Reform Without Production: California’s Housing Lesson

California has passed the country’s most aggressive housing reform, but production hasn’t followed. Financing is the bottleneck, compounded by building code, litigation, and affordable housing requirements that load every project with competing mandates — the “everything bagel” problem where the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. A look at what’s stalling delivery and what gubernatorial candidates are proposing to fix it: state-funded modular incentives, labor reform, single-stair legislation, property tax rework, consolidated funding, carrot-and-stick municipal compliance, state-enforced builders remedy. A useful model to think about from a New England vantage.