Working/Living in Clear Lake area (Santa Rosa, Daly City: houses, unemployed, buying)

[dmlandis]

I wanted some unbiased opinions about working/living in Clear Lake area. There are some teaching positions in Lower Lake and I wonder if the area is safe to live and work in. I have 20 plus years of living/teaching in SF Bay Area. Most recently have been teaching overseas in China and the Middle East but will be returning to the Golden State this summer. Open to living in a quieter place in Northern California than the uber expensive SF Bay Area. We do have a home there (Daly City) and family in East Bay where we could stay on weekends. Just wondering how it would be living/teaching there - I know the air is clean but concern is living in a nice place and not a trailer park -)

[Ruth4Truth]

Have you been up there to scout around? That would be an obvious first step, in your research. And you can do a site search here, for other threads on Clear Lake. There have been a couple.

I've been doing some research on the Clear Lake area, and my advice would be to live outside of Lower Lake, and drive in for work. I'm not sure if it's the town of Clear Lake, or Lower Lake, that's one of the locations around the state where former state penitentiary inmates are dumped, as a state effort to relieve overcrowding in the prisons. This causes "issues" in that corner of the lake. You should research other communities around the lake, to make your choice of where to live. You can look at RE listings along the lake, to get an idea of housing. The town of Lakeport is pretty decent, from what I've seen, and it's about a 1/2 hr. drive to Lower Lake from there. There's also Kelseyville, which is closer to Lower Lake, and has some nice subdivisions.

Lake County has very hot summers, and with the drought-prone weather patterns we've seen more or less in the last decade, there can be fires in the area. just a heads-up. OTOH, the winery business in the area is growing, so that represents a considerable stake that somebody had the faith to put into the area. It's definitely quiet, and very beautiful.

Let us know what you decide, and how you like it, if you do settle in the area.

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by dmlandis

I wanted some unbiased opinions about working/living in Clear Lake area. There are some teaching positions in Lower Lake and I wonder if the area is safe to live and work in. I have 20 plus years of living/teaching in SF Bay Area. Most recently have been teaching overseas in China and the Middle East but will be returning to the Golden State this summer. Open to living in a quieter place in Northern California than the uber expensive SF Bay Area. We do have a home there (Daly City) and family in East Bay where we could stay on weekends. Just wondering how it would be living/teaching there - I know the air is clean but concern is living in a nice place and not a trailer park -)

Both public schools in lower lake are rated 2/10 on great schools, I don't know it is to teach in a school with such low test scores but I wouldn't want my grandson to attend an elementary school where 14% of the kids are math proficient and 22% read at grade level. https://www.greatschools.org/califor...-lake/schools/

My nephew has lived in Lake County most of his life and he likes it. There seem to be a lot of unemployed people and a number of them seem to be drug users but I don't think that would infer that it's less safe than any other similar rural part of California.

Personally if I was a teacher and wanted to work and live in a rural area of Northern California I would look at either Placer, El Dorado or Nevada County.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

I've never lived there, but I drove around that area a lot, thinking about buying property there. Even though it was really affordable, I decided I didn't want to live there.

I don't know what it would be like to teach there. But, my take on the area was that it looked really poor. Lower Lake used to flood pretty bad. Not sure if anything has been done to remedy that. But, that side of the lake had a lot of unfinished developments - where a development got started, and plotted out, and some lots were sold and built on, but a lot of them never were. So, it looked almost like some kind of weird war zone almost, where there would be a nice house here....lots of empty lots....an ugly old single wide trailer....some more empty lots.... Just weird and creepy and zombie land-ish.

Lakeport has some decent looking older houses, but it, too, just looked kind of tired and sad and poor to me.

There are a few nicer developments on the hills around Kelseyville, but as I recall there were problems with landslides, and the homeowner's associations weren't in great shape.

The area I liked the best that didn't feel quite so poor was the area east of the lake. Looking at a map, I think it was the area where there are some wineries now, on Long Valley Road.

The Hidden Valley Lake development was another kind of sad not-quite-successful development. I recently met a couple who moved to the far north coast of CA and they told me they had a house in Hidden Valley Lake that they weren't able to sell for enough to break even, so they were just holding onto it.

It's an area that everyone has high hopes for, and it seems like an area where it would build up, being fairly close to Santa Rosa, but it just seems to never happen.

It's really pretty, but not very convenient as far as traveling to any other areas, which is probably why it just doesn't seem to build up. The roads in from I-5 on the east, or up from the Santa Rosa/Calistoga side on the south, are curvy two-lane mountain type roads. And there's nothing to the north as far as travel. To the west, it's a bit of a jaunt, but the easiest drive compared to the other options, taking you to Hwy 101. But, then the drive down 101 to get to Santa Rosa is also a bit curvy and a long drive.

Not to say you wouldn't be happy there. It just really wasn't for me. And I've never made a lot of money, so it wasn't a matter of people not having money, but the area for the most part to me felt like the majority of the population were people who were, how can I put it, people without hope or ambition. Even though I'm poor, I'm educated and like to hang out with curious, motivated people. I just didn't think I'd find that there.