> California's housing shortage is due to mass immigration into the state and not natural increase.

Is it? Certainly lots of people have moved to California, but lots have also left. Since 2000, California's population has grown by 17%, while the US has grown by 16%, and the world by around 27%.

I only know the numbers for San Francisco, but it’s 37.7% from California, 25.2% from other states, and 35.6% from outside the US (62.3% total from outside the state)[0]. I’m sure the fraction from outside the Bay Area is even higher. Anectodally, I’m the only one on my team at work born within 6000 miles of here, and we can’t say with a straight face that tons of super highly paid immigrants (and even more open job posts) don’t affect housing demand.

I’m from here, and have a lot of friends who left. The primary factor for most of them is wanting to afford a single family home, which is easier elsewhere. Restricting movement would be insane, but two thirds of the population being from migration is a huge factor in pricing my friends out, and it does kinda rub me the wrong way when someone from thousands of miles away complains that there isn’t cheap space for them here, and demands that we change the area to accommodate them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco

You are going to be downvoted because your comment will imply racism, but I think it's worth an honest discussion.

In the Bay Area in the last 20 years, I think I can count the number of non-hispanic gardeners I've seen, on one hand. The number of non-hispanic custodial workers, maybe on 2 hands. Restaurant workers, regardless of the cuisine and regardless of the restaurant price range, are also most often hispanic.

Some people scream that hispanic immigrants are "stealing our jobs." I think, they're doing the job that white America now refuses to do. Without them, business couldn't survive. But as businesses have thrived --especially tech-- they're the first to get fucked by rising prices.

https://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-stalled-population-gro... . A clear majority of California's population growth in the past 1, 2, and 3 decades is natural growth, not migration. What's interesting is that it is a result of international immigration into the state and domestic emigration from the state. Regardless of that, though, an international immigrant or a native californian still consume housing. The housing shortage is not caused by immigration.

Certainly you could make the argument that if not for immigrants to the US settling in California it would result in less population growth here, but I think a housing policy which can't even keep up with very little net migration is broken.

California’s population is about one quarter foreign-born, but it’s been at that ratio for 30+ years. Mass foreign migration isn’t a plausible explanation for the shortage of housing when the foreign-born percentage of the population is relatively stable over long time scales.

California's housing shortage is about 30 years old. The Reagan amnesty is just a bit more than 30 years old. This is why there is still the occasional widow of a plumber or other blue collar type who owns a house in Laguna or Coronado. They bought longer ago than that.

And naturally when we talk about housing shortage we always mean in desirable areas. Even in California you can get land for dirt cheap today if you don't mind being in the middle of nowhere.

But the housing shortage has been worsening over the last 30 years, while the foreign-born share of the population had been steady.

And when you say “desirable areas”, what this means is where jobs are located. Unemployed people living in the middle of nowhere are not good for society.