The issues have certainly gotten worse over the past 15 years. A lot of factors combined to get us to the current state, and some were set in motion long long a

The issues have certainly gotten worse over the past 15 years. A lot of factors combined to get us to the current state, and some were set in motion long long ago. Just some examples: Prop 13[1] passed in 1978: * requires a 2/3s majority in both chambers to raise tax rates * caps increases on property taxes to sub-inflation rates, incentivizes people to stay in their homes forever to keep their cheap rate * forces the state to rely more and more on income taxes, which are very unstable, so we see boom and bust years. CA will be coming up on a bust year now. * Shields home voters from any downside of their property value going up (higher tax rates you'd see in other states), so more incentive to NIMBY any new development in your neighborhood. * cities can get more tax revenue from commercial properties than residential so they are incentivized to build office buildings and not housing (see how well that's working out for San Francisco now) Late 70s downzoning: * Across California many cities downzoned, severely limiting the height, density and types of housing that could be built. * I read the environmental impact report for the late 70s downzone of San Francisco and it specifically called out how this would increase housing costs unless the city significantly increased development in the industrial parts of the city. That didn't really happen, so here we are. The proposition system in general * We vote on absolutely crazy things that I think should be left to legislators or bureaucrats. One thing that stood out to me as particularly weird was 2018 Prop 8[2] * This history of this system was to limit the power of the rail roads who'd bought many of the politicians, so it was a counter to a corrupt legislature. But then someone "innovated" and started paying people to collect signatures to get something on the ballot, and now it's used for all sorts of confusing and niche purposes. In recent years we've been seeing actual progress on some of the housing related policy. I think organizations like CA YIMBY[3] get a ton of credit for that. But I'm not sure what we'll do about Prop 13 or the proposition system in general. Prop 13 in general is kind of a 3rd rail in CA politics. But there has been some attempts to chip away at the edges that got close. 2020 Prop 15[4] came close to passing and would have addressed some of the issues in Prop 13 for commercial properties. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 [2] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_Limits_on_Dialysis_Clinics'_Revenue_and_Required_Refunds_Initiative_(2018) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_Limits_on_... [3] https://cayimby.org https://cayimby.org [4] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_15,_Tax_on_Commercial_and_Industrial_Properties_for_Education_and_Local_Government_Funding_Initiative_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_15,_Tax_on_Co...