California, from every source I've seen, has a major, systemic, generations long market failure. The supply of housing has been nearly inelastic while demand remains high, with the obvious results.
However there are also less obvious results given the time domain involved. The problems have followed those retiring out of California's market as other regions follow in the same footsteps.
As an example; the greater Seattle / Puget Sound metro area reached a combination of sprawl / urban growth boundary / natural features (mountains, lakes, the sound) at about the same time that the 2008 recession killed what little development was still occurring.
The price of a very cramped, noisy (poor insulation) apartment in the city without even a parking spot to store the vehicle for anything you're doing outside of the city (E.G. visiting family on a weekend, going hiking, etc) was easily at least 3K (offhand, the last time I looked), and similar units in the suburbs quite far out, if available, were about 1.5K per month.
There might be more rural areas, but those were excluded from my search as the last time I looked they failed even the FCC's definition of broadband (25mbit down, 3mbit up). I suspect any areas out that far with good Internet would still have bad prices.