Yorba Linda drops off Money’s list of best places to live

By ERIK ORTIZ

Yorba Linda Star - Aug. 3, 2006

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Yorba Linda is sparkling homes looming along the city’s sloping hillsides. It is drivers waiting at lonely crosswalks for horses and their riders to amble past. It is families sharing a $3 slice of apple pie at Polly’s after a long day.

“Yorba Linda is calm, more friendly and stuff,” said a skateboarding Jake Cortez, 12, who moved to the city from Brea with his family two months ago.

The city’s idyllic quality won national recognition last year, coming in 21st in Money magazine’s top 100 list of “Best Places to Live 2005.”

But this year, the “land of gracious living” got ungraciously snubbed; nowhere to be found on the 2006 list, released last month.

The magazine bases its list on “small, livable cities that had the best possible blend of good jobs, low crime, good quality schools, plenty of open space, rational home prices and lots to do.”

“At the end of the day, we in Yorba Linda know that we’re the first best place to live in the nation,” said Councilwoman Keri Lynn Wilson, who was planning on picking up a copy of the issue on Wednesday. “That’s why we’re all here.”

Yorba Linda did make the financial cut in two accompanying Money magazine lists: the top 25 cities with the highest median household incomes and the top 25 cities with the priciest homes.

Yorba Linda came in at No. 10 on the median income list, with an average of $100,465 per household. (Greenwich, Conn. came in first with $112,493 per household.)

It also came in at No. 14 on the priciest homes list with a $750,000 average. (Newport Beach was No. 1 with a $1.3 million average.) Despite the high cost of homes in Yorba Linda, the city has no problems in attracting prospective home buyers, said Mike Cocos, general manager of ERA North Orange County Real Estate.

He added that lists, such as the ones devised by Money magazine, are a chance for the spotlighted cities to boast, but they ultimately have no bearing – at least in selling homes.

Home buyers “are already sold on Yorba Linda,” Cocos said. “It has a very friendly, homey environment. It’s the little things. You take a look at Placentia, Fullerton, you see those unwanted advertisements (on telephone poles). You don’t see that in Yorba Linda.”

Residents interviewed at Hurless Barton Park said they appreciated the city’s many recreation spaces and lauded the low crime rate. The last homicide in the city was more than two years ago.

“You can go out any time of the night and feel safe,” said Diana Ross, who was walking the family dog, Cocoa, on a leash adorned with colorful smiley faces.

Ross, an accountant, moved to Yorba Linda 18 years ago. But while she likes its “semicountry” character, she doubts she will retire in the city, citing the high cost of housing.

“I’m just wondering what people are doing to afford those homes,” Ross said of the new multimillion dollar developments.

Maybe, in that aspect, Yorba Linda isn’t so livable, she added.

But when asked what she thought about Yorba Linda getting the brush-off from Money magazine, Ross gingerly picked up her dog’s droppings and shrugged: “What’s Money magazine?”

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