Californians face an unprecedented challenge finding affordable housing. Over the past 30 years, the precipitous rise in housing prices, development constraints, and stagnant growth in real income have cultivated a housing ecosystem that struggles to meet demand while prices far exceed the means of buyers and renters in median income brackets in urban and coastal communities. The solution lies not just in more construction, but the creation of a consistent policy framework that can better align investments that complement the state’s environmental priorities, such as greenhouse-gas (GHG) reduction. California needs policies that cultivate long-term economic growth and offset decades of unsustainable, economically inefficient suburban sprawl.