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Why a Scotts Valley family is choosing to leave California

Cheryl and Bobby Ruyle stand outside their Scotts Valley home with their children (left to right) Olive, Stella and Rosie.
Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz
Cheryl and Bobby Ruyle stand outside their Scotts Valley home with their children (left to right) Olive, Stella and Rosie.

Santa Cruz County has one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

For one family, the Ruyles, the cost of their mortgage and home insurance is forcing them to move out of the state, after a decade of living in Santa Cruz County.

Hilary Ojeda is the education correspondent with Lookout Santa Cruz. In her recent article, titled “Santa Cruz County affordability woes: How two Scotts Valley teachers decided to move their family to Colorado”, Ojeda outlines the many reasons the Ruyles felt they had to leave California.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

OJEDA: So Bobby and Cheryl rule, they have been Santa Cruz Mountain residents for the last ten years, and they have three kids. And they've loved raising their kids in this community. They're both special education teachers. Cheryl teaches at Scotts Valley High School. So, yeah, they're really embedded in the Scotts Valley community. But after the last several years of rising costs, they've started to think about their lives there.

They're making the difficult decision to sell their home and move from California to Colorado. What did they tell you about making that decision? What did they share as far as their reasons why they wanted to leave? 

OJEDA: Gradually costs have risen and salaries just haven't kept up. The summer of 2022 was the final straw for them, when they spent $10,000 cutting trees as their home insurance provider had required. And then several months later, that home insurance carrier dropped them. And so they had to go to the carrier of last resort in California, the California FAIR plan. 

So the insurer dropped them, even though they had done all this work that they were required to do?

OJEDA: Yeah, they were devastated. It was hard for them.

And so this isn't new. If you talk to education officials, they've been saying the school age population has been declining about 2% for the last several years.

Cheryl and Bobby Ruyle bought their Scotts Valley home in 2017.
Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz
Cheryl and Bobby Ruyle bought their Scotts Valley home in 2017.

You said in your story that enrollment is expected to decline by over 20% within the next decade. What does that mean for the schools here? 

OJEDA: If schools are funded primarily through attendance and enrollment, they're going to start to see — and they already have started to see — declining funds and declining budgets. We've unfortunately seen that play out in the Live Oak School District. They've issued preliminary layoffs for teachers, for a school psychologist and other classified staff.

It sounds kind of like what you're describing here is sort of a feedback loop. 

OJEDA: Absolutely. It's a vicious cycle. If the families can afford to live here, they have to leave. The schools are funded by attendance. And so if there's low funding, then the teachers and staff aren't paid enough to live here. And so the cycle goes on and on, unfortunately.

So back to the Ruyles family. They both have accepted jobs in Colorado, but both of those jobs also come with a pretty enormous salary cut compared to what they're making here. How does that calculation pan out for them? 

OJEDA: Right. Partially because they'll be able to sell their home. They're expecting to be able to sell their home. And that will help them make a move and they'll be able to pay off car payments. And, they'll likely have little to no mortgage when they go to Colorado. So that helps a lot.

And, the property taxes are lower there. The cost of the homes are lower. They're half the price, I think is what we reported in that story. And just about everything else will be much lower. Home insurance costs much, much lower. So their savings were quadrupled because, as opposed to spending $10,000 a month, they'll be spending about $4000 a month in their monthly expenses.

Bobby Ruyle with his daughters Rosie and Stella outside of their Scotts Valley home.
Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz
Bobby Ruyle with his daughters Rosie and Stella outside of their Scotts Valley home.

Has anyone proposed a solution to this? What is the fix that might prevent more and more families from leaving Santa Cruz County? 

OJEDA: So far, I don't see any solution ... that could fix this very big problem. There are people that are trying to work on this. As I reported, just a minor update, on school districts that are trying to push forward with their own workforce housing, as a way to try to help retain teachers there.

Santa Cruz City Schools is the farthest along with their project. And so they hope to be able to have teachers move in by 2027.

But, you know, that's just to be able to offer a rental at a much lower than market-rate price. And with the hopes that families could save enough to eventually buy a home. But still, clearly for the Ruyles, it wasn't enough to have their own home.

Hillary Ojeda is the education correspondent with Lookout Santa Cruz. Read her story here.

Jerimiah Oetting served in the capacity of news director, reporter and on-air host at KAZU from June 2021 to August 2024.