Report: 60 percent of SM residents live alone
Despite appearances, there are fewer people living here than a decade ago.
While California’s overall head count swelled by nearly 14 percent in the last decade, Santa Monica’s shrank by more than 3 percent.
Between 1990 and 2000, the 8.3-square-mile city attracted more single, well educated professionals while families moved out of the area, according to a city profile recently released by the Rand Corp.
The result is more than 60 percent of Santa Monica residents live alone, twice the percentage for the state. And 61 percent of residents over 25 years old have a college degree, as opposed to just 34 percent in the state. “If you’re a middle-class family of four, where are you going to settle down? In a three-bedroom house in Sunset Park? For $650,000?” said William Selby, a local resident and Santa Monica College professor of geography since the early 1980s.
“Most population experts and economists would agree that not only are the gaps between rich and poor growing in the state, but also where they live,” he added. “Santa Monica is a very well-known place and a lot of people want to live here but hardly anyone can afford it.”
The number of Santa Monica households earning less than $50,000 shrunk by 71 percent between 1990 and 2000 and the number of households with income greater than $50,000 grew by 230 percent, according to the report, which pegs the median income at $50,714.
As a result, Selby said, many local workers look inland to settle, where the cost of living is cheaper and people with families have a better chance of buying their own home.
Still, many choose to rent in Santa Monica.
In fact, 65 percent of the city’s dwellings are rentals. But between 1990 and 2000 the median rent, which for decades was protected by rent control, went up nearly 50 percent, from $532 per month to $792 per month. The increase reflects the institution of vacancy decontrol, which allows landlords to charge more on rent controlled units after tenants move out.
Though the percentage of minorities in Santa Monica has continued to grow, there is still an overwhelming majority of Caucasians — 72 percent of all who live here.
The slight increase in minorities, from 25 to 28 percent of the population, is entirely due to an influx of Asians, as Latino and African-American populations both declined between 1990 and 2000, according to the report, which was authored by Adrian Overton at the city’s request.
Councilman Herb Katz, who grew up on the Westside and moved to Santa Monica in 1963, said the city overall has seen a great deal of diversification and gentrification in the last four decades.
But with property prices soaring and thousands of people moving to California each day, Katz said it will be a challenge to keep Santa Monica from losing those gains while retaining its middle class.
“We were a quiet, bedroom community when I moved here,” said Katz, adding that his daughter would be hard-pressed to stay here if not for her rent-controlled apartment. “We have a middle class, but it’s shrinking. It’s a heck of a problem and it’s not going away. I think we need to work on it and push affordable housing, which we will never have enough of.”
“We have a middle class, but it’s shrinking. It’s a heck of a problem and it’s not going away.” — — HERB KATZ Santa Monica City Councilman
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 15, 2003. Read the original PDF.