Initially, the city of Santa Monica in Los Angeles County, California, is a postcard-perfect location. Its residents have easy access to the beachfront, and the weather is usually beautiful all year round. However, a recent real estate survey considered as a stressed-out suburb-a detail its government doesn't like to answer sitting down. It's ready to spend $1 million to assess just how happy its people are.
It all started with a survey conducted by and published in Movoto, a real estate blog. They compared more than 100 suburbs all around the country using reliable sources like FBI crime reports and U.S. Census. They then evaluated each of these places to different factors such as population density, divorce percentage, commute time, unemployment rate, average hours worked, cost of living, crime rate per 100,000 people, and income percentage for rent.
While Miami Beach Florida came out on top, Santa Monica took the second lead, citing its very high cost of living, homelessness, population density, and income spent on rent. Based on their study, almost 40% of the total income of its residents to go rent, where basic apartments can already cost over $1,000 each month.
To know the happiness level of more than 90,000 residents, a project it simply called "Wellbeing Project," the city applied for a grant under the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge. It obtained $1 million from the grant after beating more than 250 cities. There are also other cities that secured funding such as Houston.
The survey will begin this week. It will assess Santa Monica residents based on how well they know their neighbors, the state of their health, whether they are suffering from depression, and their views on the quality of education, among others.
While the idea of spending a million dollars for such study may be odd to some, the city government hopes that the answers will provide them the solutions they need to make sure their citizens enjoy living there, including modifying some of their public services.
Before this project, the study had also launched a 2011 initiative called Cradle to Career as a response to a teen suicide.
