washingtonpost.com - Lorna Dressendorfer and Erin Call, both single women in their early thirties, work side by side as labor and delivery nurses in the busy maternity ward at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Northwest Washington.
They make roughly the same salary at their full-time jobs there, and both also have part-time jobs to supplement their incomes, Dressendorfer at Williams-Sonoma and Call installing IVs as a home nursing aide.
But there is one big difference in their financial fortunes that divides the two friends sharply: Call owns an Alexandria townhouse, bought two years ago, while Dressendorfer remains a renter.
As a result, Call is worth substantially more than her friend.
The sharp increase in housing values in the Washington area has created a great divide between those who own houses and those who do not, and nowhere does this play out more than in the workplace. Those who do not own homes look enviously at their colleagues who do, and their different financial situations can lead to strains, stress and some veiled anger. Read more from this post.
