If you had to pick one issue in California that best represents the affordability crisis, it would have to be the cost of housing. Housing everywhere is, of course, affected by the law of supply and demand, but in CA, this “law” is completely distorted by government regulations, red tape, and other priorities.
Take the following situation, for example: Santa Barbara County officials will allow 16,000 acres of farm and ranch lands to be converted to solar farms and battery energy systems while helping to sabotage the efforts of several cities to expand their boundaries to meet state mandates for housing. These mandates require virtually every county in the state to add tens of thousands of new homes in the aggregate, and that is just for starters.