Probably uncertain ability to expand their water supply.

In the Western US, certain ability to massively expand a city's water rights is really a prerequisite for insane real estate profits. SF was a mining town before Hetch Hetchy, and LA didn't blow up until they robbed the Owens Valley.

Edit: yep, Truckee River is 100% allocated as of 2015

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truckee_River#River_modifica...

Not sure why Reno as opposed to Las Vegas. Reno's closer to Tahoe but Vegas is closer to a bunch of recreational areas. Neither city has a real downtown in the sense that SF or Austin do as far as I've ever seen. So you're almost definitely living in essentially car-dependent suburbs if that's an issue. (Though you often are in either SV or Austin anyway.)

Vegas is a miserable inferno six months out of the year. There is no spring or fall to speak of, though winters are really mild. Education is terrible. Everything is urban sprawl garbage construction. I lived there for 35 years until moving to Denver this winter. You couldn’t move me back to Vegas at gunpoint.

And this comment is why CA’s housing crisis is impossible to fix. There is no easy solution.

The main solution people propose, building more, has a very high likelihood of turning it into a suburban hellscape that people refuse to move to even at gunpoint.

We have plenty of places like that. If the option is just build more without an extremely careful plan, then just move to another city where it’s like that already. Phoenix is a nice sprawl.

But is Reno any better?

Pretty sure the summers aren't as bad as Las Vegas. I can't answer for any of the other issues.

Reno gets hot but nowhere near as bad for as long

Climate might have something to do with it. Reno has both cold winters AND hot summers -- kind of a "worst of both worlds", climate-wise.