Why We Live Here : In Selecting a Community, Southlanders Opt for Being Close to Jobs and Family
Angie Hill, 31, has only lived briefly in Southern California, moving four months ago from her native Australia to San Diego’s Solana Beach with her husband, Jeffre, and two children.
The Hills chose their new house to be close to Jeffre’s parents, who are helping the couple finance their home and who also live nearby. “That’s nice, especially for the kids,” Angie Hill says. “We won’t be moving within the next few years at all. For now, family commitments and finances keep us here.”
Iranian-born Mehdi Omana sold his house in Malibu 10 years ago and took a $900-per-month garden apartment in Hancock Park. The 70-year-old bachelor says that he wanted to be closer to his job as controller for a downtown L.A. textile firm:
“In Malibu it used to take me two hours to get to work, sometimes three hours if there was a traffic accident. Now I’m 15 minutes from my job.”
He doesn’t plan on buying a home because he has been spoiled by the gated community: waterfalls, tennis courts, swimming pool and trusting neighbors who water his plants and take care of his mail when he’s on vacation. But nothing, he says, can replace “not fighting traffic” to get to work.
Finances, family, fighting freeway traffic on the way to work: It’s the Southern California trifecta when deciding where to live.
About one-quarter of those interviewed in a recent Times poll said they chose the community in which they live because of affordable housing. Another quarter in the six-county region cited proximity to their jobs and one in six said closeness to family and friends. (Community atmosphere (13%) and quality of schools (6%) rounded out the top five choices.) Asked specifically about affordability of housing, half said it was the primary reason for selecting their current neighborhood.
(The poll asked 1,586 Southern Californians in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties about their attitudes on home and community life and issues. Times Poll Director John Brennan, who oversaw the survey, says it has a margin of error of three percentage points in either direction.)
It’s an old saw among many veteran real estate and housing professionals: What are the three most important factors when evaluating a piece of property?
Location. Location. Location.
In Southern California, that still leaves plenty of options.
Helen Wright, a 53-year-old educator, says she picked Long Beach because she wanted to be near the ocean.
About one in four people in the region say they live near the Pacific, slightly more than those who say the hills or mountains, and the one in five who live in the region’s numerous valleys. About one in seven live in the deserts, flats and canyons. (About half characterize their residences as in a city, while one-third call the suburbs home; 15% say they live in small towns and 6% are rural dwellers.)
But there is more to location than community size or topography.
While not everyone can choose where they live, the two-thirds of those polled who say they can give a wide variety of reasons why they do.
In many ways, 33-year-old Herb Morin is typical. He moved to Loma Linda in San Bernardino County in 1987 because he likes the location, his apartment is relatively inexpensive, he’s near his job at St. Bernadine’s Hospital and his mother and two sisters are only 10 minutes away.
But there are other factors as well.
Morin likes the quiet of the community and says he feels much safer there than Los Angeles, his birthplace: “You might say I chose this community because it’s like living on an isolated island. The only problems I’ve seen are smog, but that’s everyone’s problem.”
Asked what they like the most about their homes--and allowed up to two answers--about one in 10 Southern Californians mentioned “quiet” or privacy; 6% offered “character” or “ambience.”
On the flip side--things they like least, other than lack of space or age of their residences--poll respondents cited crime, gangs and safety (10%), bad location (8%), crowdedness (7%) and price (5%). Seven percent said they disliked nothing.
Somewhat surprisingly, two items most might think would draw considerable attention failed to register much response.
Only 3% mentioned schools positively--1% negatively--when commenting about their homes.
And how about smog, that grayish brown brew that has made Southern California famous?
Only 2% mentioned bad air quality--either way.
When architect James Dyer, a native New Yorker, moved to the West Coast almost two decades ago, he made Los Angeles his home and the neighborhood of Los Feliz--near Hollywood--his community.
He likes the area’s shops and restaurants, and easy freeway access. But most of all, he likes the community’s friendly folk, a multiethnic mix of Anglos, Asians, Latinos and blacks.
“I like the multiculturalism in Southern California,” he says. “It’s like a mini-United Nations out here.”
That it is.
And in fewer places is that reflected than in many of the region’s neighborhoods. While four in 10 of those polled (41%) say they live in mostly Anglo areas, about that many (37%) say their neighborhoods are a fairly even ethnic mix. About one in seven (13%) say their neighborhoods are mostly Latino, compared to 5% mostly black and 3% mostly Asian.
Among the four principal ethnic groups:
* Almost six in 10 Anglos live in predominantly Anglo neighborhoods; one-third say their home areas are evenly mixed.
* One-third of blacks say they live in a mostly black neighborhood, about the same as those who live in evenly mixed ones. Notably, about one in six blacks now say they live in mostly Latino neighborhoods.
* Of Latinos, about one-fourth each live in mainly Latino or mostly Anglo neighborhoods; 42% say they live in evenly mixed areas and only 3% live in principally black areas.
* About one in four Asians say they live in mostly Anglo neighborhoods; just over one in seven live in predominantly Asian areas, while close to half live in evenly mixed ones.
Most of the region’s neighborhoods also show a mix by family structure.
About six in 10 respondents (57%) say their areas are a mixture of families with children, elderly people and younger singles. About one-fourth live in neighborhoods predominantly made up of families with children; 10% live in areas of mostly elderly people, while 5% reside in neighborhoods made up mainly of singles.
Southern California’s homes are roughly split between residences housing nuclear families (44% with parents and children) and those with only one generation in residence (50%). About 6% of those polled said they have extended family living in their residence.
Sooner or later, the crowds are going to make T. D. Edwards pack his bags and move.
Says the 26-year-old South Bay electrician: “My family is from around here and this is where I choose to live because it’s a good community. I have no complaints. . . . “
Except for feeling cramped.
“The biggest problem facing our community is that it is getting more and more dense everywhere,” he says. “I hear about it all the time. It is a major complaint around here.”
Growth and its byproduct crowdedness are on a lot of Southern Californians’ minds. Times pollsters found a fairly even split on the latter part of the equation: 53% say their neighborhoods are uncrowded, while 45% take the opposite view.
But after gangs, crime or drugs, growth was most often cited as the worst problem facing the region’s communities. Questioned specifically about growth, respondents divided equally among those who say their communities are growing too fast and those who say the pace of growth is about right. (Six percent say their communities are growing too slowly.)
Edwards says he still likes his South Bay neighborhood, although he declined to name the community. But if it and surrounding areas continue to grow and crowd, he says, “I am willing to go somewhere else.”
Angie Hill, the Southern California newcomer, has immersed herself in learning about her new community of Solana Beach and is concerned about too much growth in the San Diego area.
“There is a sewage problem, lack of water, pollution . . . ,” she says, adding that she was apprehensive about relocating here. “Before I moved out here, I had a fairly negative point of view.”
But, Hill says, “I have found the people in my neighborhood to be very kind, helpful and nice. That’s what counts.”
Susan Pinkus, assistant Times poll director, assisted in the statistical analysis and interpretation for these stories.
How the Poll Was Conducted
The Los Angeles Times Poll interviewed 1,586 adult Southern Californians by telephone Aug. 10 through 13.
Telephone numbers were chosen from a list that includes all telephone exchanges in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura.
Random-digit dialing techniques were used to ensure that both listed and unlisted telephone numbers had an opportunity to be contacted.
Over-sampling of blacks and Asian-Americans provided analyzable subsamples, which were then weighted to their proper shares in the regionwide sample. Results were adjusted slightly to conform with census figures on variables such as sex, race and national origin, age, education and household size.
The margin of sampling error for percentages based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups, the margin of error is somewhat higher.
