For too long, California simply hasn’t built enough homes, and working families have paid the price. Soaring rents. Overcrowding. Displacement. The California Dream of owning a home, building wealth, staying in the community you love, isn’t just slipping away. For too many, it’s already gone.

I know this story from the inside. My father found work as a union construction worker, and built with his own hands the house I grew up in. That home gave my family a place in this country and gave my father a place in its economy. He taught me the dignity of hard work on my first construction jobs, alongside the values he carried across the border and poured into everything he built. That story, of someone who arrived with little and built something lasting, is what California used to promise. It is too rare today.

Consider what we’ve allowed to happen. Californians pay some of the highest rents in the nation, and millions of them are spending so much of every paycheck on housing that there is almost nothing left for groceries, healthcare, or a child’s future. For the families living closest to the edge, housing costs aren’t just a burden. They are the difference between stability and the street. At the heart of it is a shortage of millions of homes – California has not built nearly enough homes, and that shortage is the engine driving costs beyond reach for family after family, pushing people out of their communities and too many out of housing altogether. This is not a personal failure. It is a policy failure, and it is the defining affordability crisis of our time.

I have no illusions about what stands between California and the housing it needs. The cost of capital, the direction of interest rates, the broader forces of the national economy, these shape every builder’s decision and every family’s options, and no single office commands them. But a Governor is not powerless in the face of them either. Where the private market stalls, we can use the state’s financing tools, its public land, and its capacity to de-risk development to keep shovels in the ground. Where broken laws and bureaucratic delay are adding years and tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of every home built, we can fix that. Where cities are shirking their obligations, we will enforce the law. Where zoning still locks out affordable housing from entire communities, we will open it up. Where the permitting process takes longer than the construction itself, we will end that absurdity. What I cannot control, I will work around. What I can change, I will, from the first day I take office to the last.

Every swing of every hammer will carry that message. As Governor, I will reopen the door that has been slammed shut on families like mine, families who do essential work, contribute to our communities, and deserve the chance to build something here. That is the California I am running to build.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

1. More, For the Many. Our state cannot succeed if working people cannot afford to live here. As Governor, I will bring the anger of every person struggling to pay rent or unable to access housing into every decision I make.

2. Good Homes, Good Jobs. Building at the scale this crisis demands means that California will create hundreds of thousands of new good jobs in construction. That is only possible with the wage and labor standards that working families deserve. We know it’s possible: during the years when California built the most housing in its history, it also had the highest number of union jobs in residential construction. It is time to restart that machine.

3. Government Must Earn the Right to Lead. As we demand more from others, we must fix the delays, fragmentation and dysfunction within our own institutions. Every dollar and every day wasted in government is a cost directly added to the mortgage or rent checks of the people we are trying to help. 

4. Growth Must Not Displace. We can build at scale without collateral damage to the people we want to help. In fact, it is imperative we do so. As we pursue a California everyone can call home, I will protect renters, preserve existing affordable housing, protect the environment, and keep communities intact as we build. Building more and accomplishing these things are not competing goals. They are all essential. 

POLICY AGENDA

Day One: Real Authority, Real Action

On my first day as Governor, I will issue an executive order declaring California’s housing shortage a state of emergency and directing every state agency to treat housing production and affordability as the paramount priority. I will embed a senior housing delivery team across agencies that report directly to my office, whose sole job is removing obstacles to projects and identifying areas within state government that need reform so we can more swiftly deliver on housing commitments. Cabinet members and agency secretaries will coordinate, as they should, but this team will have the authority to act in furthering this priority and the direct line to my office to support that. Their first mission will be the nearly 40,000 affordable housing units sitting in approved projects across California, awaiting only a final tranche of funding to break ground. Everything will be on the table to close the funding gap – bond measures, state subsidies, public-private partnerships. These homes can and will be built, and when the funding is there, the team will identify, track and move every one of them. 

Cut the Cost of Building

It costs too much to build a home in California, and that cost is passed on to Californians in the form of high rents and high home prices. High fees, fragmented approvals, and layers of regulatory compliance are leading causes. On my first day I will require my administration to identify cost reductions that can be made administratively and legislatively, and will work with the Legislature to comprehensively reform fees statewide. In California, building an apartment costs 2.3 times what it costs in Texas, largely because of process delay and fees. I will also work with the Legislature to end the use of impossibly high affordable housing mandates as a backdoor to kill housing for families – a tactic that some cities actually use to skirt their responsibilities. Under my administration, that abuse ends. To further build at scale, we will reform policy to unlock modular housing by creating scalable statewide uniformity in review, while creating stable union jobs. Together, my administration’s central focus will be to keep prices down for Californians and build at the speed we need.

Enforce State Housing Law

When I was California’s Attorney General, I pioneered legal strategies to help unblock housing projects, leading to historic wins for housing across the state. Since then, California has enacted even stronger reforms, but a law is only as good as our capacity to enforce it. All too often, cities can slow walk, litigate around or ignore their obligations. California must enforce these laws without exception and without favor. I will direct the California Department of Housing and Community Development to immediately identify cities reneging on their housing element commitments and commence enforcement action, including financial penalties where appropriate. I will expand the Housing Accountability Unit so that it can quickly answer every question of technical assistance where laws are unclear or bring enforcement actions where the law is being ignored. And, I will deepen the partnership between HCD and the Department of Justice to proactively monitor compliance wherever public dollars are at stake. 

We will use a carrot approach as well: cities meeting their obligations should be first in line for state resources. But we will not be naive enough to think a carrot is the only tool we need. Cities that obstruct housing they have already planned for will face real consequences. Communities should have a voice in this process but they should not have a veto over the obligation. And where accountability laws need strengthening or loopholes need closing, I will lead that work with the Legislature.

Reform Zoning to Unlock Housing Supply

The vast majority of California’s residential land still excludes affordable housing and apartments. My administration will pursue zoning reform, expand by-right approvals near jobs and transit, and improve the laws allowing entry-level ownership options like duplexes and small condos. 

Last year’s SB 79 created the zoning for more housing, especially affordable housing, near rail transit, critical to building the housing we need in the places where that housing reduces traffic and carbon emissions the most. But the vast majority of cities in California still effectively ban affordable housing – my administration will build off the success of SB 79 by seeking to end exclusionary zoning around more types of transit and in high-opportunity areas, where children have access to the best schools. My administration will support and defend the progress California has made on “missing middle” housing as well, by, for example, encouraging local governments to opt in to AB 1033, which allows ADUs to be sold as affordable condos. We will also build on the successes of SB 684, zoning more land for townhomes, which are the new popular starter home in much of California. We will expand that option to more Californians. 

Streamline Approvals and Make the Process Predictable

Housing that is planned for on paper but never built is not a solution. My administration will deliver permits, not just plans. We will build on the foundation that SB 330 established, working to create a single predictable standard of review throughout California, and will defend and enhance the streamlining tools created by AB 130, reducing permitting delays and making approvals predictable for builders of all sizes, especially small builders like my father. As Governor, I will push the next phase: tightening litigation timelines, closing loopholes used to obstruct infill projects, and making it harder for bad actors to abuse the process, bringing that same discipline to state government as we have demanded of local governments. Every housing project seeking state review will receive a final response within a defined, clear timeline (e.g., 180 days), and our embedded housing teams will have my personal voice when they go to work every day looking for ways to unblock critically needed housing stuck in red tape. In San Francisco, it can take more than four years to get all the permits needed to build, about three years longer than it takes to actually start and finish construction. The path from submitted application to completed review should not take longer than the home takes to build. Under my administration, it won’t.

Get the New Housing Agency Right

Creating the California Housing and Homelessness Agency and the Housing Development and Finance Committee is the right structural move, but standing up a new agency is the beginning, not the end. The hard work of turning that framework into something that actually cuts costs and speeds production falls largely to the next governor. I have done this before. At HHS I managed an agency with a budget larger than the size of California’s entire state government, and I know what it takes to build a new entity into something that works: the staffing decisions, the interagency coordination, the accountability structures that keep it from drifting. As Governor, I will resource the Agency to succeed, set the production targets it will be held to publicly, and make clear that California’s housing crisis demands results, not just reorganization.

Simplify the State Affordable Housing Funding Process

Every additional public funding source a developer must assemble in order to build affordable housing adds four months to the timeline and $20,000 per unit in costs. Not because developers are inefficient, but because we built a system that forces them to navigate six, seven, or eight separate agencies and funding streams just to break ground. I watched the same dysfunction play out in health care, and at HHS we moved to fix it by consolidating programs, eliminating duplicative requirements, and holding agencies to unified goals. California’s affordable housing finance system needs the same treatment: a single coordinated state application process, unified state criteria, and funding.

Reform the 7th RHNA Cycle

Under my administration, the 7th Regional Housing Needs Allocation cycle will no longer function as a paper exercise. I will convene housing stakeholders and policy experts to transform RHNA from a planning requirement into a genuine driver of housing production, with real accountability for jurisdictions that fall short of their allocations.

Expand the Path to Homeownership

Owning a home is the California Dream, and too many families are being shut out not because they cannot afford the mortgage, but because they cannot save a down payment fast enough and because there are not enough homes to buy in the first place. I will expand California’s down payment assistance program, increase its funding, and broaden eligibility so more first-time buyers can access it faster. This program more than pays for itself: the state recovers its investment when families sell, recycling those dollars to help the next family. But helping families afford a home only solves half the problem if there are not enough homes to buy. Townhomes and small condos were once a standard entry point into homeownership for working families, and decades of zoning rules effectively regulated them out of existence. For too long, California’s laws have made it far easier to build apartments for rent than homes for sale, and I will reform those laws to change that, because the path to homeownership has to start with homes that are actually available to own.

Protect Homeownership from Bulk Investors

Institutional investors purchasing California single-family homes and converting them into permanent rentals shrink the inventory available to first-time buyers and drive coordinated pricing that goes unchecked for renters and buyers alike. Building more homes only solves the problem if those homes reach families, not corporate portfolios. I will work with the Legislature to make it harder for large institutional investors to compete with California families for homes. I will push for beneficial ownership disclosure on bulk purchases, public registries of institutional landlords, and stronger enforcement targeting price coordination in the housing market, because whether you’re renting or trying to buy, you deserve a market that works for people, not corporations.

Stand Up for Renters and Enforce California’s Tenant Protections

Building more housing and protecting the people in homes right now are not competing goals, they are both essential, and we must build more housing and ensure that growth does not push people out. California’s Tenant Protection Act gives us the tools to stop excessive rent increases, require just cause before a family loses their home, and guarantee relocation assistance for displaced tenants. I will enforce those protections fully and stand behind communities that have chosen to protect renters through local rent control, within the statewide framework that keeps housing construction moving forward. We can grow our housing stock and protect the homes people are in right now. What we cannot afford is to let speculation and inaction squeeze working families out while California catches up on supply, and that stops on day one. 

Keeping families housed is also a matter of prevention. California’s Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention program has helped people move out of homelessness, but its funding has been cut, made one-time, and left unprotected, forcing localities to use prevention dollars just to keep shelter beds open. A few hundred dollars in rental assistance at the right moment can prevent a family from losing their home and save tens of thousands of dollars in downstream costs. As Governor, I would establish a dedicated, stable targeted homelessness prevention funding stream within the state’s homelessness response, one that communities can plan around year over year, tied to measurable reduction targets and local investment. 

Build a State Master Plan for Housing Affordability

California’s housing system is fragmented, with no common strategy and no clear affordability goal. My administration will develop the first-ever California Housing Affordability Master Plan, setting a target of median-income families being able to afford median-priced homes, and unifying the state’s response across zoning, streamlining, fees, financing, and regulatory costs. Like the Climate Scoping Plan for emissions, the Housing Affordability Master Plan will give every department, agency, city, and stakeholder a shared framework to work toward. We will measure progress and hold ourselves accountable for results.