California is an expensive place to call home.

It’s such a fundamental part of California life it almost feels silly to say. Along with good weather, sunny beaches, Hollywood, and the Golden Gate Bridge, the sky-high cost of housing has become part of the state’s national identity.

The high cost of housing touches virtually every aspect of life across the state. It shapes where we can and can’t live and with whom, where our kids can grow up and go to school, where we can work and how long our commutes are.

It is the root cause of some of the state’s most pressing crises, like homelessness and poverty, and there are few challenges Californians face that aren’t made worse by the relative scarcity of affordable places to call home.

High rents widen the gap between rich and poor. High home prices make wealth generation an ever-more exclusive pursuit. Expensive cities force more workers to commute, which means more driving, traffic, and greenhouse gas emissions.

“There’s no issue that impacts the state in more ways on more days than the issue of housing,” Gov. Gavin Newsom has said. “This is the original sin in the state of California.”

We know all of this is true. We live it every day. But how did things get so bad? And is there anything we can do to make California affordable again?

Click here to learn what you need to know about California’s exorbitant housing costs.

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