Where to live in CA with children?
 

I am thinking of moving to CA. We don't have a ton of money, and are looking for a safe place, friendly faces and good schools. Is this a pipe dream??

Any help is appreciated.
Thank you. :)

w/o knowing what your housing budget is - it is impossible to tell you if it is a pipe dream or not.

Plus California is a huge, HUGE place w/ 14,000 foot mountains, snow (lots), huge cities, tiny villages, ranches, wild rivers, deserts, beaches, rural farming counties and cosmopolitan cities and everything in between.

So tell us how much you can afford and we can at least help point you in the right direction.

Would the job location be important? How about the weather?

Hi, eveangeline!

janisj is absolutely correct. California is huge. It is 2 1/2 times the size of ALL of New England. If it were placed along the East Coast, it would extend from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.

There are lots of safe places with friendly faces and good schools. You're got to narrow it down for us a bit.

Snow? Desert? Beach? Farmland? Big City? How much do you want to spend for a house? Or do you want to rent? If renting, how much for rent? How many bedroom apartment?

The more information you give us the better we can narrow it down for you.

Thanks! :)

If education is you top priority (as it was for us when we moved out of California), I would suggest you check out the school districts and private schools. For us, the only option was private schools and that's rather pricey, but if you really want to live in CA, it would be worth it to check this out.

I would suggest that you stay away from Southern California. I live there and it is much too crowded. Besides it never rains and when it does, people who have never seen rain before go crazy on the freeways. There are hundreds of accidents when it rains. When it is dry, the wind blows and causes everything to catch on fire. You might be able to afford a place that has burned down, but even those houses are way over priced.

Now if you can convince 10 people to move out of Southern California, to some other state or country, then perhaps you could move here. The northern part of the state ain't much better.

Oh, I forgot to mention; I noticed that you have children. Did you know there are over 4500 registered sex offenders in San Diego County alone? I can't begin to guess how many are in the Los Angeles area. The total for the state is about 50,000. You still want to bring your kids here?

And don't forget the earthquakes!

eveangeline: if you haven't caught on already,

dgassa is full of "de gas" :)

Hi,

The built up areas of california are very expensive for housing. Where are you moving from? If you aren't "made of money" or coming from a similarly expensive area, you may have a tough time. Check out some of the real estate listings in various areas of California to get an idea of what a basic home would cost to rent or buy.

Margy

Do you still want to move here?

I retired after having lived for 25 years in Sacramento. I would never advise anyone to move to California, and I left it just as soon as I turned 60 and got my pension. The traffic is bad wherever you are, there's a lot of crime (more or less depending on the area), housing is out of sight, taxes are high.

&quot;<i>The traffic is bad wherever you are, there's a lot of crime (more or less depending on the area), housing is out of sight, taxes are high.</i>&quot;

Like I said - California is a very biiiiig place and you simply cannot generalize like that. There are hundreds of places in CA that are not Sacramento, or SF, or LA, or San Jose, or Orange County.

W/o knowing the OP's situation re employment, etc it is impossible to help her much -- but there are MANY small towns all over CA w/o the traffic, super high real estate costs and major crime . . . . .

You're about 30 years too late, unless you want to spend your life in traffic, send your kids to overcrowded schools that might not even have air conditioning in 105 degree weather, and love to see drivers who grab their cellphones more often than their turn signals.

Try Idaho or Tennessee, maybe. Your statement &quot;We don't have a ton of money&quot; spells instant disaster in California.

California is a beautiful state, it is (as already reminded) HUGE and varied. There's no way all of some of these sweeping generalizations are true when you look at the &quot;big picture&quot; not just the greater Los Angeles area, for example.

Suze is right, but unfortunately, if someone is planning to move to CA in the next couple of years, they'll sit by and watch as all of the Los-Angeles-type problems just spread across the state. As L.A. moves to gridlock over the next few years, people will move away, spread out, and the problems will follow them as the rest of the state becomes overcrowded as well.
How long, for example, before Santa Ynez and Cambria and Mendocino have a Wal Mart, 14 Starbucks and 8 Subways instead of the mom-and-pop type stores? Sad but true.

People have been saying that about the state my entire lifetime (I grew up in Los Angeles in the 50's) and it hasn't happened yet.

Suze is right. I don't think Santa Ynez, Cambria or Mendocino will ever (in my lifetime at least/ 30 plus more years I hope!) get a Walmart.

Really I'm not betting for or against any particular area or who does or doesn't get a strip mall or Burger King or whatever.

I'm saying to Clark there, that the state is big big BIG and there's no way it's all going to look like a southern California housing developement from border to border (east to west, north to south) anytime soon.

A lot of places are having a backlash against Walmart. Trippinkpj, do you remember a couple of years ago that the small community of Hercules voted down a Walmart. And Suisun City just did also (partially because Travis AFB would be so close). There are many places in California that are safe, friendly and have good schools. My small city is one. But without knowing the budget for your housing eveangeline and what type of a job you need (assuming you do need one) it is hard to answer your inquiry.