Antioch, California: 'Last Bastion of the Good Commute' in the Bay Area Living In

The Lone Tree Estates development in Antioch, Calif., on Feb. 17, 2020. Antioch has some of the more affordable single-family homes in the Bay Area. (Jason Henry/The New York Times) The Lone Tree Estates development in Antioch, Calif., on Feb. 17, 2020. Antioch has some of the more affordable single-family homes in the Bay Area. (Jason Henry/The New York Times) Photo: Jason Henry, NYT Photo: Jason Henry, NYT Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Antioch, California: 'Last Bastion of the Good Commute' in the Bay Area 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

ANTIOCH, Calif. — In 2018, after years of renting in the San Francisco Bay Area, Denee Cox found herself priced out of her hometown Oakland, California, after a series of rent increases. She did the math and realized it might be more affordable to buy a home and pay a monthly mortgage, but she knew she’d have to look elsewhere. A home in her neighborhood at the time, Oakland’s Trestle Glen, would be more than $1 million, considerably above the $350,000 or so she hoped to spend.

Even when she looked at homes elsewhere in Oakland, in the $600,000 range, the options were disheartening: run-down houses in “high trauma” neighborhoods, as she described them, most needing a complete overhaul.

Cox, 52, expanded her search to nearby suburbs like San Leandro and Pleasant Hill but still was priced out. As she worked her way farther out, she started touring homes in the city of Antioch, about 45 minutes (in no traffic) east of downtown Oakland.

“I never saw myself living in Antioch,” she said. “But what caught my attention in Antioch was that I was able to find something completely turnkey. I didn’t have to do any work. It was new roof, new paved driveway, upgraded kitchen and bathroom.”

Cox, a licensed mental-health therapist and single mother to a 25-year-old son, 20-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, gradually found more to like about the city. Its diversity was a draw, as was the fact that it had convenient options for big-box shopping, including a Costco. And it wasn’t so far from the rest of the Bay Area that she couldn’t get her son to Oakland for his basketball games, or for her daughter to visit from college in San Francisco.

Cox’s agent, Marva Clayton of Intero Real Estate Services, helped her find a “condo-size house” — 1,000 square feet with vaulted ceilings and two bedrooms, one bathroom and a two-car garage — for the asking price of $320,000. Cox wrote a letter to the seller about raising a family in the house that she thinks sealed the deal. She arrived in August 2018.

“It’s very charming,” she said, “like a diamond in the rough.”

Antioch is filled with sprawling suburban subdivisions built during various real estate booms, particularly the 1990s and early 2000s. Cox’s home is in an older neighborhood she described as friendly and “working class.” She and her son go hiking at nearby Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, and he joined a local hockey team.

Myesha and Elgin Lawson had been looking to buy in Antioch for much the same reason: affordability. They said they were able to see several nice homes in their price range of $400,000 to $500,000. Most had at least three bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms, and at least 1,400 square feet. After renting nearby, the couple recently closed on a 1,700-square-foot house listed for $459,000. They offered $472,000 and got it.

Elgin Lawson, 38, who grew up in neighboring Pittsburg, described Antioch as “family oriented, laid-back and quiet.” The couple said the city has changed with the influx of newcomers priced out of areas like Oakland and San Francisco, with more renters and fewer homeowners. Myesha Lawson, 41, who grew up in San Francisco, said she sees people out walking dogs and neighbors who keep an eye on things.

Most worrying to Myesha Lawson was the commute. The couple, who have a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old, both work in San Francisco — Myesha Lawson in operations for a bank, Elgin Lawson in hotel management. Each weekday, they leave their house at 4 a.m. to drop off the children with relatives who take them to school. Then they drive together to catch the morning’s first BART train into San Francisco, at 4:47 a.m.

“You read movies or play games or catch up on some work,” Myesha Lawson said. “A lot of people are on laptops. And a lot of people are asleep.”

What You’ll Find

Antioch, a 30-square-mile city with about 112,000 residents, has rural, residential and marine areas, with its northern border formed by the San Joaquin River. It is home to one of the area’s newest Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, an “eBART” train connecting Antioch to the Pittsburg/Bay Point line. City officials say the station has put Antioch on the map, literally and figuratively.

“It’s a game-changer,” said Kwame Reed, Antioch’s head of economic development. The city recently adopted a new slogan — “Opportunity Lives Here” — with prominent BART train ads encouraging more businesses to relocate there.

The commuter city has long grappled with the opposite problem that much of the Bay Area faces: plenty of housing, not enough jobs. Two large hospital campuses, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Delta, employ some locals. But nearly 90% of Antioch workforce commutes elsewhere for work, Reed said.

Along the river, Antioch’s sleepy downtown feels full of potential. The 1928 El Campanil Theater, a handsome landmark, was restored in 2004. Storefronts, including an antique coin shop and a quilting store, cater to an older crowd. One newcomer, Guadalajara Taqueria, was bustling during a recent lunchtime. On West 10th Street, Hazel’s Drive In recently changed hands but has been in operation since 1947 and offers old-fashioned prices (hamburger: $4.50).

Not far from downtown, a handful of older neighborhoods have houses built in the mid-20th century, as well as a few brightly colored Victorians. Along the waterfront there are large swaths of industrial businesses and a marina. A new seafood restaurant, Smith’s Landing, overlooks the river and the Antioch Bridge.

Much of Antioch’s commercial life is in strip malls. Newer, higher-end shopping areas have chain restaurants and big-box stores, including a large Barnes & Noble. Recently, several major cannabis dispensaries, such as Coco Farms, have cropped up. The city is also home to several acres of rare grape vines, which local officials are trying to reimagine into an agro-tourism business.

“Antioch had a bad reputation,” said Reed, noting the city’s standing as a super-commuter area with a perception of high crime. He’s hoping that the new branding campaign will paint a better image of the city — featuring the waterfront, golf and hills for hiking. “There’s a lot to do here,” he said.

What You’ll Pay

Antioch remains one of the more affordable cities in the Bay Area, but prices have been edging upward. In 2019, according to Zillow, 2,831 homes sold, with the median sale price in December 2019 at $455,100 — up from $419,700 in December 2017.

The median monthly rent in 2018 was $1,817, up from $1,658 in 2016, according to census data compiled by Apartmentlist.com.

Clayton, who lived in the area for many years, said the typical Antioch buyer she works with is a first-time homeowner who may have been renting somewhere more expensive, like Oakland or San Francisco. A monthly mortgage payment in Antioch is often lower. The lowest home prices in Antioch tend to be along the border of Pittsburg; newer homes along the border of Brentwood, to the southeast, tend to be the priciest.

“It’s kind of the last bastion of the good commute,” Clayton said. “But affordability, that’s No. 1.”

The Vibe

Parts of Antioch feel like typical western American exurbs, with cookie-cutter, stucco-and-tile-roof houses laid out on cul-de-sacs in master-planned communities. The city, like many that invested in frenzies of new development in the early 2000s, was hit especially hard by the 2009 recession; many newly built communities were converted to rentals when they couldn’t sell. Some locals said the influx of renters gave the place a more transient feel than it had before.

Clayton said houses with five or six bedrooms that went up more than a decade ago sold for more than $800,000 during the market’s heyday. At the peak of the foreclosure crisis, the homes sold for as little as $200,000.

“It took Antioch awhile to pull out of the recession,” said Reed, adding that new construction is being built at a slower pace and less speculatively. And there are other indicators that things may be looking up.

The Cielo at Sand Creek development, initially intended as a 55-and-up retirement community, recently relaunched sales and removed the age restriction. It promises two-story houses on small lots, as well as community pools and small parks.

Sean McCauley, 49, a real estate developer who is building a home in Antioch, has bought about a dozen structures downtown, redeveloping some into office buildings and businesses. “Antioch is not a bad place to be,” he said. “If people come through with an open mind, it can be a beautiful place to live.”

The Schools

Antioch isn’t necessarily known for its strong public schools — one new development in town has banners advertising that it’s zoned for a neighboring town’s schools.

During the 2018-19 school year, 28% of third-graders in the Antioch Unified School District met or exceeded standards for English Language Arts (ELA), compared with 49% statewide; 24% met or exceeded standards for math, compared with 50% statewide. For eighth-graders, 25% met or exceeded ELA standards, compared with 49% statewide, and 13% met or exceeded math standards, compared with 37% statewide.

There are four public high schools in Antioch, including two large, traditional schools — Antioch High and Deer Valley High. In 2017-18 at Antioch High, 63% of students met bench marks for English on the SAT exam and 38% for math. At Deer Valley High, 79% of students met bench marks for English and 51% for math. At Dozier-Libbey Medical High School, a smaller school for students planning to go into medical professions, 85% met bench marks for English and 52% met them for math. (For the SATs, the College Board defines students as “college ready” when their test scores meet a bench mark of 480 in English and 530 in math.)

The Commute

Drivers can reach San Francisco in under an hour on clear roads, although at rush hour, it can take more than two hours. The ride on BART is about 70 minutes. In no traffic, it’s about 40 minutes to Oakland and about 20 minutes to Walnut Creek.

The History

Antioch was established in 1850 as Smith’s Landing and was formally incorporated in 1872. Early industries included coal mining, logging and a paper mill. The city attracted notice in the 1980s when Humphrey, a humpback whale, made his way from the ocean to the Sacramento River Delta and swam under the Antioch bridge. In 2009, another wave of attention came when a kidnapping victim, Jaycee Dugard, was discovered alive there after being held captive by her abductor for nearly 18 years.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.