Santa Monica, Calif. is an oceanside suburb of Los Angeles, where the weather is usually warm and sunny and the shimmering sandy beaches and sparkling blue oceans stretch as far as the eye can see.

Other than being able to sunbathe almost year round, the city is probably best known for its amusement park on a pier where you can get a free exercise class from the Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno.

So what is there to be unhappy about? A lot, apparently.

Santa Monica ranked second on real estate blog Movoto’s July list of the ten most-stressed suburbs in America, eight of which are in the typically warm and sunny states of California and Florida.

The reasons for Santa Monica ranking so high include crime, homelessness, congestion, and cost of living. According to online real estate database Zillow, the median price for a home is $1,139,000, and rents are up nearly 20 per cent in the last year.

Now, Santa Monica has decided to do something to improve morale. The city applied for a Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge grant and beat out more than 300 other U.S. cities to secure the $1 million in funding.

According to the Bloomberg Philanthropies website, five cities were selected in a competition designed to "inspire cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life – and that ultimately can be shared and replicated by cities worldwide." Houston, which also won a grant, is using it to build a better trash-collection system.

The Santa Monica proposal is to create a "Wellbeing Project" to determine if people actually like living in the picture-postcard town.

This week, officials began asking residents questions about health, loneliness, and if they are involved in community activities or they know their neighbours.

"It's really about trying to get a much clearer understanding of who the people of Santa Monica are, what they are doing and what we can do on a local government level to help ensure people are thriving," said assistant director of community and cultural services Julie Rusk.

"At the core of this project is development of The Local Wellbeing Index, a new tool that will harness the power of data to create a genuine understanding of who the community is and how it's doing," reads the project's website.

"We believe that reflecting a community back to itself in this way will be the key to making it easier for city government, local agents of change and residents to work together toward positive change.

The city hopes to have the results from the study by this winter.

This video was part of Santa Monica's proposal for the grant.

With files from CTV’s Los Angeles Bureau Chief Tom Walters and The Associated Press