Nipomo, CA (Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Lompoc: apartment, rent, house)

[agguy805]

I read that 16.7% of adults in Nipomo have a bachelors degree or higher. There is also a lot of lower-income first, second, or third generation Latin American families. Going to high school their about a third of the school was on reduced price or free lunch program. Nipomo is now quite a pricy place to live. Different than just 6 years ago. Looking in the newspaper, rent for a house is from around $875-2000 a month, some can be even more. Despite the high cost of living job wages are about the same as any other place in California. For example, with free or reduced price lunch programs, for a family of five, household income has to be below around $28,000 a year. And like I said, at the high school there was a good portion of students who were elgible for it. The thing is, how can people who have a family and make less than $28,000 a year afford to live in the Central Coast and in Nipomo? I mean with $28,000 a year at most you can only afford to pay rent of $583 a month and there is NOTHING for that price. You can't even find a one-bedroom apartment in Nipomo for less than $700.

So my question is, how do blue collar workers who don't get paid a whole lot afford to live in Nipomo and anywhere else along the Central Coast? (like SLO, Arroyo Grande, Santa Barbara, Grover Beach, Santa Maria, Lompoc)

[EscapeCalifornia]

What you're seeing is not unique to Nipomo or the Central Coast. All of the big cities like LA are full of low paid people living in very expensive areas. The answer is they pay a much higher percentage of their income toward housing than people in other states do and they cram more people into less space. So you get 3 families living in a 3 bedroom house.

[Axxlrod]

They live in squalor. They pack 10 or more people into the cheapest place they can find.