San Francisco Bay Area residents think they have it best

By PETER HECHT
Thursday, April 19, 2007

Residents who are California Dreamin', believing the Golden State is among the best places to live, most likely reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, a new poll reveals.

In a Field Poll index on how residents view living and working in the state, 67 percent of residents in the nine-county Bay Area say they consider California "one of the best places to live."

No other California region was close in the poll results released this week.

Fifty-five percent of residents in other Northern California counties and 41 percent of Central Valley residents felt their regions were among the best places to live.

By comparison, 47 percent of Los Angeles County residents, 46 percent of Orange County and San Diego County residents and 43 percent of other Southern California residents rated their regions among the best.

"Whenever we've done surveys on California as a place to live, Bay Area residents have always scored higher" in giving their region positive ratings, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the California Field Poll. "You can only speculate: The weather is not extreme. There are cultural activities, sports activities and an employment base, both high tech and educational."

Fifty percent of respondents in the March 20-31 survey of 1,093 registered voters statewide rated California as one best places to live. Twenty-nine percent said the state was "nice but not outstanding." Sixteen percent rated the state as average and 4 percent said California was a poor place to live.

Those numbers were slightly better than the attitudes expressed by California voters in a similar poll in 2003. They were far better than in 1992 _ the year of economic turmoil and the Los Angeles civil unrest after the Rodney King police beating verdict _ when only 33 percent of state voters viewed California as one of the best place to live.

But Californians don't think nearly as much of their state as they did in Field Polls between 1967 and 1985 _ when 70 to 78 percent of respondents characterized the state as an outstanding place to be.

"You had the perspective then of California as a promised land, as a place where there is endless opportunity," DiCamillo said. "The housing prices hadn't yet started their steep rise. California was a place people felt really privileged to be."

But despite a current real estate slump, the new poll indicates a decided uptick among voters over how they view the state of the California economy.

Some 42 percent of poll respondents said they believe California is experiencing economic good times compared to 31 percent who believe the state is faring poorly. In 2005, just 24 percent of poll respondents expressed confidence in the state's economy compared to 49 percent who believed California was in "bad times."

Forty-one percent of Californians in the recent poll said they are better off financially than a year ago compared to 28 percent who said they are worse off and 30 percent who reported no change.

The numbers were similar to results in polls since 2004 _ but less exuberent than during the technology boom from 1998 to 2000 when as many as 54 percent of California residents felt they were better off financially.

(Contact Peter Hecht at phecht(at)sacbee.com.)