Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
If you're like most Californians, you effectively live in your car. Californians commute
an average of 30 minutes each way to work and spend at least $1 out of every $5 earned on
car-related expenses. But Californians have zoomed ahead of the national energy-use
curve in their smog-checked cars, buying more hybrid and fuel-efficient cars than any oth-
er state. Despite California's reputation for smog, two of the 25 US cities with the cleanest
air are in California (kudos, Redding and Salinas!).
Few Californians could afford a beach dream home anyway, and most rent rather than
own on a median household income of $61,400 per year. Eight of the 10 most expensive
US housing markets are in California, and in the two most expensive areas, Newport
Beach and Palo Alto, the average house price is over $1.5 million. Almost half of all Cali-
fornians reside in cities, but most of the other half live in the suburbs, where the cost of
living is just as high, if not higher: San Jose near Silicon Valley has been ranked the most
overpriced city in America. Yet Californian cities (especially San Francisco and San
Diego) consistently top national quality-of-life indexes.
As for those roommates you dreamed about: if you're a Californian aged 18 to 24,
there's a 50/50 possibility that your roomies are your parents. Among adult Californians,
one in four live alone, and almost 50% are unmarried. Of those who are currently married,
33% won't be in 10 years. Increasingly, Californians are shacking up: the number of un-
married cohabiting couples has increased 40% since 1990.
Homelessness is not part of the California dream, but it's a reality for at least 135,000
Californians, representing over 20% of the total US homeless population. Some are teens
who have run away or been kicked out by their families, but the largest contingent of
homeless Californians are US military veterans - estimated at 31,000 people. What's
more, in the 1970s mental-health programs were cut, and state-funded drug treatment pro-
grams were dropped in the 1980s, leaving many Californians with mental illnesses and
substance-abuse problems no place to go.
Also standing in line at homeless shelters are the working poor, unable to afford to rent
even a small apartment on minimum-wage salaries. Rather than addressing the underlying
causes of homelessness, some California cities have criminalized loitering, panhandling,
even sitting on sidewalks. More than three out of every 1000 Californians already sit in the
state's notoriously overcrowded jails, mostly for drug-related crimes.
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