Elise Stengle runs her Mission District hair salon at 3049 22nd St. while living in Eugene, Oregon — 500 miles away — because flying home is still cheaper than paying Bay Area rent.

On the corner of 22nd Street and Shotwell in the Mission, Gräsplan salon keeps regular hours. The shelves are stocked, appointments run weeks deep, and Elise Stengle is behind the chair — the same Elise Stengle who, if you asked where she sleeps, would say Eugene, Oregon: 500 miles away.

Once or twice a month, Stengle boards a plane at Eugene Airport, flies to the Bay Area, and works stretches of up to 14 days before flying home. The math behind this arrangement is not complicated. Her rent at 3049 22nd St. runs $3,000 a month; add product costs, utilities, and insurance, and she earns less than $60,000 a year. That is not enough to live in the city where she has spent nearly three decades building a clientele, according to an SF Standard profile published July 12.

"Everybody always thinks, oh, you charge $95 for a haircut, you must be sitting pretty," Stengle told the Standard. "Do you want to know how much my space costs? And do you want to know how much all the products cost?"

Her own arithmetic is blunter: "It's still cheaper for me to have a mortgage in Eugene and fly twice a month than it would be for me to probably live in a cardboard box on the street here. It's ridiculous."

The neighborhood surrounding her is doing its own tallying. According to DataSF, the Mission recorded 42 eviction notices in the last 90 days, with recent filings on the 1000 block of Capp Street, the 1200 block of Hampshire, and the 100 block of Guerrero. In the latest seven-day window, city services fielded 2,151 311 requests from the neighborhood — the accumulated friction of a district under sustained pressure.

Stengle's commute is an extreme edge of something those numbers describe more quietly. She is traveling 500 miles by air, repeatedly, because the alternative isn't affordable — the same calculus that drives a notice filing, playing out at altitude instead of in housing court.

Walk past Gräsplan tomorrow and you will see a salon with its lights on and a stylist at work. The return ticket to Eugene is not visible from the sidewalk.