Three cities in Marin rank as Bay Area’s least-diverse communities, research finds

A new study finds the Marin County cities of San Anselmo, Ross and Belvedere are the three least-diverse communities in the Bay Area, the Association of Bay Area Governments says.

Vallejo, Suisun City and Oakland rank as the most diverse cities or towns in the nine counties comprising the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the study.

San Francisco itself comes in 21st on the list of 109 communities, the study reports.

The report finds that 89.7 percent of the population of San Anselmo is white, with Ross at 89.5 percent white and Belvedere at 87.6 percent white. Vallejo, by contrast, is 38.7 percent white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We live in an increasingly diverse country, we live in a very diverse Bay Area, and, by contrast, we’re kind of out of it,” said Ford Greene, San Anselmo’s vice mayor, reported The Marin Independent Journal. “I think we lose out. We don’t have the benefit of as rich a social and cultural environment as if we were commensurately diverse.”

John Goodwin, an Association of Bay Area Governments spokesman, said the data should be viewed in context, according the publication. Vallejo has a population of 122,000-plus, while San Anselmo has just 12,500.

The study uses data from the American Community Survey, last conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2017, The Marin Independent Journal reports.

This story was originally published January 28, 2019 at 7:26 AM with the headline "Three cities in Marin rank as Bay Area’s least-diverse communities, research finds."