Another Snub for L.A.

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Another Snub for L.A.

As a famous Angeleno oft said, there they go again.

A new CNN/Money survey left out Los Angeles as among the Top 25 “best places to live,” a ranking that the City of Angels received last year largely on the strength of the “bourgeois bohemian” lifestyles in Silverlake and Echo Park.

But wait, it gets worse. The latest research, posted last week on the CNN/Money Web site, found L.A. at the bottom of the list of 1,263 cities when it came to personal crime (1,206th place), property crime (1,095th), number of Superfund sites (1,260th) and student-teacher ratios (1,208th). Adding further insult, several neighboring cities were listed as among the “hottest” towns with populations of more than 100,000, including Anaheim, Irvine, Orange, Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

Quality of life surveys that either bash are nothing new, but in this case, L.A.’s success might be keeping it down.

CNN/Money rated cities by, among other factors, the relative expense of homes compared to median income. The higher the the home price, the survey folks figure, the more attractive the place must be.

Certainly, L.A. housing prices are soaring between 1990 and 2000, housing prices in the county increased by 30 percent. But the California Association of Realtors reports that only 24 percent of households can afford a median-priced home, the lowest level in more than a decade.

Matt Myerhoff

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