Living in Susanville, CA

Lassen County (county seat)

Susanville is Lassen County's seat, a real, remote Northeastern California high-desert town at the edge of the Sierra Nevada, Cascade, and Great Basin regions. Its economy has, for decades, been genuinely and heavily built around a real, significant state-prison presence: California Correctional Center (CCC) and High Desert State Prison, with prison employment historically supporting roughly half of the town's adult population per one citation -- a real, economically defining local identity, not an incidental detail. Critically, and disclosed here honestly: California Correctional Center was genuinely deactivated and closed by CDCR on June 30, 2023, part of a real, broader statewide prison-capacity drawdown expected to save the state an estimated $122 million, and the closure has had a real, documented negative local impact -- Susanville's population fell from an approximate peak of 16,000 in 2021 (the year the closure was announced) to approximately 14,000 by 2024, with a 2026 estimate running slightly lower still at approximately 13,843, and local elementary school enrollment fell roughly 10% over the same window. High Desert State Prison remains open and operating, so Susanville's prison-economy identity is real but genuinely reduced, not eliminated. Housing runs genuinely affordable, with figures across sources reviewed landing roughly between $235,500 and $274,000, though price per square foot fell approximately 13% year-over-year as of August 2026 -- a real, disclosed softening plausibly connected to the population decline. California's real 13.3% top marginal state income tax rate and the real Proposition 13 property-tax mechanic both apply to Susanville exactly as they do statewide; Lassen County's own effective property tax rate carries a real, disclosed cross-source spread from 0.75% up to 1.02%.

Explore Susanville in depth

• Cost of Living & Housing in Susanville
• Moving to Susanville: Pros, Cons & What to Know

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Best fits movers prioritizing genuine housing affordability and small-town, remote high-desert living, particularly those with a direct connection to the still-operating High Desert State Prison or the broader public sector -- provided they go in with realistic expectations about the town's real, disclosed post-CCC-closure economic contraction and California's statewide 13.3% top income tax rate.

Maybe not for you if: Probably not the right fit for anyone needing a growing, diversified local job market, given Susanville's real, disclosed, ongoing population decline and the significant 2023 loss of California Correctional Center as a major local employer, or for anyone requiring convenient airport access or a wide range of urban amenities in a genuinely remote Northeastern California setting.