Polling Shows Housing as California Voters’ Top Priority

The California Playbook, published online by POLITICO, reported that a poll from researchers at the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology, which was shared with Playbook, found California’s housing shortage to be the issue of most importance to voters in California.

​In addition to California voters overwhelmingly listing the state's worsening housing shortage as the biggest problem leaders in Sacramento need to do more to address, 33 percent of likely voters say housing is their single highest priority, which was almost twice as many as those who listed health care, which was the second most-commonly cited issue. Public safety and road and bridge maintenance trailed as the third and fourth priority issues in the poll.

The UCI-OC survey was conducted before state lawmakers and Newsom approved an aggressive plan to turbocharge housing construction by slashing environmental reviews that were previously required for many new projects. Now, most housing projects in urban areas will be exempt.