LAKE COUNTY – A new state report shows that California's population grew in 2009, while locally there was a slight loss in population for the county and its two cities.

The state Department of Finance population report showed that California gained 393,000 new residents last year, pushing the Golden State's population to 38,648,000 as of Jan. 1.

The report said that the biggest numeric increases in population in 2009 occurred in some of the state's largest cities – Los Angeles (44,037), San Diego (17,041), San Jose (16,237) and San Francisco (9,485).

Of the 480 California cities, 445 had gains in population, five experienced no change and 30 lost population, the report showed.

In Lake County, the estimated population this past Jan. 1 was 64,053, down by 22 people from the previous year, according to the state.

The city of Lakeport had a 0.1 percent drop in population, dropping from 5,151 in 2008 to 5,140 in 2009.

The report showed a slightly larger population drop – 0.2 percent – for the city of Clearlake in the same period, with the Jan. 1 population estimate at 14,385, down from the previous year's estimate of 14,401.

The remainder of the county had a population of 44,528, down by five people from the 2008 estimate, which resulted in no statistical variation, the report showed.

The state's biggest city remained Los Angeles, more than twice the size of the next largest city, San Diego.

Los Angeles' population was estimated to be approximately 4,094,764 as of Jan. 1, growing by more than 44,000 persons during the year. That growth rate is more than twice that of San Diego, which now has a population of 1,376,173, adding more than 17,000 persons during the year, the state reported.

California's fastest-growing city in 2009 was Colfax, located in Placer County; Colfax's population increased by 5.7 percent. The Department of Finance reported that the other fastest growing cities in the top five were Beaumont in Riverside County (5.5 percent), Sand City in Monterey County (5.4 percent), Coachella in Riverside County (3.8 percent), and Oakley in Contra Costa County (3.3 percent).

In 2009, California added 62,385 housing units, numbers down significantly from the peak for residential construction in 2005, when the state added 197,477 new units. The Department of Finance report said that in 2006, 172,458 units were added; in 2007, there were 131,823 additional units; and in

2008, only 86,492 were added. The estimates are based on information the agency collects directly from local governments.

In addition, the state said that the decline in single-family detached homes continued in the current year as well, decreasing by 40 percent from last year. While in 2008 the state added 39,596 single-family

detached homes, only 23,637 were built in 2009.

California's prison population also declined for the third year in a row, down by 3,189 to 181,964 inmates statewide, the Department of Finance said. That decline was due to inmate relocation among facilities and to other states.

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