Ventura County’s population is aging and shrinking, according to latest State of the Region report

This article was originally published by Ojai Valley News. Read the full article at their website.

According to the ninth annual State of the Region report by the Ventura County Civic Alliance, the population of Ventura County continues to age and shrink.

This change is impacting various sectors, including education, the cost of living and the job market.
According to the report, the population of Ventura County peaked in 2016 and has declined by more than 20,000 people since.

Also on a downward trend is school enrollment, with 2024-25 being the lowest enrollment since 1994-95.
“Schools get paid per student,” said the report’s writer, Tony Biasotti, during the debut on Nov. 10. “As you have declining enrollment, you will have to downsize your school, lay off teachers, potentially close schools. It’s not great.”

And with an aging population, the workforce is also shrinking.

“Because of that, we tend to show low unemployment, but really not a lot of job growth,” Biasotti said.

Housing

Despite a declining population, the county is still experiencing a housing shortage, with the number of new homes added in the past decade falling far below what the county built in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“I think that has something to do with the other fact, about our population getting older,” Biasotti said. “The average household size is getting smaller. Somebody with a million-dollar-plus home, which is not unusual around here, you might have a retired household of one or two people instead of a family of four in that house.”

And home prices remain high.

In June, the median price of all single-family homes sold in the county was $975,000, the highest on record.

“If that goes on, and people choose not to live in Ventura County, that will reduce the demand to live here and will eventually reduce home prices and rents,” Biasotti estimated. “But we have to ask ourselves as a community if that’s what we want — if we want our affordability to get better because fewer people want to live here, or if we’d like to do it by increasing the supply of housing so more people can live here.”

Bucking the trend is Oxnard, where new housing developments are taking place. The 341-unit Vintage Lockwood affordable senior housing project is underway, as are plans to build another 234-unit project nearby along the 101 freeway.

There’s also the development of the 301-unit complex at 21300 W. Oxnard St.; the 150-unit complex off Cypress Road; the massive 990-unit Teal Club Road development; and the 58-unit Dolores Huerta Gardens complex, named after the noted American labor leader and civil rights activist, which opened in September.

“Every time there’s a major housing development that comes to a planning commission anywhere in California, everybody comes out and says, ‘Oh no, not this, not near us,’” said Oxnard City Manager Alex Nguyen. “This is one of those social problems that’s actually not caused by the government; it’s caused by all of us.”

Employment

Creating employment opportunities for local residents may help with housing affordability issues, Nguyen said.

“Our residents work very hard, but they earn very, very little,” he said. “Our goal right now for this generation is to find ways to make sure our current residents can actually participate in this economy.”
The average cost of living in the county for a single adult is $29.59 an hour, according to the report, and for two adults with one child, it’s $48.57 an hour.

Meanwhile, farming, fishing and forestry workers in the county are making an average of $19.78 an hour, food prep is at $20.22 an hour and health care support is at $20.57 an hour.

Amgen is trying to tackle the problem by creating more local biotech-related jobs, which fall under the life, physical and social science job category, where average wages are $48.08 an hour.

“There’s at least 40 biotech companies of various sizes along the Conejo Valley, up through Camarillo,” said Chad Pettit, executive director of global government affairs at Amgen, who also spoke about the recent groundbreaking for the $600 million Amgen Science and Innovation Center in Thousand Oaks, estimated to bring hundreds of new jobs to the county by its 2029 opening.

“Sunshine and sea breezes don’t pay the rent,” Pettit said. “We need a mix of housing that’s not just single-family homes to be able to attract those types of jobs that allow for a wage that matches the cost of living in the area.”

Crime

Ventura County’s appeal is also its low crime rates.

Ventura County experienced the lowest overall crime rate of California’s 28 large counties in 2024. And crime in the early 2020s in Ventura County was about one-third of what it was in the early 1990s.
“If residents don’t feel safe, if businesses feel that they’re not able to operate, the economy will not flourish,” said Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko, adding that a strong economy means hiring additional staff, installing more traffic cameras and other financial contributions that create a safer community.

But housing also plays a role.

“Housing, supportive housing, interim housing, emergency shelters, are all, in my opinion, crime prevention measures,” Nasarenko said. “When people are housed, when they have an opportunity to be indoors, not on public streets in front of businesses, in front of parks, the likelihood of crime just falls.”
In 2025, the number of homeless people in Ventura County (1,990 people) was the lowest since 2020.
But because the count is done once a year in January, there’s likely “a great many more people than this that are probably homeless throughout the year,” Biasotti said.

Other stats from the report

More than nine out of 10 eligible Ventura County residents are registered to vote.

Ojai is the tourism capital of Ventura County, making $9.9 million in transient occupancy taxes.

Naval Base Ventura County remains the largest employer in the county.

High school graduation rates rose to 89.3%.

Thirty percent or more of students in most schools failed to meet the state standard in English, and 40% tested below the standard in math.

Enrollment continues to shrink at California Lutheran University and CSU Channel Islands, forcing both schools to cut budgets and lay off employees.

The average rent of all apartments in Ventura County in July was $2,711 per month.

Every part of the county had its lowest rainfall total since 2020-21. In 2025, Ventura County went back into drought status for the first time since 2022.

Teen pregnancy in Ventura County plummeted to an all-time low.

Across the county, 149 residents died from opioid overdoses, the lowest number since 2020.

Ventura County has the third-highest leukemia and prostate cancer rates of the state’s 28 largest counties.

Heart disease and cancer remain the most common causes of death.

In Ojai, violent crime rates more than doubled, jumping from nine incidents in 2023 to 20 in 2024.

“Behind those numbers are real people, real lives, our neighbors,” said Vanessa Bechtel, president and CEO of the Ventura County Community Foundation, regarding the latest statistics. “Systems change when people change, and people change when they’re cherished.”

To view the full 120-page report, visit: https://tinyurl.com/yhwthdyw