California's housing policy elite gathered at UCLA recently for what was billed as a comprehensive look at the state's housing crisis. What they got was a masterclass in the gap between academic theorizing and the brutal reality of trying to build anything in the Golden State.

Let's set the stage: California needs roughly 2.5 million new homes by 2030 to meet demand. We're building at a fraction of that pace. Median home prices in San Francisco still hover in the stratosphere. And yet, conference after conference, the state's housing intelligentsia keeps circling the same drain — more subsidies, more mandates, more bureaucratic infrastructure to manage the bureaucratic infrastructure that's already failing.

To be fair, there were bright spots. Some panelists reportedly pushed for streamlining CEQA, the state's environmental review law that has become the single greatest weapon NIMBYs wield against new construction. Others championed by-right zoning reforms that would let developers actually build without spending years in approval purgatory. These are the right instincts — remove barriers, let the market respond to demand, and stop pretending that government-subsidized affordable housing alone can solve a crisis driven by artificial scarcity.

But for every sensible deregulatory pitch, there was a counter-proposal involving new oversight boards, inclusionary mandates, or rent control expansions — the very policies that economists across the political spectrum have warned make housing more expensive in the long run.

Here's the uncomfortable truth that too few people at these conferences are willing to say out loud: California's housing crisis is fundamentally a government-created problem. Zoning restrictions, permitting delays, impact fees, and environmental litigation have made it nearly impossible to build housing at the scale and speed the market demands. The solution isn't more planning — it's less.

Until Sacramento gets serious about cutting red tape instead of adding new layers of it, these conferences will keep happening, the same slides will keep getting presented, and young Californians will keep moving to Texas.

We'll be here, taking notes.