Santa Barbara (San Francisco, Santa Ynez: apartments, rent, house)

[j_rode]

I've heard Santa Barbara is a great city and I know it's a college town, but I have a few questions.

First, is there many job opportunities or is Santa Barbara a place where most people go to retire? My uneducated response would be the latter and that jobs are few and far between, but that is an uneducated guess. I'll be graduating from college here in Wisconsin with a degree in Marketing. Any luck getting into something like that in Santa Barbara?

Second, how's the cost of living? Can one live decent on a 30-35k salary a year? I'd probably be looking at a studio or one bedroom apartment if I were to locate to Santa Barbara.

Last, but no least, bugs. Are bugs, most importantly, spiders, an issue in the area? I absolutely hate spiders indoors. Here, we get really small ones occasionally in the summer and those freak me out enough. Just curious as to if you get big ones in Santa Barbara, especially if they are in homes.

Thanks in advance!

[Charles]

Originally Posted by j_rode

I've heard Santa Barbara is a great city and I know it's a college town, but I have a few questions.

First, is there many job opportunities or is Santa Barbara a place where most people go to retire? My uneducated response would be the latter and that jobs are few and far between, but that is an uneducated guess. I'll be graduating from college here in Wisconsin with a degree in Marketing. Any luck getting into something like that in Santa Barbara?

Second, how's the cost of living? Can one live decent on a 30-35k salary a year? I'd probably be looking at a studio or one bedroom apartment if I were to locate to Santa Barbara.

Last, but no least, bugs. Are bugs, most importantly, spiders, an issue in the area? I absolutely hate spiders indoors. Here, we get really small ones occasionally in the summer and those freak me out enough. Just curious as to if you get big ones in Santa Barbara, especially if they are in homes.

Thanks in advance!

What are the results of your job search?

What are the results of your search for housing?

Yes, there are spiders, normally just little house spiders in dark damp places. There are black widows too in places like woodpiles.

[ImRandy]

You're doomed. Spiders are native to every continent except Antarctica and even there they've hitched rides on ships and planes so you wouldn't be completely free of them. On average there are something like 11,000 spiders per acre in the US and in the best habitats the numbers go sky high. Considering they are predators, stating the number of bugs around to support such numbers would traumatize you. Since they are everywhere and you can't get rid of them you'd probably want to learn to live with them.

[goatherder]

At $30 -$35 K you will get used to beans and rice real fast, the cost of living is a lot worse than what you are used to. finding a good job in your field especially for a fresh out of school type like yourself will be iffy and you would probably have to get whatever job you can and even share a room while you are starting out before you find something better.
We have a fair bit of industry here, we benefit a lot from hightec startups from ucsb graduates.
As for your question about the demographics it is said that S.B. is a town for the newlywed and nearly dead, There are a ton of students and post students in their twenties and a lot of well off folks in their fifties and up. If you want to meet cool folks your age you will.
Spiders? oh yeah, nice dry mild climate they love, I do not see a lot of them but they are there, I have seen tarantulas that would make you wish you had stayed in the land of beer and cheese.

[Gidget]

Well, j_rode, apartmemts are VERY expensive in Santa Barbara and not much cheaper in surrounding areas. A good friend just moved back to SB and had one heck of a time finding a place to live. She ended up paying $1700 for a two bedroom place in a not-so-good neighborhood. You might consider having roommates to be able to afford SB.

The bugs...There are spiders all over, you really can't avoid them, but it's not like SB is literally crawling with them. Black widows tend to hide in dark areas and tarantulas are seldom seen, mostly in undeveloped areas. In my whole life I have only seen them 3 or 4 times and that was while hiking. In general, though, CA is not a very buggy place. I'd be more worried about the cost of living.

[Winston Smith]

Santa Barbara's climate is Mediterranean -- warm and dry, not tropical nor humid, rarely hot -- and doesn't attract big bugs of any kind. Few and far between in SB, a Black Widow is the worst you might encounter, but they're reclusive and won't bite unless you disturb them. Three-inch or so sized tarantulas live in the hills and in the Santa Ynez Valley. You're not likely to get bit by one, but if you do, the bite is not harmful. The rare occasion that you might see one is a treat. On the subject of hills and outdoors, a bigger preoccupation is rattlesnakes. If you're a hiker, just learn how to identify them and common sense tricks to avoid them. Ants you can count on. Mice and rats can be a problem; get a cat for the house and welcome opossums to you yard. Opossums eat mice and rats. If you're near the hills, leave rattlesnakes alone as they eat mice and rats, too.

Quick note on some of your original questions. Though SB is "graying" with rich retired people, it's not a retirement community in the same sense as Boca Raton, or some place. There's a mix of demographics in SB. Jobs, however, pay 30-40 percent less than those same jobs pay in L.A. or San Francisco. Housing costs are very high.

[Gidget]

Originally Posted by ImRandy

You're doomed. Spiders are native to every continent except Antarctica and even there they've hitched rides on ships and planes so you wouldn't be completely free of them. On average there are something like 11,000 spiders per acre in the US and in the best habitats the numbers go sky high. Considering they are predators, stating the number of bugs around to support such numbers would traumatize you. Since they are everywhere and you can't get rid of them you'd probably want to learn to live with them.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I don't see this as a useless or pointless post...I thought this was quite informative, especially considering this statement in the original thread:

"I absolutely hate spiders indoors. Here, we get really small ones occasionally in the summer and those freak me out"

I got the feeling that spiders were a huge issue for her, and the above post addressed that concern.

[jessemh431]

30-35k in SoCal is almost at poverty line. Sorry to tell you that. You should really try and get a roommate with the same salary. 60k is fine to live off of in SoCal.

SB is not a retirement place at all. There are tons of young people that stay there after college. Also, it's one of the only places in SoCal where you can have a laid back lifestyle in a beach community. It used to be that the beach communities of LA and SD were laid back, but now the worst traffic in LA is found in the beach cities and the west side. I don't know where you're from, but it seems like a small town. You will do much better in SB than any other place in SoCal.

[SoCalif]

Originally Posted by j_rode

I've heard Santa Barbara is a great city and I know it's a college town, but I have a few questions.

First, is there many job opportunities or is Santa Barbara a place where most people go to retire? My uneducated response would be the latter and that jobs are few and far between, but that is an uneducated guess. I'll be graduating from college here in Wisconsin with a degree in Marketing. Any luck getting into something like that in Santa Barbara?

Second, how's the cost of living? Can one live decent on a 30-35k salary a year? I'd probably be looking at a studio or one bedroom apartment if I were to locate to Santa Barbara.

Thanks in advance!

30-35K a year would be extreme poverty in SB.

[Socal2Bham]

Originally Posted by j_rode

Second, how's the cost of living? Can one live decent on a 30-35k salary a year? I'd probably be looking at a studio or one bedroom apartment if I were to locate to Santa Barbara.

If you are willing to live with roommates for a while until you can establish yourself, it MIGHT be doable but at that salary range, it's pushing it.
When I was younger I was able to pull it off in the 35-40K range only by living in a 7 bedroom house with 6 roommates for 9 years and I didn't have a car for the first few years but that was 6 years ago.

Anything is possible. Heck, when I was 18 I lived in the Cota St. apartments. My rent for a studio was $550 a month (15 years ago) and I think my monthly income working at The Boadway was like $650! Talk about living on peanut butter sandwiches and ramin noodles.