What impact will this trend have on schools? Here is the Star Editorial and the Story that spawned it

--Star Editorial---

Editorial: Americans on the move again
The 'exurbs' are the destination

April 24, 2006

Over the decades, Americans moved from farms and small towns to the big cities, then from the cities to the suburbs and now, in a continuing trend reaffirmed by the latest Census, to the "exurbs."

From 2000 to 2004, 18 of the 25 largest metropolitan areas had more people move out than move in. There were some discrete factors — the high-tech bust contributed to the exodus from San Francisco and Boston — but the common denominator was people seeking jobs and, especially, more affordable housing.

Residents leaving high-priced Los Angeles region helped neighboring Riverside metastasize into the nation's 15th-largest metropolitan area and the biggest winner in the 2000-2004 migration sweepstakes.

Riverside added 23 new residents per 1,000 of its population. The biggest loser was the San Francisco area, with 14.7 of every 1,000 departing.

In contrast to the urban white flight of earlier years, this move out of the big cities cuts across racial, ethnic and economic lines. People are moving to distant suburbs and small cities on the periphery, the exurbs.

Increasingly, that's where the jobs are, and if traffic planners don't have enough problems, they must contend with growing suburb-to-suburb and exurb-to-exurb commuting.

The long-term migration from the Northeast and Midwest to the Sun Belt continues. Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina were the big gainers; Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, California — a victim of its own success — and New York the big losers.

Americans have always been willing to pack up and move in search of a better life. They still are, and that's why sprawl — suburban and exurban — is becoming a way of life.

Population's flight fueled by high cost of housing
New U.S. Census figures show county's losing its middle class

By Charles Levin, clevin@VenturaCountyStar.com
April 22, 2006

With two kids and another on the way, Yesenia Rodriguez and her husband needed a bigger house but couldn't afford one in Ventura County.

So in August, they sold their three-bedroom home in El Rio for $505,000 and bought a six-bedroom house with a swimming pool in Bakersfield for $415,000.

They aren't alone. Newly released numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that more people continue to leave Ventura County than arrive here from other counties, a trend that could bode ill for businesses and schools. The numbers, however, don't include people coming here from other nations or residents moving abroad.

Census data released this week estimated that 10,642 more people left Ventura County than arrived from other counties from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2005 — more than double its estimate of 4,700 for the previous fiscal year.

Five years ago, the numbers were on the plus side, with 1,212 more people migrating to Ventura County than leaving.

Not all the details are clear

The latest census report doesn't provide figures on exactly where people here are flocking to, or the origins of those moving here. And when immigration from other nations is taken into account, the county's population dropped by only 59 people last fiscal year, from 796,165 to 796,106, according to the Census Bureau.

The state has a different formula for measuring population and "net domestic migration," and its figures are not as severe. The state's net migration figure for 2004-05 in Ventura County was 4,270, but, it said, overall population rose by 7,103, to 815,528.

Still, it's the mostly young, educated, middle-income families like the Rodriguezes who are fleeing, driven away by housing costs, experts say. Most leave for Bakersfield or the Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, previous population reports have shown.

This week's figures didn't surprise several experts, but one said the numbers show the trend is accelerating.

"This certainly is a dramatic change in the pattern," Bill Fulton, a planning expert and Ventura councilman, said this week. "It suggests to me that if we want to keep young, middle-class families, we have to have houses for them to live in and jobs for them to work at."

Fulton attended a regional growth conference this week called "Where Will the Children Live?"

"The trend suggests somewhere else," he said.

Housing costs continue to rise partly because retirees and aging baby boomers from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties have enough money to outbid local residents seeking to buy here, said economist Bill Watkins, director of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Economic Forecast Project.

Median housing cost $610,000

In March, the median price for new and existing homes and condominiums in Ventura County was $610,000. The median is the point at which half the homes cost more and half cost less.

Meanwhile, Ventura County retirees and families are leaving, selling their homes and taking their equity to communities where real estate is cheap, Watkins said.

Left unchecked, the trend will leave Ventura County with a two-tiered economy of haves and have-nots: affluent empty-nesters with disposable income and working-class families who perform service jobs and live in overcrowded conditions, Fulton said.

Businesses will suffer as the county continues to lose its "brain trust" of young, educated workers, said Zoe Taylor, president and CEO of the Ventura Chamber of Commerce.

School officials have watched the trend for years, and the latest numbers only reinforce their observations, said Chuck Weis, Ventura County Superintendent of Schools.

"Last year we lost 331 students countywide," Weis said this week. "This year, we think we're down about 1,500 students — maybe higher."

As enrollments decline, schools lose state funding, which threatens programs like art, sports and music, and school jobs from custodians to teachers. School closures are inevitable, Weis said.

Schools losing students

For several years, Ojai and Oak Park schools had suffered the biggest attendance losses. But enrollments in 15 of the county's 20 districts are now declining, Weis said.

When Rodriguez moved to Bakersfield, local schools lost both a student — one of her children — and a teacher. Rodriguez was teaching at McKinna School in Oxnard and didn't want to leave her job, colleagues or seven brothers and sisters.

But the couple dreamed of nice vacations and a second home for rental income. Husband Marco, who sold cars for a local dealership, hoped to open his own business.

That wasn't likely to happen with a $2,100-a-month mortgage in El Rio, said Yesenia Rodriguez, 29. "We were making it, but we were living on a budget," she said.

In Bakersfield, Marco, also 29, recently opened a cellular phone store. Some months are slow, but the couple's mortgage payments are now only $1,200 a month, so they can make it on Yesenia's teacher salary.

"We wouldn't ever be able to do that in Oxnard or purchase a home like what we have now in Oxnard," she said.

The Ventura Chamber of Commerce will soon convene a focus group, including city officials, business leaders, seniors, environmentalists and neighborhood activists, to brainstorm the housing problem, Taylor said.

Home prices, however, will continue climbing as retiring baby boomers want to live in coastal California, Watkins said.

Housing prices could flatten or even fall like in the 1980s and 1990s, but that's hard to predict, Fulton said.

"We're hostage to certain economic and social forces," Fulton said. "You can do as much as you can to make a marginal difference — provide more housing for the middle class — but it's definitely an uphill battle."