Yeah, fixed at ~164 thousand square miles (~400,000 km^2). Are you for real? Los Angeles and New York City proper (not the metropolitan areas) are interestingly nearly identical in official area at around 468 square miles each. But LA has a density of around 8000/mi^2 while NYC is well over 27000/mi^2. If LA merely matched NYC that'd cover another 10 million or so population by itself. The size of freaking California is not remotely a limiting factor, the limiting factor is not enough high density buildings.
Otherwise, there is a natural equilibrium. Many people want to live here, housing scarcity goes up. Prices go up, less people want to live here (this is already happening). What you're left with is the price reflecting precisely the degree to which people are willing to pay to live here.
And who decides these zoning laws? Typically cities and counties. Unfortunately Prop 13 has incentivized building out retail properties (sales tax revenue) over all else. So let's start by doing away with Prop. 13 protections for everything but primary residences. Then, change the statewide zoning laws to encourage/require available housing before non-residential property can be built. Want 2,500 office units? Fine, but if you don't have 2,500 residences available those need to be built first. Or maybe have the state keep 75% of the property tax revenue of new developments until the housing requirements are met. That money can then be used to subsidize affordable housing.
To be clear, the population is growing faster than the housing stock.
> Rent control or low income housing are essential tools to make ordinary Americans’ lives better.
How exactly does this address the problem that there are more people than housing? It addresses it for some (the select few low-income residents who were lucky enough to get a below-market rate unit and people already renting), but squeezes everyone else into even fewer units. It doesn't even help "ordinary" people; it helps two specific groups.
Bingo. And why not?
Because California property owners don't want it to. The artificial scarcity drives up property values. Take a look at Brisbane, they fought residential development tooth and nail claiming that people should just work in Brisbane but live in San Francisco.
The Bay Area's population has grown by 8.5% in the last 10 years. [0] Please, that's not "Manhattan". That's one person on your block converting their garage into a rentable unit.
Those "existing homeowners" are really messing things up for everyone because they don't want Bob to turn his garage into a rental? Somehow I think there's more to it than that.
[0]: https://www.kqed.org/news/11741275/map-the-bay-area-leads-ca...
600k people is about as much as Seattle proper. Which happens to span 83.94 sq mi. In less than 10 years. That's _a lot_ of construction.
Of course I wouldn't mind becoming more like Manhattan in some ways. Compared to how pedestrian hostile the Bay Area is, Manhattan is heaven.
