Evelyn Pech-Vazquez
After selling our house and rental properties, we made the move
We sold seven rental homes and our main residence with the goal of buying a house in California and broadening our children’s horizons.
In April 2021, we moved 3,000 miles west to a small town in Southern California. The increase in diversity was apparent from the start. In my daughter’s first year of kindergarten, she made several bilingual friends. I was surprised by how many kids spoke Spanish, not to mention the long list of other languages.
In our new home in Simi Valley, 40 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, the demographic for Hispanic or Latino residents is 26.2%, nearly double that of Michigan’s state capital, per the United States Census Bureau.
I’ll never forget the first day my oldest, now 20, came home excitedly from his job at McDonald’s and said he was helping train a new employee who only spoke Spanish. This was coming from the boy who had complained about being forced to speak Spanish for years.
For the first time, he looked proud to be bilingual. All three of the younger kids have had similar experiences, whether it was helping translate for a new immigrant in class or speaking Spanish for fun with bilingual friends.
Housing prices made it hard, but we have no regrets
Three years in, we are still paying $2,600 for a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment, evidence of the biggest challenge we’ve faced: housing. With the profits of eight Midwestern houses, adding up to $177,000, we still don’t have enough to buy a home. Zillow listed the average home value in Simi Valley as $846,159. Many of these houses are half the size of our place back in Michigan.
One pleasant surprise was that our high-school graduates might qualify for two years of free community college through the California Promise Program, which waives first-time students’ enrollment fees and, in some cases, tuition, as well. This was great news for our big family.
Overall, the sacrifices we made to move to Southern California were worth the benefits of living in a melting pot. We would do it all over again.
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