Scarcity, Not Landlords, is Driving California’s Rent Crisis

California’s rent debate is often reduced to a simple story: tenants are hurting, and landlords are to blame. That narrative may be easy to repeat, but it overlooks some of the real causes of high rents.

I have spent almost half my life as a renter. I have family members, from aunts to cousins, who have only ever rented. There is real anxiety about rent increases and the fear of being priced out. Californians just rejected Proposition 33, the latest attempt to expand rent control statewide, because many voters recognize a hard truth: rent caps feel like action, but they do not solve the disease. 

AB 1157, and similar efforts to make California’s statewide rent cap stricter and permanent, would double down on the same mistake. The bill proposal would tighten the allowable annual increase, expand coverage to more housing types, including many single-family rentals, and remove the existing sunset date. 

This past week, AB 1157 failed to advance out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. That outcome was correct, even if the underlying frustration driving the bill is legitimate. 

If the goal is lower rents, the answer is not ideological control. It is supply. It starts and ends there. 

When supply expands, price pressure eases. When supply is constrained, every other policy becomes a fight over scarcity.

Look at gasoline. The national average is about $2.81, while California remains around $4.23. The same country, different policy choices, different outcomes. Housing works the same way. California can choose abundance or permanent conflict.

Here is the challenge for rent control activists: stop treating builders, contractors, lenders, apartment owners, and housing associations as the enemy. They are the only path to scale. If you want affordability, you need a pro-building coalition that can actually deliver units.

That means cutting permit timelines and fees, standardizing approvals, reforming regulatory barriers that add cost and delay, and stopping new taxes and mandates that make land acquisition and development harder. 

It also means labor flexibility, so projects can staff up with both union and non-union crews where appropriate. 

Remember that delays and construction costs are not neutral. They are rent increases.

This will not be quick. But every year spent chasing caps instead of capacity guarantees worse rents, fewer choices, and more displacement. 

Renters deserve real relief, but that relief will not come from policies that slow construction or reduce housing supply. The only path to lower rents is to build more homes and expand supply, so families have more choices and less market pressure.