Candidates like Matt Mahan are pushing aggressive plans to build more homes by reducing restrictions on building housing and speeding up construction.
California’s 2026 governor’s race has made one thing clear. Housing is not just a policy issue, it’s the issue to focus on.
Other candidates like Xavier Becerra emphasize housing affordability, making sure housing is actually accessible to working people.
However, neither approach works on its own.
Candidates aligned with development policies argue that California’s core problem is supply. This means the ratio of the number of people who want to live here to homes available isn’t proportional.
Candidates such as Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco often point to zoning laws and the California Environmental Quality Act as major barriers to building more housing and making construction cheaper.
Zoning laws are local rules that determine what can be built in certain areas, such as there are certain height limits on buildings in some areas.
The California Environmental Quality Act is a law requiring extensive studies to be done during the earliest planning stage that look into the effects of the building in its placed environment.
The “build more housing” side of the argument isn’t completely wrong. California doesn’t have enough homes.
The state would need to build hundreds of thousands of units each year to keep up with the housing crisis. More supply should, in theory, lower prices. But a lot of new housing ends up being expensive anyway, which doesn’t help the people who are struggling.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, millions of Americans spend more than 30% of their income on rent. While jobs may offer annual raises typically from 3% to 5%, rent also increases at the same rate annually, sometimes at a capped rate of 10%, according to the California Department of Justice.
Renters are stuck in a continuous cycle of spending more on rent.
When the focus is shifted to affordable housing, the argument has its own issues.
Affordable housing refers to homes that cost no more than 30% of a household’s income, making it more manageable for low income or middle-class families. Democratic candidates support government funding to help maintain housing at lower prices.
Many Californians, even with stable jobs, are priced out of their own neighborhoods. Affordable housing projects are often slow to complete and rely on inconsistent funding.
According to Enterprise Community, in 2026 there are nearly 40,000 housing units in California that are approved for construction but are stuck in financial limbo.
The affordability versus availability problem overlaps. It can never be one over the other due to both problems being a consistent factor in the lives of many who live in the state. A realistic solution would address both problems together.
You can promise affordability all day, but without funding to build housing, it won’t work.
California’s housing crisis shows that politicians should start treating housing as a connected system instead of as separate issues.
When Newsom was running for Governor in 2018, he had high ambitions to fix the housing crisis, stating that he wanted to build 3.5 million new units by 2025.
Later in 2022, Newsom refined his goal to that of building 2.5 million units by 2030, however according to a report by Better Cities, as of 2026 only 1.1 million of the units have been planned.
In 2025, Newsom signed legislation remodeling the California Environmental Quality Act in order to speed up the process of housing development. The changes aim to reduce the months or years that are added due to approval timelines.
Even with policies today by Newsom in California, we see how solving different aspects of the housing crisis separately, but not getting to the root of the problem isn’t very effective.
His policies make it easier for housing to be approved, but there is a gap between approval and completion, leading to the thousands of housing units that sit unfinished.
Approvals alone don’t guarantee affordable housing.
California needs to ensure that projects are actually completed. This could mean creating more state-backed funding guarantees, faster approval timelines and stricter accountability for developers who receive permits but fail to build.
One of the most effective ways to ensure affordable housing is through social housing. Social housing is a government-led housing model where the state government plays a direct role in building, owning or managing housing so it doesn’t fall victim to market rates.
That way it is kept affordable in the long term for families across different income levels is that a household would pay no more than 30% of their income on rent. With a mixed income across all tenants, model costs are stabilized.
Policies are often created to focus on one problem which can lead to isolating others.
Until housing is treated as a complete solution, gaps will be greeted in policies leaving California with a year’s long persistent problem.
The current debates over housing in the governor’s race reflect a larger political problem. “Build more” and “make it affordable” are both feasible ideas, but they hardly work alone.
California needs candidates who are willing to recognize that the housing crisis is both a shortage and affordability problem, and also who are equally willing to act accordingly to fix the problems.
California could increase housing productions by making the approval system more coordinated. Many delays happen because projects go through many reviews and hearings, creating inconsistent timelines.
According to Housing and Community Development, the process of getting housing approved involves, “lengthy processing time, unclear permitting procedures, layered reviews, multiple discretionary review requirements, and costly conditions of approval.”
Streamlining this system would not only help speed up construction but also make it easier to implement policies like inclusionary housing, where a portion of housing and new developments are set aside for lower-income residents.
By combining faster approvals with affordability requirements, California can ensure that new housing is both built efficiently and is accessible for those who need it.
