Everything else equal, we can all agree that living in a cheaper place is better than living in a more expensive place.
I’d much rather pay $500/mo in rent than $1,000. And I’d rather pay $2 for coffee than $5.
And while every neighborhood in Long Beach might be more expensive than living in rural California, there are certain neighborhoods that are definitely cheaper.
What exactly are those Long Beach neighborhoods where your dollar goes a little further — you can get that one bedroom instead of the studio?
Instead of relying on public opinion and speculation, we wanted to get the facts straight and determine which neighborhoods in Long Beach are the cheapest using Saturday Night Science.
121 cost of living index
127 cost of living index
153 cost of living index
143 cost of living index
169 cost of living index
148 cost of living index
175 cost of living index
Located in
Los Angeles County, California
Los Altos is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in northern Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census.
Data | Crime | Cost of living | Movers
170 cost of living index
175 cost of living index
168 cost of living index
The receipts
Compare the top ten
Pick a metric. The bars rescale. The red line is California’s statewide median.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: How we determined the cheapest Long Beach hoods in 2026
To rank the cheapest places to live in Long Beach, we had to determine what criteria define “cheap” and then apply Saturday Night Science.
Using Census and extrapolated BLS data, we arrived at the following set of criteria:
- Overall Cost Of Living
- Rent To Income Ratio
- Median Home Value To Income Ratio
We then ranked each neighborhood with scores from 1 to 27 in each category, where 1 was the cheapest.
Next, we averaged the rankings for each neighborhood to create a cheap neighborhood index.
And finally, we crowned the neighborhood with the lowest cheapest neighborhood index, the “Cheapest City Neighborhood In Long Beach.” We’re lookin’ at you, City Of Signal Hill.
We updated this article for 2026. Skip to the end to see the list of all the neighborhoods in the city, from cheapest to most expensive.
The full plate
Detailed list of the cheapest neighborhoods to live in Long Beach for 2026
Click any column to sort. Search by neighborhood name.
| Rank | Neighborhood | Cost Of Living Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | City Of Signal Hill | 121 |
| 2 | North West Long Beach | 127 |
| 3 | Wilmington | 153 |
| 4 | Downtown | 143 |
| 5 | Los Cerritos Area | 169 |
| 6 | Californial Heights | 148 |
| 7 | Los Altos | 175 |
| 8 | Lakewood Village | 170 |
| 9 | City College Area | 175 |
| 10 | Airport Area | 168 |
| 11 | West Side | 142 |
| 12 | Circle Area | 133 |
| 12 | Bixby Area | 159 |
| 12 | Wrigley | 156 |
| 15 | North Long Beach | 141 |
| 16 | Belmont Heights | 188 |
| 17 | State College Area | 179 |
| 18 | Naples-Marina Area | 194 |
| 19 | The Plaza | 179 |
| 20 | Poly High District | 143 |
| 21 | East Side | 152 |
| 22 | Park Estates | 203 |
| 22 | El Dorado Park | 187 |
| 24 | Alamitos Heights | 202 |
| 25 | Belmont Shore | 211 |
| 26 | Bixby Knolls | 186 |
| 27 | Dominguez | 226 |
Source: U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024. All 27 Long Beach neighborhoods.
Summary
Summary: Lowest cost places to live in Long Beach
If you’re measuring the neighborhoods in Long Beach where prices are low, and it’s cheap to live, this is an accurate list.
The most affordable neighborhoods in Long Beach are City Of Signal Hill, North West Long Beach, Wilmington, Downtown, Los Cerritos Area, Californial Heights, Los Altos, Lakewood Village, City College Area, and Airport Area.
As mentioned earlier, the neighborhoods in Long Beach aren’t all cheap. Dominguez takes the title of the most expensive neighborhood to live in Long Beach.
We ranked the neighborhoods from cheapest to most expensive in the chart below. Not sold on California? Take the two-minute Find Your Place quiz and see which state actually fits you.
Questions and answers
Cheapest Neighborhoods In Long Beach FAQs
What is the cheapest neighborhood in Long Beach?
City Of Signal Hill is the cheapest neighborhood in Long Beach for 2026. It posts the best combination of overall cost of living, rent against income, and home prices against income. North West Long Beach and Wilmington are next.
What are the cheapest neighborhoods in Long Beach?
The cheapest neighborhoods in Long Beach are City Of Signal Hill, North West Long Beach, Wilmington, Downtown, Los Cerritos Area, Californial Heights, Los Altos, Lakewood Village, City College Area, and Airport Area. We ranked all 27 neighborhoods in the city.
How do you decide which neighborhoods are cheapest?
Three measures: an overall cost of living index, rent-to-income, and home-value-to-income, all from Census tract data. Scoring costs against local incomes keeps one luxury tower from skewing the math.
Is a cheap neighborhood a bad neighborhood?
Not necessarily — this ranking measures what things cost relative to income, nothing else. Check our safest neighborhoods in Long Beach ranking before you sign a lease, because cheap and safe are separate questions.
What is the most expensive neighborhood in Long Beach?
Dominguez lands at the expensive end of the 27 neighborhoods we scored. If your budget disagrees with it, the rest of the list runs cheaper.
