10 Best Cities to Raise a Family in Southern California

  • Santee
  • Walnut
  • Cypress
  • Rancho Palos Verdes
  • Rancho Santa Margarita
  • Moorpark
  • Lake Forest
  • South Pasadena
  • Manhattan Beach
  • Poway

Southern California has the winning combo of superior schools, diversity, and safe neighborhoods for young families. Read on to find the 10 best cities to raise a family in Southern California

The largest cities didn’t crack the top 10, making way for smaller cities where you can actually get to know your neighbors, find a relatively decent commute and affordable housing (the standards are way different here than in other parts of the country). Pack up your family’s things and start searching for your forever home, because you’re headed to SoCal.

There are many cities in Southern California but for the purposes of our study, we’ve only included those with a population of 25,000 or more. To find the top 10 cities for our rankings, we looked at these five factors:

  1. Education
  2. Commute Time
  3. Household Type
  4. Residency
  5. Housing Costs

Southern California is home to some of the best schools in the state as well as several renowned universities, including USC and UCLA. If you’re looking for an area where there’s a strong emphasis on education, our rankings reflect the cities with the highest percentage of adults who earned a high school diploma or better. Generally, the more educated a city’s residents are, the more it adds to the overall quality of life.

Los Angeles is notorious for traffic congestion. We know that you value your time so we chose only those cities with the best average commute for our list.

All kinds of people come to Southern California but families tend to gravitate toward certain cities. Moving is always tough but settling down in an area where there are lots of other families can make the transition easier for everyone. We considered the percentage of family households with children under 18 to pinpoint those areas with the largest kid population. Countless people move in and out of California each year, especially around bigger cities like Los Angeles and San Diego. Getting to know the people in your neighborhood can be difficult if people are constantly moving in and out. Our study takes into account the percentage of residents still living in the same home they were a year ago to find those areas with the lowest turnover rate.

Source: https://www.creditdonkey.com/family-southern-california.html