Ventura County residents enjoy relatively clean beaches, are likely to own their homes despite sky-high prices and are rarely unemployed. They also spend a lot of time sitting in traffic.

Those are some of the highlights of the Ventura County Civic Alliance's new "State of the Region" report, which analyzed data on 12 aspects of the county's civic, economic and natural resources. The report is set to be released today at a breakfast at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Charles Maxey, dean of CLU's business school, headed up data gathering for the project. The report was written by Ventura County Star Senior Editor John Krist, although The Star is not affiliated with the report.

"There are lots of things that are good about living in Ventura County, and the report documents those," Maxey said, referring specifically to low crime, schools and the environment. "There are also a couple of big concerns, and those are housing prices and commuting, and they're related, which a lot of people don't understand."

Traffic is always at or near the top of the list when residents are asked to name the county's biggest problems. According to the report, 50 percent of the respondents in a 2006 poll said traffic congestion was "a big problem" in Ventura County, and 35 percent said it was "somewhat of a problem."

The region's pattern of economic development means that the situation isn't likely to get better soon, Maxey said. "If you look at the jobs we're creating, we've got people going out of the county to work every morning, and we've got people coming into the county to work every morning," he said. "You can't do that and not have congestion."

The State of the Region report is a follow-up to a similar report that the alliance issued in 2002. In both cases, the alliance — a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of civic leaders — tried to go beyond black-and-white data to address things that are a little more abstract, such as the county's level of civic engagement.

"It's not a technical expert's report," Maxey said. "This is what people who live in the county wanted to know."

One recurring theme is the difference between east and west. Eastern Ventura County has lower crime, better schools, lower population density, higher homeownership rates and more money invested in its libraries than the west county.

"It's driven by demographics," Maxey said. "I think they're going to grow farther apart before they grow closer together. The east county population is more affluent and it's growing more so, and the west county population is growing much faster."

The alliance will host a reception today at CLU to launch the report in the east county. On Wednesday, it will host a west county launch at CSU Channel Islands.