This is just my opinion, but I believe it is because California is the land of the “I got mine!” mentality, the types who pull up the ladders that they climbed. Housing has effectively been outsourced to the Central Valley and the desert due to a “sorry, we’re full” mentality along the coast despite the fact that there’s plenty of room to densify existing metro areas instead of creating sprawl that stretches over 100 miles. Transportation and other infrastructure projects get routinely delayed or even canceled due to the same mentality. Even mass-transit projects that are more environmentally friendly get the same treatment.
There is this large contingent of Californians, especially along the coast, who are hellbent on preserving an imagined 1950’s California where the population was much smaller. While they’re not able to stop job growth in the major metro areas, they are able to offload housing to far-flung places, and they are able to block or at least delay infrastructure projects that help serve this increased population. This is starting to reach severe levels. Housing is very expensive, homelessness abounds, the prices for anything sensitive to rents and labor are sky-high (have you been to a restaurant lately?), and California seems to have a hard time maintaining and expanding its infrastructure to meet a population of 40 million.
“If you build it, they will come; therefore, if you don’t build it, they won’t come” is the thinking of many influential Californians when it comes to housing and infrastructure. But, lo and behold, the people kept coming due to the job market, and California wasn’t ready for them. We’re now dealing with the effects of roughly 50 years of such thinking, and it’s about time California changes its mentality before it kills the goose that laid the golden eggs that made California so prosperous.