But Salinas officials said the news is not surprising. The signs of overcrowding in parts of the city are glaring and the pressures for services is nearly bursting.

Mayor Anna Caballero said cities on the Monterey Peninsula should be doing more to ease the congestion in Salinas. Restaurant and tourism workers live in Salinas and commute to their jobs in Carmel Valley or Pebble Beach. But officials from those areas aren't doing their part to create affordable housing, she said.

"We're drowning over here," she said. "There are environmental reasons why we don't want to grow too much."

Caballero said city officials have made a decision to limit expansion into agricultural lands, but that means certain parts of the city, such as East Salinas, are becoming more dense.

Many cities in the state are experiencing the same dilemma.

California, already the most populous state, has the most crowded cities in the country as measured by the percentage of packed households.

California had the highest number of homes with 1.5 people or more per room, excluding bathrooms, hallways and storage areas. Of the 50 cities with the highest percentage of crowded homes, 39 were in California. The Associated Press reviewed data for cities with 25,000 or more occupied housing units.

Salinas ranked fourth in the national listing with 23 percent of the houses labeled as overcrowded.

But city senior planner Jenny Mahoney cautioned that the numbers may not provide the clearest picture because of the Census Bureau's definition of the term overcrowding.

"You could have two parents and two children in a two-bedroom apartment and that would be considered overcrowded," Mahoney said.

But she agreed that Salinas does have a terrible problem with overcrowding, especially in East Salinas where families are doubling and tripling up in a house to make ends meet. The most densely populated area in the city is in the vicinity of Towt Street and Garner Avenue.

The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in East Salinas is $725 a month, according to a draft of the city's general plan. And that's in an area with a high poverty level, said Mahoney. In North Salinas the median price for a two-bedroom is $835 and in South Salinas the rate is $825 a month.

The housing crunch in Salinas is citywide, said Alfred Diaz- Infante, president of the Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association.

"Families are being forced to live two or three per unit because of the lack of housing," he said.

Immigrants who come to the country with little money but are eager to climb the economic ladder often live together out of necessity. So many people living in single-family homes or apartments, however, can strain services such as trash collection, schools and public safety, experts and city officials say.

Ernesto Gonzalez, principal of Upper Sherwood Elementary School and a former city councilman, said his school's population has increased by a few hundred in the last three years and has reached about 1,400 students for the combined preschool and K-6 classrooms. For three years the school was split in two to better handle the onslaught of students.

Gonzalez said the school now has the land and the facilities to handle the children, but that the sixth grade still has about 30 students per classroom.

Gonzalez said farmworkers earning minimum wage and living in Salinas don't have much choice when faced with high rental costs.

"People do what they have to," he said.