California Didn’t Become Unaffordable by Accident

By Michael Phillips | CABayNews

There is a comforting myth in California politics that what we’re experiencing now—sky-high housing costs, vanishing middle-class neighborhoods, young families leaving, retirees downsizing out of state—is the result of bad luck, global forces, or unavoidable market trends.

That myth lets everyone off the hook.

California didn’t become unaffordable by accident. It became unaffordable by design—though rarely by intent.

This matters, because when a problem is framed as inevitable, no one is responsible for fixing it. But when a problem is the cumulative result of choices, trade-offs, and incentives, accountability becomes unavoidable.

For decades, California layered policy on top of policy, each well-meaning in isolation, each politically defensible, and each carrying costs that were easy to ignore at first. Environmental protections. Local control. Community input. Growth management. Historical preservation. Tenant protections. Impact fees. Litigation pathways. Review boards. Appeals.

None of these ideas are radical. Many are admirable. Some are necessary.

But together, they formed a system that quietly made building housing slow, risky, expensive, and often impossible—especially the kind of housing normal working families can afford.

The result wasn’t immediate collapse. It was a slow squeeze.

Teachers who couldn’t live near the schools they served. Firefighters commuting hours each way. Nurses doubling up in apartments meant for singles. Adult children moving out of state not because they wanted to, but because they couldn’t see a future here.

This is the part that rarely gets said out loud: California doesn’t push people out with drama. It exhausts them.

People leave not in protest, but in resignation.

They leave after the third rent increase. After the down payment that never quite grows fast enough. After the school waitlist. After the permit delay. After realizing that “someday” has become “never.”

And when they do leave, the official explanation is often sanitized. “Migration patterns.” “Remote work shifts.” “Lifestyle changes.”

Rarely do leaders acknowledge the more uncomfortable truth: California trained, attracted, and nurtured talent—and then made it impossible for that talent to stay.

This isn’t just a housing story. It’s a governance story.

California has mastered the art of announcing future relief while deferring present pain. Plans are unveiled. Task forces convened. Frameworks released. Pilot programs launched. Timelines extended.

Meanwhile, families need solutions now.

They don’t need another white paper explaining why reform is complicated. They already know. They’re living it.

What’s striking is how often those most affected by unaffordability are the least represented in decision-making. Renters juggling multiple jobs don’t have time to attend weekday hearings. Young parents can’t sit through three-hour zoning meetings. Retirees on fixed incomes don’t hire lobbyists.

The system listens best to those with the most time, money, and legal leverage—and those groups tend to benefit from scarcity, not abundance.

None of this means California is doomed. The state still has extraordinary advantages: talent, innovation, climate, culture, and economic diversity that most places can only envy.

But advantages are not permanent. They require stewardship.

Real affordability will require more than slogans. It will require leaders willing to admit that the system as designed produces the outcomes we see. It will require trade-offs that upset entrenched interests. It will require saying “yes” more often—and “not here” far less.

Above all, it will require honesty.

Because the most dangerous lie in California today isn’t that help is coming. It’s that no one could have seen this coming at all.