Actress Jana Kramer says the cost of housing in Los Angeles kept her from giving her children the kind of childhood she wanted, prompting her family’s move to Nashville, Tennessee.
In a recent interview with Fox News Digital promoting her new film “The One,” the 42-year-old said she and her family could not afford a home with a yard in the neighborhoods they wanted while living in the Studio City area of Los Angeles.
“I remember being in Studio City with the two kids, and we couldn’t afford to have a bigger place with a bigger backyard and neighborhoods like that. Again, we just couldn’t afford certain neighborhoods and, for me, Tennessee has just always been a place that every time I land, my nervous system just like relaxes, it feels calm,” she said.
Kramer grew up in Michigan and said she struggled with the idea that her own children might not experience the kind of neighborhood freedom she remembered from her own childhood, including going “from friend’s house to friend’s house” and staying outside “until the sun went down.”
Since relocating to Tennessee, she said she has watched her kids live a similar childhood, riding bikes and visiting friends’ houses nearby. “It just makes me feel like home,” she said.
Kramer noted that leaving Los Angeles does not mean leaving the entertainment industry behind entirely. “I love it here. You can always go back,” she said. “You can always go to Hollywood, but things have changed so much with self-tapes, which I actually don’t love, but you can. It’s a plane away.”
She said she respects families who choose to raise children in Los Angeles but said Tennessee offers her family “a totally different life” that echoes her own upbringing in Michigan. “I just really wanted that same upbringing for my kids,” she said.
Kramer shares two children, Jolie and Jace, with her ex-husband Mike Caussin, and a son, Roman, with her husband Allan Russell.
A New Film on Youth Homelessness
Kramer’s latest project, “The One,” follows an 18-year-old navigating homelessness after aging out of the foster care system. The film opens in theaters nationwide on Nov. 5, which coincides with National Homeless Youth Awareness Month.
“I remember reading the script and just, I love a complicated story, you know, I think it’s always fun to play those roles because life is complex,” she said. “But I loved the story behind it. I loved the faith element. It wasn’t completely thrown in your face, but it was a beautiful thread throughout the movie. And it just had a lot of heart to it.”
Kramer said she hopes the film draws attention to children without stable homes.
“I just… I can’t imagine that as a kid. It’s like I think about my kids, and it makes me sad to think about. Them not feeling safe or them being put into unsafe homes because our job as parents is to protect them. And it makes me really sad that, some kids in the foster system don’t get placed into safe homes and those that have to hop around.”
