But housing prices would be lower than they are now if housing construction had kept closer pace to demand.
California is not uniquely popular. Lots of states are growing. California has actually been growing more slowly than the rest of the country for the last two decades. Yet it has housing affordability problems that vastly exceed the very fastest growing states, like Texas or North Carolina. A major factor in that affordability problem is that California has been very slow in building new residential units. If you don’t build enough supply to meet (or come close to meeting) your demand, your prices will rise faster.