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12 Most Hated Towns on the California Coast — Paradise With a Dark Side

The Yankee Life

35,381 views

California's coast is 840 miles of stunning scenery... and some seriously dysfunctional towns. In this video, we count down the 12 most hated towns on the California coast — places that look like paradise on Instagram but hide billionaire beach wars, invisible poverty, extremist marches, and one of the most shocking mass shooting aftermaths in recent American history.

From a town that requires a government permit to wear high heels, to a community that's been ripping down its own highway signs for 50 years so tourists can't find it, to a quiet farming town where workers lived in shipping containers earning $9/hour surrounded by $1.7M homes — this one gets dark.

🕐 Towns:
#12 Solvang
#11 Carmel-by-the-Sea
#10 Laguna Beach
#9 La Jolla
#8 Bolinas
#7 Malibu
#6 Santa Barbara
#5 Newport Beach
#4 Sausalito
#3 Huntington Beach
#2 Venice Beach
#1 Half Moon Bay

👇 Key facts from this video:
• Malibu homeowners were fined $5.1 million in a SINGLE DAY for blocking public beaches
• In Santa Barbara, earning $100K/year qualifies as "low income" — and homeless residents die at an average age of 54
• Newport Beach was ranked the #1 most expensive place to live in America (avg home: $3.69M)
• Sausalito's harbormaster personally crushed 120+ boats belonging to the town's poorest residents
• Half Moon Bay farmworkers were earning $9/hr and living in metal sheds — in a town with a $1.7M median home price

🔔 Subscribe for more honest takes on the best (and worst) places to live in America. We cover dream retirement spots, budget-friendly cities, real estate tips, and the truth about towns everyone else sugarcoats.

#California #CaliforniaCoast #RealEstate #CostOfLiving #Malibu #LosAngeles #SanDiego #LaJolla #VeniceBeach #HuntingtonBeach #NewportBeach #SantaBarbara #HalfMoonBay #Sausalito #CarmelByTheSea #Bolinas #Solvang #LagunaBeach #BestPlacesToLive #WorstPlacesToLive #MovingToCalifornia #CaliforniaLiving #HousingCrisis #AmericanTowns #TravelTips

20 Comments

@davidandlucindawells6163 1 month ago

The AI accent of “Solvong” is hilarious 😂.

@JudyWoods-q9i 3 weeks ago

My first visit to Carmel by the sea was in 1965, it was beyond enchanting. Like a European dream planted by the ocean. Yes it has had an influx of many changes throuout all these years, but it is still special and enchanting with the mist softly coming in off the sea, it will always be special to me.

@rockypalmer6779 4 weeks ago

Half Moon Bay: it feels like a Sunday morning--funny, so true. a foggy sunday morning, usually

@daffodil9075 1 month ago

Solvang is not located on the ocean. It is situated a bit inland.

@jetsons101 1 month ago

Carmel-by-the-Sea officially adopted a standard street numbering system, ending over a century of relying solely on directional descriptions (like "3 houses south of 12th Avenue") and whimsical house names. The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea finalized the transition to improve emergency response times and public safety for its aging community. Your A.I. needs to be updated.

@lkhoward24 1 month ago

Having surfed or known every one of these locales throughout the past seventy years, this clip nailed them all. The natural beauty and perfect year-round climate can't be matched by too many other places on the planet. But the reactionary millionaire/billionaires who own property are "coastal oligarchs" whose cruelty seems to be expanding. I lived there when it was enjoyed by all. Those days are over.

@jp.9664 1 month ago

This AI crap is ruining YouTube so fast ! How hard is it to use a real voice that can actually pronounce simple words properly ? Solvong ??? Come on

@Alistairville 1 month ago (edited)

I used to live on Balboa Island, Newport Beach. It was a lovely place to live. However, traffic has always been appalling in Southern California.

@jamesgriffin958 1 month ago

Solvang is to the beach like Solvang is to Denmark. NOT close.

@kappamanstew 1 month ago

The Pumpkin Festival is a seriously good time.

@forwags 1 month ago

Laguna is lovely from November to January.

@Michaela1942 1 month ago

I was born in California and have lived here most of my 84 years. Sadly, the life that I had growing up is mostly gone. When I was young, all these towns were easily available to everyone - to visit and to live. In fact, artists, musicians and semi-working actors use to live in thrown up houses right on the beach in some places. It all changed in the late 1970s-early 1980s. Living, parking, driving - all became a lot of work. Much of the beautiful open beach and forest areas are gone to development. Where I live now is one of the last semi-affordable coastal areas in the state (and I'm not telling where it is). I guess we need tourism, BUT could they be a bit less noisy, messy and down right destructive? In my area (and I'm sure in others) we have to field whole crews of volunteers to clean up our beaches and forests after every holiday because a lot of tourists have decided that they can leave their old food, cans, used diapers, etc. for us to deal with. I can see why whole towns don't want tourists.

@dzymslizzy3641 1 month ago (edited)

As a CA native, I've seen enough of these kinds of people who "speak with forked tongue." It's truly disgusting.
However, as interesting as this was, the narration was evidently an AI bot, as the numerous mispronunciations (and inconsistencies thereof) of town names was jarring.
But the worst, IMO, was seeing Half Moon Bay allowing the elitist snob-appealing Ritz Carlton Hotel into town. Well, perched as it is on the ocean bluff...Mother Nature will have the last laugh: just look about 10 miles up the coast to Pacifica, and see what has happened to a couple of apartment buildings (well, you can't exactly see what happened to them, but you can see where they used to be) a number of years back, and what is currently happening to the Pacifica pier!

@CuriousMouseExploration 1 month ago

Everyone said go to Solvang and then it was boring after the first half of the day of seeing it. The hotel we stayed in was cute. Though I would not consider it a coastal town at all - it's too far away from the coast to be that. We consider towns coastal ones when they are literally on the coast, not inland from them. I wasn't thrilled about Carmel either - we only stayed there to go to the Monterey Aquarium and then moved onto better places. I haven't been to Laguna Beach for 15 years but I hear that social media culture made it bad and now there are wall to wall people and other bad stuff. Prior to that, I loved going there so I couldn't tell you what the present holds. When we frequented there, the trash was minimal, we got there early to find a parking space, and weekdays were generally better than weekends, less crowded. But all was good back b4 social media was a thing. Deciding which beach to go to in CA all depends upon what you want to do there and making sure people haven't killed the vibe they used to have.

@cabana777 2 weeks ago

Solvang, Carmel by the Sea, Laguna Beach, La Jolla, Bolinas, Malibu, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach, Sausalito, Huntington Beach, Venice Beach, Half Moon Bay.

@aaronvu6292 3 weeks ago

I do not live in Huntington Beach. But I surfed near the pier almost everyday, and went to the restaurants with my family almost every month. And the city is actually very safe and clean. And I'm not White.

@Dawn-e3h 1 month ago

I lived in San Diego and La Jolla Cove does not smell like that. They closed off the sea lions because people were letting their kids run unattended and were bitten. Get your facts straight.

@LarryMcNeely-me4px 7 days ago

I live in HB, which captures the true essence of my city.

@CuriousMouseExploration 1 month ago

Wow, I did not know that about Huntington Beach but I only go there for doctors appointments and recreational activities - body surfing and Bolsa Chica Wetlands hikes, though I haven't since 2022 since I've been on disability. I've never even seen the news on those controversies. The only recent problems have been the homeless people who sneak into businesses - our PT that works in the same medical group as my PCP caught one homeless dude spending the weekend in the building and kicked him out. My co-worker said they had to move to another part of HB because homeless people just pull their pants down and do #1 and #2 right out in public for all to see. There isn't a lot of land for new housing in HB either - but odd that they won't allow ADUs on people's own property.

@CuriousMouseExploration 1 month ago

I've never been a fan of Newport Beach and I really to agree with Newport Beach residents - there really is no place to put more housing and the housing would never be affordable for most anyhow. And getting around would be worse than a nightmare as it is already a nightmare now. It's totally impractical at best to force the affordable housing initiative in Newport Beach as it stands now. It's not that difficult for people to commute from Costa Mesa other close towns off the immediate coast.