The essay leads with the assertion that there has been impressive housing progress in CA. While I’m happy to see the optics around Nimbyism change and positive legislation get passed, let’s not celebrate CA too much.
The relevant metric is how much housing gets built, not how much red tape gets snipped away, and by that measure CA is still doing very poorly.
They're both very relevant. Recent CA state housing laws have snipped away at red tape, but with a lot of conditions and loopholes. So they're not going to be as impactful as they could or should be. And more broadly, in light of a couple of years of population loss to other states, California probably ought to take a hard look at its cost of living and how to drive it down.