Need Help: From Toronto to Anaheim? (Santa Ana, Huntington Beach: home, public school, restaurants)

[Toronto Star]

Hi,

I recently had a job offer(120K) at Anaheim, OC, I am considing move to OC from Toronto. My wife and I love warm weather and also believe SoCal have more career opportunities than that in Toronto. We have a 16 month old daughter, so school should not be a major concern for the monment.

I read a lot about good or bad about L.A. and O.C., I need you help to advice any nice community/town adjacent to Anaheim(nice means affordable housing, safe community and beautiful view)? We love lakes and Asian foods, but aoviding traffic will be number one consideration.Thanks.

Frank

[DontH8Me]

Sorry I don't have too much info, but I just wanted to say what a hoot I got when I read 1. affordable housing, 2. safe community, and 3. beautiful view all used in the same sentence on an LA thread.

What little I do know of Anaheim is that the OC considers it so far away from them that they don't really consider the area "part of OC". Anaheim is like the red-headed step child of the OC. I've hear that Anaheim Hills is better than the city proper but I've only ever been in Anaheim itself. It's not all that bad but I have heard the schools are among SoCal's worst.

If I had to work in Anaheim and wanted not much of a commute and all the rest of what you seek, maybe Huntington Beach.

Re: lakes and Asian food - anywhere you go you will find Asian food, there are literally thousands of Asian restaurants in SoCal. Lakes - not so much. But there are nice lakes a few hours' drive away from the city, I've been to just about all of them so let me know if you want more details ;-)

[Amavel]

As an OC native, I may able to share some advice about moving to the Orange County area.

Though you stated that your child is still very young, I would recommend beginning your search looking up public school API index scores. I believes its on a 200-1000 index, with 1000 being the superior ranking schools. Though its not as relevant now, it may prove useful in the future if it becomes inconvenient to relocate. Additionally, schools that perform well are often found in respectable communities, though sometimes pricey. With that said...

Anaheim definitely has its good parts and bad parts but its a very spread out city. Anaheim Hills and Villa Park are probably the nearest upscale communites. While neighboring cities Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster have overall reputations of lower home prices and poor school performance. As the previous poster recommended Huntington Beach, it has a good reputation (as well as the other beach cities and most of South County).

Most of all, since you have a good idea of the location of your future workplace, I would highly suggest moving within a reasonable commuting time/distance. Don't be fooled, Orange County has similar traffic patterns as LA and has some horrific freeway interchanges. A drive from Disneyland to the beach would normally take 30 minutes.. but during rush hour could take up to 2 hours passing through the Orange Crush (5, 22, 57 interchange).

So, with all that said, good luck and don't overlook Wikipedia.. its pretty useful for this type of research