Posted on 03/17/2005 3:59:11 PM PST by BurbankKarl
The talk in Los Angeles is the talk of getting out In fact, a third of the residents surveyed said they want to move away, up more than 20 percent from 2003. The mood here in the South Bay, however, is slightly rosier.
Fed up with traffic, crime and skyrocketing housing prices, a growing number of Los Angeles County residents say they plan to move away within five years, according to a survey released Wednesday.
Although the mood in the South Bay area was slightly rosier, the report by the Public Policy Institute of California calls the county's 10 million residents "stunningly unhappy with some key indicators of quality of life and paints a picture of growing concern for any chance of long-term recovery."
"I spend all my money on rent," said San Pedro resident Janelle Anderson. "And now with gas prices going up, I'd love to find a cheaper place to live. But it's not that easy to leave your job and family."
The number of residents who plan to leave the county almost doubled in two years. A similar survey in 2003 found that 17 percent of residents did not see themselves staying in the county. The number is now 33 percent.
In fact, more people in the city of Los Angeles say they plan to leave than the 26 percent who voted in the recent mayoral election, said Mark Baldassare, the survey's director.
"It seems they plan to vote with their feet," he said.
For Torrance resident Gary Webb, it's the unrelenting traffic that makes him ponder leaving.
"It seems like I'm always in my car," he said. "And it keeps getting worse. I can't go anywhere without getting stuck in traffic."
The third annual survey found traffic, lack of affordable housing and low-performing public schools as reasons for the bleak outlook -- 74 percent of the 2,000 participants said congestion on freeways and main roads was a major problem. Another 64 percent said a lack of affordable housing was a big problem in the county. Both those figures have significantly increased from two years ago, when 67 percent cited traffic woes and 54 percent mentioned housing.
"So many dimensions of people are more negative today," Baldassare said. "The way they rate housing problems, the way they view race relations, and increasing negativity were certainly important things we noted."
In all, 58 percent believe race relations were not so good, compared to 53 percent in 2003. Different races also had varied outlooks. Only 21 percent of blacks -- compared to 50 percent of all residents -- say police in their community treat all racial and ethnic groups fairly most of the time.
But there were some silver linings in the survey. For instance, most residents expect race relations to improve.
"There are areas that have optimism," Baldassare said. "Most people believe race and ethnic relations will improve. And we're seeing improvements in the economy and the general belief that the quality of life is still good."
Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demographics at USC, suggested that the survey include a question about whether people planned to move. He said he was a little surprised at the results, but he also cautioned about reading too much into them.
"It's a little higher than I would expect," he said. "It's not clear people are going to act different. People complain about traffic, but don't leave."
But if people do follow up on their plans to move, it could spell trouble in the future.
"The danger is people will still keep coming, but the ones you want to keep might go away because they've got other choices," he said. "You might be keeping the wrong kinds of people. Middle-class taxpayers might get up and go. That's the key. Who are the ones leaving?"
The survey divided the county into four parts. The area that includes the South Bay -- which stretches from Long Beach to Malibu -- was more optimistic about many trends. While generally unhappy with traffic, two-thirds of the area's residents said things were going well. They also gave the highest rating to the economy (40 percent) and expressed strong approval of local parks (68 percent).
"Some of the optimism in the region reflects the fact that people have good air quality, good job opportunities," Baldassare said. "Many people are in good economic shape compared to other parts of the county."
Yup. It's Texas Independence Month, by the way.
Where are all these idiots going to move? These Cali transplants have already ruined places like CO...
It is just awful here, get going while the going is good!
Please go!
I will just have to stay here and suffer the terrible warm weather, beaches and mountains by myself.
Really. It's OK. I can handle it. You go on now. Don't worry about us. We'll be OK.
No kidding.
Enjoy.
However, you sound exactly like Harry Truman almost exactly 25 years ago. No, not that Harry Truman - the one who's now buried under several hundred feet of mud and ash from Mount St. Helens.
What is it, 169th?
Wow. If that's what happened to good old Harry, I better stay in California. I'll leave Washington to you. :)
LOL. I don't believe him. ;-)
Yup. I believe that on the 175th Anniversary we get to celebrate by tossing unwanted and uninvited Mexican visitors back across the Rio Grande.
When my mothers Alzheimers got really bad, I decided to move her out of California, and take her back up to Washington state to live with me and my family, so I could care for her...this was in 1990..Dad had died in 1989.
We rented a Ryder...the biggest they have, as mom had a whole house full of furniture and her collections from 45 years of her and dad being married...
At that time, 1990, it cost me about 1500 dollars to rent that Ryder...but they told me, if I was going the opposite direction, from Washington State, to California, I could probably have gotten the same size Ryder for free...they would be willing to forego the rental fee, just to get the truck back into the state of California...
On the other hand, I have tons of relatives who live in California, love it there, and will never move...they live in Petaluma, Ukiah, Redwood Valley, and Willits...the cost of housing in Petaluma is ridiculous, as it is considered a suburb of San Francisco..one of my cousins lives in Petaluma, was born there, and will die there..but the pice of housing there is absurd......the further north you go, the prices of the homes seems to go down...a cousin living in Willits, has a lovely house on 9 acres, and what he paid really was not out of line...
Alaska, one can hope. I feel sorry for the poor bears that will have to eat the rotten people who are stupid enough to wander around in the snow and pet the bears.
"You can't have too many tattoo parlors" is PB's motto.
I dont why the surveys come out the way they do...
But I lived for the first 32 yrs of my life in Chicago...lived the next 5 yrs in North Carolina...and have been in Western Washington State now, for the last 21 yrs...
Of those three places, I prefer Western Washington State...
Have spent long summers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with my large extended family...nice places to visit, but I would not want to live there...
But its moot for me and the hubby now...he retires in a few weeks, and soon, very soon, we will pull up stakes, close up the house, jump into the RV, and live and drive and travel until we drop dead, or the son decides we are insane and commits us somewhere...so if luck is with us, we will spend our 'golden years' living for a time in all the different states...
However, our first goal is to visit all the little breweries and sample all the beers made out here, in Oregon, Washington, and California...since there are hundreds of them, it may take us a few years to get out of the west...we have thought of getting a bumper sticker reading something like 'Beware, Geriatric Beer Samplers on Board', or some such silly saying...tho the hubby says we will probably get arrested...
However, my bottom line thought is this...each state, every state, has lots of things good with it, as well as lots of things wrong with it...no state is completely good, no state is completely bad...
I just hope I live long enough, and am sober enough, to appreciate the good in every state I travel through...
You hit the proverbial nail on the proverbial head.
No chance of flexitime?
I used to live in El Segundo quite a few years ago. That was our beach view.
Pretty boring, isn't it?
Here's the kind of backyard water view I have now:
Don't mean to rub it in, but a featureless view over the Los Angeles beaches is, to many people, the ultimate.
It ain't.
More room to enjoy the surf in the mornings and the mountains in the afternoon.
All the time bathed in sunshine.
Adios!!
What you say is all true, but anywhere that doesn't have 10 feet of snow each winter and isn't a complete cow town is also getting over priced and over Hispanic. So there's not much to choose from unless you want to live in North Dakota or some other incredibly dull, frightfully cold locale.
You'd think the Democrats of Los Angeles would have taken a hint from Cuba, where a similar "socialist workers paradise" clearly illustrates the direction that Los Angeles (and Kalifornia for that matter) are heading.
As always, the voters get exactly what they deserve. Of course, the problem now is that those same scumbag Democrat voters want to move out of the mess they created and go infect some other area. Well, as long as they stay in Kalifornia, I guess it's a wash....
The only problem I have is being a productive, employed white male that has worked for 27 years in this state, and not being able to afford a home large enough for a family of four, even in a combat zone.
I'm tired of fighting the greenies, pervs, leftos, wetbacks, and New Yawkers that think this place is a never ending episode of Baywatch. I want some real estate and some peace. And only needing to spend an hour on the road back and forth to work.
My Home on the Range cost me $226,000 for a 1/3 acre lot, two story 4 bedroom house with beautiful amenites and a pool with a huge backyard big enough to play catch with my boy. For a cul-de-sac lot in a good suburd of Dallas (Allen).
If the inflation in home prices follows me to Texas, well, I can be like the Californians I know and cluck cluck while I shake my head sympathetically, because, you know, I'll already have mine...
Congratulations on your pending move!
Nothing like voting with your feet.
Personally, the wife unit and I are discussing getting out of Pennsylvania before it catches the liberal scumbag virus from Jersey and goes over to the socialist Democrat side. I fear it's in the air.
The Marco Island/Naples/Fort Myers area of Florida has a nice ring to it. Been there, and it is sweet. And cheap, compared to Pennsylvania. Not to mention tax advantages.
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