California Governor Candidates Spar Over Housing

Now that ballots have been delivered to homes across the state, casting a vote in the primary election for the next California governor is only a few pen strokes away.

No issue is more crucial to likely primary voters than the cost of living, according to April polling, and no cost more important than housing. As the candidates’ final cram for airtime commenced, the top five Democrats vying to run the most populous state in the U.S. gathered onto a dimly lit stage in Oakland on Friday and received a proper grilling on housing by New York Times columnist and podcast host Ezra Klein.

Over the last decade, California legislators have executed a full-scale takeover of housing policy. Today, the state governs how much housing cities and counties must permit, and has stripped away the discretion that once allowed local lawmakers to reject compliant housing projects. Still, the state has fallen well short of its housing production goals. Klein zeroed in on this tension and worked to understand how each candidate would use the power of the state government to translate housing policy into housing production.

The five gubernatorial hopefuls focused on issues such as labor and the challenges of prevailing wage requirements, the lack of innovation in how homes are built, and the housing financing quagmire that local fees tend to exacerbate.

The two Republican candidates in the race — former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — did not accept an invitation to attend, Klein said. However, Hilton has led for months as the most popular candidate among likely voters, with Bianco remaining in the top three or five, depending on the poll. The top two candidates, regardless of party, to come out of the June 2 primary will advance to a head-to-head face-off in November’s general election.

Tom Steyer pushes back on “unfunded mandates”

Just days prior to the debate, Steyer received the coveted endorsement of YIMBY Action. The organizing arm of the pro-housing-development movement known as YIMBYism, or Yes (to housing development) In My Backyard, said they backed Steyer largely because of his promise to foster the development of 1 million new homes over the next four years. Newsom made a similarly ambitious pitch in 2018 for 3.5 million new homes over eight years. Despite successful pro-housing policies that have required local governments to build more housing while simultaneously taking away their ability to deny projects, the state produced fewer than 900,000 new units over that time.

Steyer, who has never served in elected office, joined the strain of pro-housing candidates who push for modular construction. Manufacturing a home’s components off-site and assembling them on-site would cut at least 20 percent off the cost of housing development, he said. The government should work to “redo the building codes” so as to facilitate modular construction in cities and counties across the state, Steyer said.

The glacial progress on housing construction can’t be fully blamed on cities and counties, Steyer said. When the state decided to jack up the number of housing units each local government must permit, it was an “unfunded liability,” Steyer said. This led to cities and counties charging higher impact fees on new development to pay for infrastructure and other related costs, a response that further complicated the financial puzzle of housing construction.

Steyer promised to call a special election as governor to repeal part of California’s Prop 13, a 1978 law that capped property taxes and limited reassessments to when the property changes ownership. Steyer wants to retain Prop 13 for residential property, but repeal its benefits for commercial property, which he has called a “corporate tax loophole” that costs the state $20 billion per year. He vowed to call a special election on his first day aimed at closing the loophole, and use the money to help cities and counties finance infrastructure and other aspects of residential development.

Xavier Beccera, litigator-in-chief

As state attorney general in 2020, Becerra intervened in a lawsuit filed by a proto-YIMBY organization against the City of San Mateo. At issue was whether the state could enforce its housing mandates on cities that have their own charter. Becerra defended the state’s power to do so under the 1982 Housing Accountability Act. The court eventually upheld the state’s authority, setting the foundation for the Department of Housing and Community Development to enforce that state’s housing supply mandates through programs like builder’s remedy — which allows approvals without concern for local zoning rules for certain housing projects that include affordable units —and go after noncompliant cities and counties through lawsuits.

Yet the threat of penalties hasn’t always worked. Cities such as Huntington Beach have been sued by the state for not meeting their housing requirements. Yet, as the long process of lawsuits and appeals has dragged on for years, Huntington Beach has in the meantime avoided building new housing.

“We have to live by rules,” Becerra told Klein. “If you’re a city, and you see the housing crisis, and you’re not following rules, then get ready because I’m going to enforce; I’m going to use the powers of the state.”

Becerra, who served as secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden, also supported prevailing wage requirements for “major” construction projects, saying the carpenters who build the homes need to be able to afford to live in them. However, he supported the idea of not requiring wage rules for construction projects under eight stories.

Katie Porter pushes back on labor

The former congresswoman from Orange County said the speed of construction is a housing development’s most obvious cost driver. In California, it takes an average of 49 months to build a housing project, versus 37 months in Colorado and 27 months in Texas, according to a 2025 study by nonprofit research firm RAND.

“If we could be 22 months faster … then the estimates are that we can take 10 or even 20 percent off the price [for] market-rate [housing],” Porter said. Streamlining, she said, could include a standardized, statewide building permit instead of a patchwork quilt of different permitting styles and requirements. She also supported capping the ability of cities and counties to add impact fees on a project.

Yet, Porter stood out most with her position on labor.

“I do not think today, or now, is the time for prevailing wage [requirements] on residential [projects] … it’s going to drive up the cost,” Porter said. “I stood up to labor. I’m not scared of anybody, because I have three teenagers that I do not want living on my couch.”

Nearly 40 percent of adults aged 18 to 34 in California still live with their parents, according to recent analysis of Census data by Finance Buzz. At 39.1 percent, California ranks third in the U.S., behind New Jersey and Connecticut.

Matt Mahan wants a top-down approach on fees

The mayor of San Jose has consolidated support from Silicon Valley and earned major endorsements from the real estate industry. Yet, the polls show Mahan has struggled to translate his success as mayor of the state’s third most populous city into support among likely voters.

On Friday, Mahan pushed for an evermore aggressive, top-down approach to clearing the path for housing development.

“The governor cannot bring a lawyer’s mindset to [the housing] problem,” Mahan said. When a city fails to meet permitting deadlines or try to use fees and the building code to slow a project, “the state should override and create by-right mechanisms for developers to move ahead projects whether or not the city likes them.”

Mahan also zeroed in on impact fees, which local governments front-load on new construction to cover new residents’ effect on public infrastructure such as parks, sewage systems and roads. In some cities, parks impact fees reach toward $100,000 per new unit of housing, stifling a project’s ability to pencil out.

The fees’ “bogus” feasibility studies, Mahan said, employ a “cottage industry of consultants.”

“No one is getting $65,000 worth of value out of their neighborhood park,” Mahan said. “We should cap fees at a much lower level. Top-down policy. … We don’t control interest rates, we don’t control the cost of timber, but timelines at the local level and all these fees are completely levers within our control.”

Antonio Villaraigosa struggles to articulate a housing policy

The former mayor of Los Angeles, who also served as speaker of the California Assembly, struggled to distinguish himself among the candidates on Friday.

He leaned heavily on his robust political resume and attacked Democrats’ ineffectiveness, but failed to articulate any new ideas on how to address the state’s housing crisis. Early in the evening, Villaraigosa said he rejected Prop 13 — a 1970s era policy that caps property tax increases across the state — but wanted to “hold the line on property taxes.” He later said he wanted to “fix” Prop 13 but didn’t clarify how he could accomplish it while holding the line on property taxes.

Villaraigosa also said he opposed the transfer tax policy of Measure ULA. He pointed to a RAND study that showed construction has fallen more than 80 percent since the city implemented ULA.

The one-time mayor and state legislator said he wanted to create a housing production accountability board to make sure cities and counties are not only permitting housing, but building it as well.