home, much less a teacher. But fate smiled upon English teacher Ms. Peters recently as she managed to seize the chance to reverse the norm of living in San Francisco.
For (duration of time) Ms. Peters lived in a one-bedroom apartment like a number of residents that live in San Francisco. She has always wanted a place to call her own but a teacher’s salary has made it hard to keep up with San Francisco’s high cost of living. Thankfully, Ms.Peters had rent control on the apartment to prevent her rent from reaching high prices. But with a good portion of her income going to rent, there wasn’t enough extra money for her to buy a home in San Francisco.
Ms. Peters said, “It’s hard, cause a lot of time, we don’t get paid enough often to have our own place.” She continued, “I know a lot of people who lived in San Francisco and they inherited their parent’s place or they have a lot of roommates because they can’t afford their own place, so compared to other places, it’s more expensive for sure”.
Not thinking her life would change at all, Ms. Peters resigned herself to the fact that she would have to rent for the rest of her life until a teacher’s lottery changed the course of her life.
Last August, Ms. Peters entered the DownPayment Assistance Loan Program (DALP)’s lottery. The program provides down payment assistance for low to middle-income first-time home buyers to buy a house in San Francisco. It’s split into 3 applicants; General Public, SF First Responders, and SFUSD Educators.
Applicants enter a lottery to see if they get a low number, the lower the number, the higher chance a person’s chances of winning the lottery. Ms. Peters entered the SFUSD Educator section and got the number 6. Originally it wasn’t a low enough number, but by some miracle, the 4th place got canceled and the money went to Ms. Peters instead.
Ms. Peters got the notification that she won the lottery on January 8th and only had 90 days to find a place to live. With such a tight deadline, Ms.Peters and her agent were racing against the clock to find a suitable condo for her to live and was having a hard time not just because of the tight deadline but also because there were many things that Ms. Peters had to compromise on things or she would not find a condo for herself to live in within 90 days.
She eventually settled down on a one-bedroom condo in Diamond Heights. The interest rate was over 5% and she was to pay a fee to the Homeowners Association (HOA) but the condo does cover water and the removal of trash.
Overall, Ms.Peters is very happy with her new place and considers herself very lucky to be selected. She said, “I knew somebody who did this lottery for 7 years and never got anything So I was very lucky to get drawn when I did.”
