United States / California / Santa Rosa-Petaluma Metro Area / Sonoma County / Santa Rosa / Zip Codes

Review of Santa Ro,

The good, the bad, the ugly
Star Rating - 11/12/2016
The good is the great climate, excellent resources like quality food choices (groceries and restaurants), and medical services and shopping opportunities, college town, proximity to Bay area.
The bad is high cost of living, very high rents with low availability, increasing crime and gang activity.
The ugly is the traffic and congestion. Santa Rosa is a hub through which an enormous amount of commuter and "local" traffic flows to and from all points south, north, east, and west. All the country feeder roads are now overloaded so there are no shortcuts left. To get anywhere you have to deal with bad traffic at most hours of day. The entire Bay area is over crowded with horrible traffic problems. Santa Rosa area was once a gem. Now its well on its way to another endless suburbs and citification.
David | Quartzsite, AZ
Reply to this Comment

3 Replies

I'm with Vickie. If you've come from any metropolitan area the traffic is easy to deal with. I live on one side of town and commute to the other side of town. 15 minutes each way at 8am and 5:30pm. 101 can get congested but you learn how to time it. Plus you can take Stony Point or Petaluma Hill if the traffic on 101 is really bad.
Adrian | San Rafael, CA | Report Abuse
Agree 1   Disagree 3
Having lived in Santa Rosa for over 65 years (breaks for military and schooling), I fully agree with D. Evans in his assessment. Traffic, growing crime, high percentage of rental population and extremely aggravating traffic problems have largely taken the fun out of living in the Santa Rosa area. Unless you've lived here for 15+ years or have a large combined household income or huge nest egg, it's going to be extremely difficult to find an enjoyable place in this area, especially coming from almost anywhere out of state.
Robert | Santa Rosa, CA | Report Abuse
Agree 82   Disagree 47
I movced here as a retiree as Santa Rosa is significantly less expensive than the Peninsula region of the by area. The traffic concerns aren't there for me as if you don't have to travel 101, there really isn't much traffic.
vickie | Santa Rosa, CA | Report Abuse
Agree 82   Disagree 60
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