Yuba homebuyers face mounting commuting costs

Gracie and Louis Prado moved to Yuba County’s new commuter subdivisions later than most people, arriving just 16 months ago from Elk Grove. But they came for the same reason thousands did since 2002: more elbow room and a big house for less money.

Yet the trade the Prados made for a bargain home just south of the county seat of Marysville — a long commute to work in Sacramento — is now chewing on their incomes. As they make their way back and forth on Highway 70, the spike in gas prices is sucking an estimated $200 to $250 a week from their wallets.


“We just didn’t think gas would go to $4 a gallon,” says Louis Prado, who commutes 104 miles daily from the east Linda neighborhood of Edgewater in a V-8-powered pickup truck to his job as an office manager in Rancho Cordova. Gracie Prado commutes 98 miles daily in a recently bought Saturn to a nursing job in Sacramento.

Michael Roberts, too, never expected these gasoline prices when he and his wife moved from Sacramento to Olivehurst’s Plumas Lake two years ago.

“I figured $4 a gallon is as far as it could ever go,” he said, standing in the driveway of his single-story house.

Roberts drives 76 miles a day to and from his job as an electrician at Union Pacific Railroad in Roseville. His wife drives 100 miles daily to Rancho Cordova and back.

The Sacramento Bee