Then there is the "poverty" that is caused by urban planning issues in urban and coastal California. There are families making six figures who can qualify for affordable housing programs here. In no way should a family bringing in six figures be just barely scraping by, but due to the increasing rent burden that’s where many find themselves.
The Cal budget center presents these facts: http://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/californians-parts-stat...
* The problem is state-wide. Cost burdened or severely cost burdened renters; Far north 42%, San Francisco Bay Area 37.8%, Sacramento Region 38.4%, Central Valley 38.9%, Sierra Nevada 36.8%, Central Coast 42.1%, los angeles and south coast 46.1%, Inland Empire 42.7%
* more than half of California's renters and over a third of homeowners with mortgages face high housing costs
* 8 in 10 low income Californians have unaffordable housing costs
The US census shows that people without means can't afford the living costs are self-selecting themselves away:
* A snapshot of more recent U.S. Census migration numbers shows that nearly three-quarters of those who have left California for other states since 2007 earn less than $50k a year.
If they had suggested merely that housing costs are an issue for californians, I would not have argued.
Legislators seem to disagree with you and passed a bill to require relevant cities to zone for farmworker housing https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... and there is another one proposed this year.
Everything I read attribute this to a lack of housing supply. https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/19/housing-affordability... and http://capitolweekly.net/crisis-affordable-housing-grips-cal...
For instance, Stockton leads California rent increases with a 10.4 percent increase in rental price between July 2016 and July 2017 and their home prices have increased 92% in the last 5 years. In a supply balanced market this would not happen as the landlors do not have leverage to increase rent this much, and developers/owners don't have the leverage to sell housing for this much more.
* 41 percent of San Franciscans spend 30 to 50 percent on rent, despite a lot of rent control for longer-tenure residents and a population average income being $104k as well as median $77k.
* Zoning rules have restricted the housing supply so much that the median age of a San Francisco building is 1964, despite multiple boom times after that which should have lead to upzoning. http://demomemo.blogspot.com/2017/02/age-of-housing-stock-by...
* On the peninsula there is one housing unit for every four jobs. Cities have build offices and garnish the income from that, but forces the externalities on housing and infrastructure onto surrounding cities because city boundaries does not reflect where those fall
A lot of problems solve themselves when a one bedroom doesn't cost $3600 per month. We have plenty of space to build up and are mainly limited by zoning that.
There is no question in my mind that when even my tech friends can't afford to live on their own a normal middle class family is in trouble.