Three years ago they bought a house, not a large one, but what seemed to me to be a very expensive one. It wasn't a bad house, but it also wasn't a very big house and it wasn't a new house. It was, in fact, at least 75 years old (although it had recently been renovated) and it cost almost half a million dollars.

In the years since they bought their present house, their family has increased in size, but the house has not. In the years since they bought the house the price of homes in Santa Clara County has risen nearly $100,000. They are now faced with the prospect of a market where what they would like to buy is going to cost them over $500,000. How much over a half million is going to depend, as usual, on the town. But no place is going to be cheap nor is it likely to get cheaper.

What's even more discouraging is that the number of houses, new or used, on the market has declined. It has, in fact, almost disappeared in relation to the demand. Some one told me recently that there are roughly 1,000 houses on the market in the entire county.

I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems like it. As soon as a house goes on the market it is sold, usually at a price higher than it listed. It doesn't seem to matter much what the house looks like, it's shelter and that's what's important.

I also hear horror tales of Santa Clara County workers commuting from as far away as Tracy or Modesto because that's the only place where a reasonably priced house is likely to be found. I know this was true in the halcyon days of the dot.com boom, although I thought it had abated somewhat after the dot.com bubble burst.

Whatever the case, it is very expensive and very difficult to find a house to buy in Santa Clara County.

It's easy to sort out some of the reasons for this: population growth, the cost of labor and materials, the lack of available land to build on and mortgage rates at their lowest level in decades.

What's more difficult is to figure out what to do about it. The prospects for change appear to be nothing but grim.

Certainly, it's unlikely that any more land is going to become available. The only really buildable land is likely to be hillsides or the Central Valley. The population, barring a major catastrophe, is not likely to decline. If anything, population pressure is going to increase in this century.

Building materials aren't likely to get cheaper. Mortgage rates have nowhere to go but up. So we're faced with the problems that have plagued parts of Europe since World War I: too many people, not enough land and a continually increasing population demanding a place to live.

The solution in Europe has been to build up and to have more and more housing owned not by individuals but by the state.

The dream of a vine-covered cottage has all but disappeared in Europe. And it seems to me it is disappearing in California.

Alas, my kids and a lot of others still live with that dream, home with a neat front lawn, a white picket fence around it, a two-car garage and shade trees, a dream which may never really have existed and one that is probably a relic of the past.

If it ever did exist, it was in the days when California was mostly land and not people, when houses were bungalows and cottages, not three-, four- or five-bedroom ranch-style homes.

It is perhaps a good thing that home is where the heart is. It seems not likely to be anywhere else soon.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Willow Glen Resident.