California built less new housing per capita in 2023 than in any year since the Great Depression, despite having the largest state-level housing-finance apparatus of any subnational entity in the OECD, despite a self-declared housing emergency, and despite the state legislature passing eighteen separate “streamlining” bills between 2017 and 2023.
This is the worked example I keep returning to. Not because California is uniquely bad — most coastal jurisdictions in the Anglosphere are within an order of magnitude — but because California’s machinery is the best documented.
The pipeline
Here is what it takes to get a multifamily building approved in metropolitan California, summarised:
- CEQA initial study and EIR (12-36 months)
- Coastal Commission review, if within five miles of the coast (6-18 months)
- Local planning department discretionary review (variable)
- Design review board (variable)
- Historic preservation review, if any structure on the parcel predates 1970 (variable)
- Building permit (6-12 months)
- Conditional Use Permit appeal window (90+ days)
- Litigation (1-7 years)
“The median multifamily project in California now takes 4.5 years from application to occupancy permit. In 2003 the figure was 2.1.”
What the data shows
The bills passed since 2017 did not move the median. They added exemption pathways for narrow categories — affordable housing built on transit-served parcels by specific kinds of nonprofit sponsor — and left the underlying review architecture untouched.
Each individual streamlining bill polled well and passed with bipartisan support. The aggregate effect on production was zero.
This is what “the friction is the product” looks like at the unit level.