Decade of Change

The once-a-decade U.S. census is still months away, but new government surveys have already sketched the outlines of change in Ventura County, which grew substantially richer and significantly more racially diverse during the 1990s.

Over the last nine years, upscale Ventura County lured tens of thousands of urban professionals from the Los Angeles basin seeking better schools and lower crime rates. At the same time, thousands of immigrants from Mexico moved here in pursuit of a steady paycheck and a better life, state and federal figures show.

Those two trends continued Ventura County’s 30-year transformation from a predominantly white farm region to a racially mixed suburban area. And with those trends came prosperity, analysts said.

Ventura County, which is now 61% white and 30% Latino, saw its median family income increase to $63,100 by 1998, compared with the statewide median of $58,500, a federal housing analysis found. That compares with a typical income for a local family of $50,000 in 1990 and represents a 26% increase, despite a prolonged statewide recession.

“Ventura County is, overall, definitely more affluent than it was 10 years ago,” said Mark Schniepp, UC Santa Barbara’s chief economic researcher. “The ‘90s probably will end up being the best decade on record for Ventura County, in terms of income growth.”

That is partly because residents who moved here in recent years were far wealthier than those who moved away, according to a Times analysis compiled from documents prepared by the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal housing agency and the state Department of Finance.

The typical household income of residents moving into Ventura County between 1992 and 1996 was $41,000 compared with $35,000 for their counterparts leaving the county. The difference created a cumulative income gain of $136 million.

And that was during the recession of the early 1990s, before the current three-year economic boom kicked in to set records for jobs and income.

None of the figures are adjusted for inflation. And whether all county residents are sharing in this prosperity is another question.

Difference Seen Between East, West

Until the 2000 census breaks down the county’s wealth by city and by race, it is difficult to predict whether historic income differences have continued between the predominately white-collar east county and the blue-collar west.

Growth trends suggest, however, that many of Ventura County’s prosperous newcomers have settled in fast-growing commuter neighborhoods in the east and central county.

The county’s three fastest-growing cities in the ‘90s were Camarillo, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks, all largely white and prosperous.

“If you look at the income distribution, there’s a very strong difference between the east county and the west county,” said Jamshid Damooei, an economics professor at Cal Lutheran University. “And in my opinion--despite the growing economic base of middle-income Hispanics--the economic gain is mostly in the more affluent part of the county.”

By last July 1, the state Department of Finance reported, 738,000 people lived in the county, up 68,000 from 1990. That resulted in a 1.22% annual growth rate during the ‘90s, compared with rates of 2% to 3% in the go-go 1980s and the building boom of the 1970s.

Of that net increase in residents, 43,000 were Latino. Indeed, the county’s Latino population surged 24% in the first eight years of the decade. Likewise, the number of Asian residents jumped by 35%, or 12,000 people. But the number of whites inched up just 2%, or 9,000 residents, according to state reports.

That means that Ventura County is slightly more than 60% white, down from 66% in 1990 and 73% in 1980. While the proportion of Latinos now is approaching one-third, it was only 26% a decade ago and 21% in 1980. The legal immigration of 12,000 Mexicans from 1992-96 helped fuel that increase.

With strong Filipino immigration accounting for part of the gain, Asians now comprise 6% of the population, up from 5% in 1990 and 3% in 1980.

The county has remained about 2% black for two decades.

The ethnic shift also reflects the fact that local Latinos had children at twice the rate of local whites during the last decade, according to state health reports. That helps account for this decade’s 16,000-person increase in Oxnard, where residents are mostly Latino.

Middle-Class Latinos Emerging

In 1996, in fact, Latinos had more babies than whites--the first time that has ever happened. Latinos accounted for 48% of all babies born to county residents that year.

“We’re moving from a predominantly white county to one that will not have a racial or ethnic majority in less than two decades,” Cal Lutheran’s Damooei said.

What that means for the county’s economy depends on how quickly Latinos move from lower income levels to the middle class, he said. That transition is becoming increasingly visible.

“I see it in the number of Hispanics in my classes and in their performance” the professor said. “That has improved tremendously in the 12 years I’ve been here.”

Oxnard lawyer Carmen Ramirez said she sees the county’s Latino middle class--growing in both size and affluence--all around her in professionals and elected officials.

“I see it in more home ownership, good-paying jobs and more vacations to Hawaii and New York--and in less scrabbling just to get by,” Ramirez said.

A UCLA study found a doubling of Latino businesses in the county between 1992 and 1997. There are now more than 10,000.

The move by county Latinos up the economic ladder was also documented in a 1996 study by Pepperdine University researcher Gregory Rodriguez. He found that the economic progress of local U.S.-born Latinos outpaced the county’s population overall in key categories--such as home ownership.

According to the Pepperdine study, 55% of all local U.S.-born Latinos--the large majority of Latinos here--qualified as middle class through income or home ownership, compared with 49% in Los Angeles County.

Ventura County also tied at 44% with Orange County for the percentage of foreign-born Latinos categorized as middle class. That compares with 32% in Los Angeles County.

Indeed, while the 1990 census found the incomes of Latinos were the lowest of any group in Ventura County, the average Latino household income was still $40,693, much higher than the statewide average for that group.

This is understandable, analysts say, because of the high cost of living in the county, where workers must make more money simply to afford high rents or mortgage payments.

Cost of Living Pushes Out Young

The elevated cost of living helps explain the swirl of change that has beset Ventura County this decade. The cost of housing routinely pushes out local residents--especially the young who want to buy a house.

“In this county, it is becoming very difficult for [low-income residents] to survive,” Damooei said. “The cost of housing is so high they have to go.”

On the other hand, he said, when urban workers prosper they consider bucolic Ventura County as their step up.

IRS figures document this flow of poorer migrants out of Ventura County and richer ones into it. For example, nearly 95,000 Los Angeles County residents migrated north into Ventura County from 1990-97. Those households earned an average of $43,300. At the same time, about 57,000 Ventura County residents moved to Los Angeles County, taking with them household incomes averaging only $34,400.

This pattern repeats itself for six of the eight Southland counties where Ventura County residents were most likely to move.

In all, 219,396 residents moved to Ventura County from 1990 to 1997, while 246,494 moved out. Of those departures, about half were to locations in Southern California.

Together, Emanuel Benitez of Oxnard and Kim Carbonati of Moorpark illustrate the dreams that have propelled this flow of moving vans in both directions across the Ventura County line.

Benitez, 43, recently moved his wife, Guillermina, and their 6-year-old son to the Riverside County desert town of Indio. He made the change because he knew his $32,000 annual salary at a poverty law firm could never stretch far enough here to pay for a house or his son’s college education.

“I was really happy there, but [in Indio] you can buy a four-bedroom house for $90,000,” Benitez said. “In Oxnard, the same house would cost $200,000. Here, I make the same money; it just goes [farther].”

Meanwhile, lured by the new suburbs of salmon stucco and red tile roofs, Long Beach residents, Carbonati, 42, and husband Harry, 44, moved to Ventura County in 1990. Visits to friends had sold them on the rugged beauty of the Simi Hills and small-town life in Moorpark.

Now, they are raising two young sons in a 3,200-square-foot house twice as large as their old one. She runs the family pizza parlor across from the local high school and even brought her mother down from Alaska to help. He commutes to Hawthorne, where he is a manager at Northrop-Grumman.

“My husband says this is as close to paradise as you get,” Kim Carbonati said. “It would be hard to imagine ever going back to Long Beach.”

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Ventura County Migration Trends

Migration patterns favored Ventura County this decade. About 35,000 more residents moved in from other Southern California counties than left. Arriving residents were also far wealthier than moved away.

Population Shift in Ventura County

Ventura County’s 30-year transformation from a predominantly white farm region to a racilly mixed suburban area continued in the 1990’s. The county is now 61% white, 30% Latino, 6% Asian and 2% black.

Local City Population Increase

Ventura County’s three fastest-growing cities in the ‘90’s were Camarillo, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks. But Oxnard, the county’s largest city, had the most new residents.