I moved to Cerritos area and bought a SFR with decent sized yard. But the cost of watering the lawn has been expensive. I ripped up about 1/4th of the backyard lawn and replaced it with landscape cover + rubber mulch + elevated plating beds + yard furniture. This year has been hot and the zucchini grew well, but all my cucumber plants died.
I also put in a 25-30 ft 3-wire trelis for my passion fruit, which grew really well and produced a bumper crop this year. The 2 guava trees also did very well, but the citrus trees did not produce well this year. In retrospec I should've put in a taller 5-wire trelis, ah well.
One benefit of having a yard is that you could dig your own fallout shelter, though it's probably not necessary under current environment. As far as I'm concerned the Russians don't really need to wave their nukes, Europe can either bend over or freeze this winter without Russian gas. But a backyard is still nice to have for burying your supply cache.