Proponents of home ownership argue that it ties people more closely to a community and makes people more invested in taking care of a neighborhood.
There are many factors that determine how much of a community is made up of homeowners vs. renters - age of the community, income, whether a town is mostly single-family housing or multi-family housing.
The Patch-created map above shows the percentage of the town's population that owns a home, based on figures from the 2010 census. A full window view of the map is available here.
The Montrose-La Crescenta area has a solid homeownership rate of 68.6 percent. That's still a contrast from La Cañada Flintridge's 89.1 percent. In other places, Pasadena checks in with a 48.1 percent rate of home ownership, Altadena has 71.7 percent, South Pasadena has 51.1 percent, and San Marino has 90.6. Heading east, Monrovia has 50.7 percent and Arcadia has a 66.7 percent rate.
With the above map on left you can compare the different home ownership rates across L.A. County - the redder cities have the lowest rate, the greener the highest and the shades of orange and yellow are in between.
