This week, Santa Barbara had its 15 minutes of shame when S Money, an Australian-based money exchange service, ranked the city as the “most expensive city to be happy in the U.S.,” claiming that — according to a “price of happiness” index based on a 2018 Purdue University study on the relationship between happiness and income — it costs about $162,000 a year to be happy in Santa Barbara.
The rankings, which placed Santa Barbara in the dubious top spot above Honolulu, New York City, and San Francisco, went viral and sparked a wave of online criticism, but the report also highlighted a larger problem underlying Santa Barbara’s extremely high cost of living: If it costs that much to be happy in Santa Barbara, how much does it cost just to exist?
According to the recently updated income limits from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the Area Median Income (AMI) for Santa Barbara County jumped up from $101,000 per year to $107,300 for a four-person household.