Like many Union City residents, Heather Perez chose the unassuming East Bay suburb for its relative affordability and the convenience of its location. But in the 12 years she lived here, she hardly experienced either.
Unsatisfied with Union City’s public schools, Perez enrolled her two youngest children at a private school on the Peninsula, near where one took intensive ballet lessons and her husband, Steve, worked as a software engineer. After Steve went fully remote during the pandemic, Heather began asking herself: Why are we stretching our budget just to spend our days traversing the Dumbarton Bridge?
“We felt like hamsters on a wheel,” she said. “We just kept spinning and spinning, and it was really hard to save.”…