Santa Maria or Hawthorne? (Los Angeles, Santa Monica: real estate, rent, houses)

[LUVA]

I live in the city of Hawthorne CA and want a comparison between Santa Maria and Hawthorne. Any body please. I have 3 kids, 3 year old twins and 8 month old baby. I'm looking for a better life. Is the city of Santa Maria the right place, at least better than hawthorne. Housing here is too high and the houses and neighborhoods are not that great.
thank you

[the city]

Santa Maria is not the place you want. Orcutt would be more like it. The public schools in Santa Maria (Pioneer Valley and Santa Maria High) are at 3000 students. And the private school there is very hard to get in. The mall there is an old 80's enclosed mall at 60% occupancy. The mall waited too long to get their new theater in and so now they have two anchors vacants. Pretty much all Santa Maria is these days is your normal ex-urban hispanic city with gang issues and traffic issues.

[LUVA]

We recently visited santa maria a few months ago for a couple of days, we drove around the city and didn't see much of gang movement only lots of hyspanics and that's about it. Saw some neighborhoods that I didn't like but were just a few. Maybe I need to spend more time there to see the real SM, Orcutt is nice but expensive, right?

[fatmancomics]

I moved out of Santa Maria because, being part of an inter racial couple, my wife and I weren't welcomed there. Anyone who lives in that area will tell you that Santa Maria is not a good place to live because it is the "ghetto" of Santa Monica county but, coming from Hawthorne, it will be a paradise to you. I lived right by Santa Maria high school and there was a homeless shelter behind my building and I loved it the year that I was single.
Bottom line, the minority there is black people so don't move there if you're black. If you're hispanic, white or asian there shouldn't be a problem.

[the city]

Originally Posted by LUVA

We recently visited santa maria a few months ago for a couple of days, we drove around the city and didn't see much of gang movement only lots of hyspanics and that's about it. Saw some neighborhoods that I didn't like but were just a few. Maybe I need to spend more time there to see the real SM, Orcutt is nice but expensive, right?

the nice parts of orcutt are expensive. the rest of orcutt is like santa maria. i have been to all of the high schools in the area, been to the downtown, the mall, the airport, the baseball park, and other parts of santa maria. and i have talked to my friend that has been to the bad parts of santa maria. it is a horrible ghetto place to live. it's for black and hispanics that like the ghettos. ghetto mall, ghetto downtown, and ghetto big-box shopping centers galores. it is not the santa maria it used to be.

[CA central coast]

Originally Posted by the city

the nice parts of orcutt are expensive. the rest of orcutt is like santa maria. i have been to all of the high schools in the area, been to the downtown, the mall, ..........

Ah, yes..........the mall.

[CA central coast]

Originally Posted by fatmancomics

I moved out of Santa Maria because, being part of an inter racial couple, my wife and I weren't welcomed there. Anyone who lives in that area will tell you that Santa Maria is not a good place to live because it is the "ghetto" of Santa Monica county but, coming from Hawthorne, it will be a paradise to you. I lived right by Santa Maria high school and there was a homeless shelter behind my building and I loved it the year that I was single.
Bottom line, the minority there is black people so don't move there if you're black. If you're hispanic, white or asian there shouldn't be a problem.

Not welcomed by who?

[Capt. Dan]

Originally Posted by CA central coast

Ah, yes..........the mall.

And not just the mall! The "ghetto mall!" Kid you REALLY need to get a friggin life!

[fatmancomics]

Originally Posted by the city

the nice parts of orcutt are expensive. the rest of orcutt is like santa maria. i have been to all of the high schools in the area, been to the downtown, the mall, the airport, the baseball park, and other parts of santa maria. and i have talked to my friend that has been to the bad parts of santa maria. it is a horrible ghetto place to live. it's for black and hispanics that like the ghettos. ghetto mall, ghetto downtown, and ghetto big-box shopping centers galores. it is not the santa maria it used to be.

I rest my case.

CA Central Coast: sadly, it was the Mexicans that were the worst as far as their behavior towards my wife and I. She was working retail and they were her rudest customers. When we went out to eat or rent a movie or something, we had to go to the white side (south of main) or risk getting stares and even a few under-their-breath comments. We ended up driving to the other nearby cities a lot when we went out to eat. San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach, Avilla Beach and Paso Robles were always fun and full of nice people. Solvang and the little villages nearby were more snobbish but they were also full of out-of-town tourists and they were still nicer than the folks in Santa Maria.
I think that the problem is that you have Santa Maria's "native" citizens pissed off about all the immigrants who come to live there and make their living picking fruit. Those folks come mostly from remote areas in Mexico and don't really concentrate on keeping their streets and buildings as clean as the "natives" would like them to.
Also, during the real estate boom there were lots of people who migrated from places like Los Angeles for more affordable housing. This led to more homes being built in areas that used to be farmland but they used the new "let's build as many with as little land possible" method so you had those matchbox houses stacked on top of each other. With the sudden growth of the population, you had a little bit more traffic and the "natives" became resentful of the new people for "overpopulating" their city. To anyone just coming in, it was still heaven because sitting in traffic for 15 minutes to get from one side of the city to another beats sitting it for 30 minutes just to move half a mile.
To me, the city was nice with just enough conviniences like the movie theater, the target, the cosco and the new sushi restaurants. But as you can see from the quoted post above, that is considered "ghetto". In the end, like I first stated, it was the bad attitude of the people that got me to move back to L.A.

[the city]

Originally Posted by fatmancomics

I rest my case.

CA Central Coast: sadly, it was the Mexicans that were the worst as far as their behavior towards my wife and I. She was working retail and they were her rudest customers. When we went out to eat or rent a movie or something, we had to go to the white side (south of main) or risk getting stares and even a few under-their-breath comments. We ended up driving to the other nearby cities a lot when we went out to eat. San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach, Avilla Beach and Paso Robles were always fun and full of nice people. Solvang and the little villages nearby were more snobbish but they were also full of out-of-town tourists and they were still nicer than the folks in Santa Maria.
I think that the problem is that you have Santa Maria's "native" citizens pissed off about all the immigrants who come to live there and make their living picking fruit. Those folks come mostly from remote areas in Mexico and don't really concentrate on keeping their streets and buildings as clean as the "natives" would like them to.
Also, during the real estate boom there were lots of people who migrated from places like Los Angeles for more affordable housing. This led to more homes being built in areas that used to be farmland but they used the new "let's build as many with as little land possible" method so you had those matchbox houses stacked on top of each other. With the sudden growth of the population, you had a little bit more traffic and the "natives" became resentful of the new people for "overpopulating" their city. To anyone just coming in, it was still heaven because sitting in traffic for 15 minutes to get from one side of the city to another beats sitting it for 30 minutes just to move half a mile.
To me, the city was nice with just enough conviniences like the movie theater, the target, the cosco and the new sushi restaurants. But as you can see from the quoted post above, that is considered "ghetto". In the end, like I first stated, it was the bad attitude of the people that got me to move back to L.A.

gangs, a half-filled mall, strip malls, ONE crappy movie theater, and horrible high schools, and traffic make this a normal ghetto ex-urban city in california.

if they can fix their mall to bring more tax revenue into the city to fix some problems like traffic and gangs then maybe it would be a nicer city.

they should have not waited to redevelop their mall. and i think their new plan better get going.

the mall used to have Steve and Barry's, mervyn's, and Robinsons May, now all it has is Macy's, Sears, and Gottschalks.

they need to add the theater, old navy, forever 21, and the borders NOW!!! otherwise that town is dead and a ghetto forever