Does Anyone Still Live in Malibu?

Malibu’s full-time population dropped by 2,000 in the 2020 census, the first decline in the city’s history. Have the parttimers officially taken over?

✎ written by Holly

Bieler

 Photos by Kyler Duran & Julie Wuellner

The numbers were baffling. It was August of 2020, five months into the U.S. census, and Malibu officials had just received some very strange news. Only 36% of Malibu residents had participated in the census so far.

But that made no sense. In most cities in Los Angeles, particularly affluent ones, the average response rate rarely dropped below 60%. Indeed in the 2010 census, Malibu had recorded a 66% participation rate, 5 points higher than the national average. If these new 2020 numbers were correct, Malibu now had among the lowest participation rates in the state, if not the country.

This wasn’t the first time a statistical oddity had emerged from the city’s population data. The following summer, amidst the rollout of the first covid-19 vaccines, city officials were again left scratching their heads when county health reports seemed to suggest Malibu residents were inoculating at a rate 20 points lower than neighboring areas.

The mystery would be solved two weeks later, however, with the release of the 2020 census results. To Malibuites, the results were startling. Data now indicated 10,654 people lived in Malibu full-time, down from 12,645 in 2010. That was the population number the state and city officials had been using to calculate the city’s perplexing participation rates. Their numbers made no sense because over the past decade, more than 15% of Malibu’s population had quietly disappeared.

Even for residents who griped about Malibu’s climbing housing prices or city hall inefficiencies, it was a surprising number. 2,000 full time residents, gone. It was also unprecedented. 2020 marked the first time in Malibu’s modern history its population had decreased, capping a half century of steady growth. The city’s population hadn’t dipped below 11,000 since the 1980s.

Viewed a certain way, the data could appear heartening. Afterall, maintaining its small-town feel has been the predominant goal of Malibu politics and activism since it gained cityhood in 1991. A strong anti-growth community and a city council notoriously wary of developers meant the city’s population grew only 25% between 1980 and 2010, while neighboring communities saw their populations double and triple during the same period.

At the same time, Malibu has seen serious development in the last few years. Indeed the 2020 census showed more housing units were built in Malibu over the last 10 years than any decade before it. That was the weird thing about the 2020 census numbers, to many locals. How was it possible the City had shrunk by 2,000 people, when Malibu had more housing than ever before, and every home on the market seemed to sell within the week?

The Woolsey fire in 2018 accounts for some of that decrease. As of December 2022, only 63 of the 488 Malibu homes that were destroyed have been rebuilt. But what about the rest?

Experts say a likely culprit could be the rise in second homes and shortterm rentals. Census data only includes residents who live in an area full-time, so owners of vacation homes or shortterm rentals in Malibu aren’t counted towards the city’s population numbers (long-time renters are counted as fulltime residents).

Data on part-time ownership isn’t regularly collected, but in a 2013 housing report, the City of Malibu estimated that a quarter of the city’s housing stock was owned by part-time residents. By one survey’s account, that number is closer to 60% today.

For many Malibuites, these numbers aren’t surprising so much as ominous, proof that one of the community’s persistent issues has now morphed into an existential threat. As more families move out and more LLCs move in, will Malibu become a ghost town?

Some residents say it already has.

When Doug Bruce moved to Big Rock in 2015 he was an anomaly, one of the few new people in a neighborhood of Malibu old-timers who had lived in the area for 30 and 40 years.

“We all knew each other,” Bruce said.

Most days during his morning run, Bruce couldn’t get far without striking up a chat with a neighbor.

But it was an old neighborhood, and in the ensuing years, many of the original families would pass away. And in almost every case, Bruce says, their homes have sold to people who hardly, if ever, live in them. Slowly then quickly, the houses on his street have turned into Airbnbs, vacation homes and the construction sites of house flippers.

“The neighborhood’s completely changed in seven years,” he said.

Today, he’s less likely to run into a neighbor than a property manager, or a bleary-eyed teen looking for one of the nearby Airbnbs that regularly hosts parties.

“I walk down the street and I don’t recognize anyone,” he said. “I feel like I’m in New York City.”

Like many Malibu residents, Bruce is also concerned how the influx of new visitors could affect safety in his neighborhood. Since the Airbnbs popped up, he says, he’s caught people staking out houses more than once.

It’s a sentiment that’s widely felt in this city, but a solution remains elusive. The Malibu City Council has been working on regulating short term rentals for at least a decade, and in 2020 passed an ordinance requiring homeowners to remain on-site during short-term rental stays. But the Coastal Commission struck down the ordinance last summer, saying the provision was too strict, and would drive many homeowners out of the business.

“We’re turning Malibu into a hotel,” said Malibu City Councilmember Steve Uhring, who campaigned in 2020 on stricter regulations for short-term rentals. “That’s what it’s becoming from one end to the other. Just come on and rent a place and have a good time. I don’t know if that does a whole bunch to help build a solid community.”

And the repercussions go beyond community ties, Uhring pointed out. A shrinking population in an already tiny town could have a huge impact on the city’s economic future, from shuttering businesses to cuts in government funding. The numbers could even affect the city’s schools, which have seen rapid drops in enrollment over the past few years. From 2010 to 2019, the schoolage population in Malibu decreased 37%. The number of children younger than 5 — a measure of future enrollment— dropped by even more, to 49%.

They’re sobering numbers during a sobering time in the city of Malibu, grappling with how much of its past it can realistically take into its future.

“Where I grew up in upstate New York, everybody took care of each other,” Uhring said. “When anybody bought a new car, everyone on the street would come out to look at it. For me, it’s always been the same here.”

5 THE STORIES BEHIND