California housing costs make the state 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 skyhigh 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? Here’s what you need to know about California’s housing costs.

The Cost of Buying a House in California

It’s really hard. Both compared to how difficult it is in other states, and how challenging it was for previous generations of Californians.

In the late 1960s, the value of the typical California home was more than four times the average household’s income. Today, it’s worth more than eleven times what the average household makes.

While it’s always been more expensive to be a homeowner here, the gap between California housing costs and the rest of the country has widened into a chasm. The median California home is priced nearly 2.5 times higher than the median national home, according to 2022 Census data.

Read the full article about California housing costs by Ben Christopher and Manuela Tobias at CalMatters.