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Census: Rate Of Empty Homes, Apartments Up In California

 

 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Californians saw the rate of empty homes and rental apartments in the state increase during the past decade, census data showed on Thursday in the latest news on the state's battered housing market.

   The Golden State's homeowner vacancy rate shot up from 1.4 percent to 2.1 percent, while the rental vacancy rate rose from 3.7 percent to 6.3 percent, according to data from the 2010 census.

   At the same time, the average household size in owner-occupied and rental units increased across the state.

   Since the economy tumbled, Californians have left the state in search of jobs or doubled up with family members to ride out the storm in the housing market, real estate experts said.

   "People are moving out of state or people are doubling up," said Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California.

   In addition, developers were too zealous in developing the inland parts of the state, he said.

   Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning at the University of Southern California, said the rental vacancy rate was low in 2000, which prompted the construction increase. But given the severity of the housing crisis in California, the state appears to have fared fairly well, he said.

   "There's a lot more stability than you would fear after all the turmoil we've gone through," he said.

   Over the past decade, the average household size rose from 2.87 to 2.90. The average family size also rose from 3.43 to 3.45 at a time when a smaller share of households had children, the data showed.

   It isn't immediately clear whether household size is increasing because families are moving in together to cut down on costs, or because of growth in the state's Mexican and Chinese communities, where children tend to live with their parents longer, or another explanation, experts said.

   The Mexican population grew 35 percent over the past decade to 11.4 million and accounted for 88 percent of the state's population growth. About 82 percent of Hispanics in California identified as Mexican in 2010, up from 77 percent in 2000, the data showed.

   While the Hispanic population in California grew 28 percent over the decade and was the key driver in the state's 10 percent population growth, some demographic experts cautioned on reading too much into the country-specific data for Latinos.

   Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said the apparent increase in the share of the Latino population that is Mexican stems from the way the 2000 census questionnaire was worded, which prompted more Hispanics to give general, not specific, accounts of their national origin.

   The Chinese population -- the largest Asian group in California -- rose 28 percent over the decade to 1.3 million. While smaller in size, other Asian communities grew more during the 10-year period. The Vietnamese, Filipino and Korean communities each grew slightly more than 30 percent, while the Indian population rose 68 percent to 528,000, the data showed.

   California's population also aged over the past decade. The median age of the state's 37.3 million residents was 35.2 last year, compared with 33.3 a decade prior.

   The shift could be most clearly seen in the nearly 60 percent swell in the population between the ages of 60 and 64.

   "It is all about the baby boom," Myers said.

   California's elderly population also rose over the decade. There were more than 600,000 residents age 85 and over in 2010, up 41 percent from ten years ago, the data showed.

   Even so, California remained younger than many other states. Last year, the median age was 38 in New York and 40 in Connecticut.

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