Poll Finds Residents Love Living in County

Satisfied and secure but wary of what the future may bring, residents of Ventura County are extraordinarily content even when compared with those in the Southland’s other suburban areas, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll.

Mostly big-city refugees, residents have poured into this bucolic county--doubling its population since 1970--to embrace the suburban dream of safe streets, good schools and friendly neighbors.

And they’re pleased with what they have found.

A Times Poll of the suburban areas surrounding Los Angeles shows that Ventura County residents are at least as happy with the quality of their lives as other suburbanites--and in many cases more content.

The poll found high levels of satisfaction throughout suburbia, and the degree of contentment increased every step away from the heart of Los Angeles.

“You can see the progression,” said Susan Pinkus, director of the poll. “In the older suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, residents are not nearly as happy as they are in Ventura County, where they want to pull up the ladder and keep things the way they are. The people in Ventura County are extremely happy.”

If Orange County was once the region’s principal haven for disenchanted Angelenos, Ventura County is now a favored refuge for jaded big-city folk, especially those fleeing the San Fernando Valley--itself the Southland’s suburban archetype after World War II.

Indeed, three of every five Ventura County residents say they moved here to escape urban problems such as crime and congestion. And two of five cite small-town values and friendly people as the best things about their communities.

Nearly two-thirds live near family members. Nearly half say they socialize with neighbors. And more than half participate in community activities--the highest proportion in suburban Los Angeles.

Overall, nine of every 10 residents found Ventura County a good place to live. About 95% said they feel safe in their communities. Three of five gave their schools good marks. And twice as many said their communities had improved during the last 10 years as thought things had become worse.

Those marks all compare favorably with other suburban areas.

Engineering manager Floyd Lindquist and wife Marian are typically pleased.

“I’m prejudiced,” said Lindquist, 65, who settled into a hilltop home in Thousand Oaks when he transferred from Minnesota in 1985. “But I think where we live is probably second to none in Southern California. Driving into this area is a little bit like a breath of fresh air.”

But if Ventura County’s residents value their quality of life, they say they have stretched themselves to afford it. Two of every five say they sacrifice to live in their communities, compared with just 26% over the Simi Hills in the San Fernando Valley.

Nearly two-thirds of Ventura County residents own their homes, highest in the suburbs. And when it comes to technological toys, they also lead the suburban pack--48% own cell phones and 19% of their children are armed with pagers.

The Internet is also an integral part of their lives, with 54% of households wired.

But as Ventura County’s residents turn to the future, they worry that they cannot maintain the same high quality of life. They worry about crime. They worry about a creeping urbanism that could rob western Ventura County of the Southland’s last vast stretches of farmland.

In both the newer commuter communities of the eastern county and the older farm towns of the west, two-thirds of Ventura County’s residents said they favor slowing growth and limiting development even if that hurts business and cuts jobs. Such sentiment was not as strong elsewhere in the suburbs, perhaps because they are so developed already.

But even with a spate of new slow-growth laws, Ventura County residents fear they can’t hold back the flood.

Those who said they expect to move in the next two years cited a diminishing quality of life as their foremost reason for leaving. And only in Ventura County did residents say they expect their children’s standard of living to be worse than their own.

Nearly three of four residents want their children to live nearby when they grow up. But they said in interviews that they worry that their kids can’t afford the high cost.

That’s one reason construction worker Mike Sunda, 50, and wife Sandra, 49, have put their Spanish-style house in Ventura up for sale for $319,000, and are shopping for a new home in north-central Washington. They figure it will cost $60,000.

“It’s just so expensive to maintain a middle-class lifestyle in Ventura,” Sandra Sunda said. “I can’t imagine how a young couple trying to get into their first house can afford $210,000.”

So now that their children have graduated from high school, the Sundas are cashing out for a place on a river in an apple-growing region that has not yet experienced a suburban boom.

“We like it up there,” Sandra Sunda said, “because it’s rural, and because it’s a very small town.”

In conducting its survey, The Times Poll interviewed more than 500 residents each in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, the traditional enclaves of suburbia in Los Angeles County, and 500 each in Orange and Ventura counties.

For comparison purposes, more than 300 were also polled in areas of the city of Los Angeles that are not considered suburban. The poll was conducted between July 10 and July 16 and has a margin of sample error of plus or minus three to five percentage points.

The pluses and minuses of suburbia change from one geographic region to the next--and even within each region.

In Ventura County, there are big differences in perception from the newer more affluent communities of the east county to the older middle-class towns that ring the farm valleys of the west.

In the east--where commuters each morning roll out of clean and leafy cities that did not exist 40 years ago--residents were happier than in the west.

East county residents know crime is not a real problem for them: 71% say their communities are very safe, compared with 35% in the west.

The differences were more striking when respondents cited the top problems in their communities: 52% in the west rated crime as the top problem, compared with just 18% in the east, which routinely ranks as one of the lowest crime areas in the nation.

Although large majorities of residents countywide said they were satisfied with their communities, their degree of happiness varied markedly from east to west.

Nearly three of every five east county residents rated their communities as excellent places to live and raise children, compared with just one of every three residents in the west.

And in the racially mixed western county, 23% of residents said there was a good amount of racial tension in their community, compared with just 4% in the predominantly white east county.