As a native Californian who's privileged enough to not need to think about leaving, I blame the skyline and a macro culture that fetishizes virtuous solutions over efficient ones (the particular virtue doesn't matter because none of them try to seek practical compromises). Also, since I know it will come up, yes prop 13 was a bad idea and doesn't help but if you repeal it in the current environment you're just exacerbating the problem of Californians who can't afford California.

Skyline-wise, rent keeps going up and up and yet nobody wants to seriously consider the idea that maybe we should eliminate a lot of height limits and expand the streets to accommodate the traffic. If you even allude the idea you get noise from a mix of environmentalists who hate all forms of urbanization and home owners who totally want to help so long as their property values don't go down because the neighborhood changed (you could write a book on the civic effects of property being treated like an investment and I'm sure some have).

Related to the skyline issue, because with housing changes comes traffic changes, everyone complains about traffic but they'd rather get good-person points for voting to help the environment with new bike lanes that a miniscule amount of the community will use rather than prioritizing bus lane construction and line expansions. And don't you dare suggest that cities regulating e-scooters to the point of just being a fun novelty was a bad idea! Who cares if revisiting local regulations on e-scooters could expand the utility value of those freshly created bike lanes by catering to a new ridership? Those lanes were meant for bicycles! It's in the name! Besides, everyone knows e-scooter riders never did anything but hit old people and ignore traffic laws (like most cyclists). To add insult to injury, my own city caps the legal speed limit for e-scooters (both commercial and privately owned) at 25mph despite cyclists having a speed limit that is sometimes 25mph but often climbs into the 30s.

Virtue-wise, there are lots but the outcome is the same in the sense that either nothing happens or costs go up while just enough for a photo op happens. Everyone wants to help the poor but at the same time advocate sin taxes on class agnostic products like alcohol, cigarettes, and plastic bags (don't bother trying to explain regressive taxes, that's just wallstreet trying to justify killing people for a buck). Bonus points for individuals who want better food access for poor communities but simultaneously demonize current providers like fast food and large grocery chains while also advocating farming regulations that raise the price of meat and dairy products ("BuT ThEy CoUlD JuSt EaT BeAnS AnD RiCe If ThEy WeRe AcTuAlLy PoOr)". Don't worry though, prices will balance out once the hood is full of those locally owned co-ops that are coming.

Those are just the examples that come to mind quickly but are by no means the only ones (I didn't even get into costly and superfluous certification/licensing requirements, ignoring job loss from mandatory benefit expansions, or how we'd rather keep exclusively raising minimum wage endlessly while demonizing EITC expansions even though they work together synergistically). That said, the overall point isn't that any specific topic is at fault but rather that we have numerous similar situations and the solution to all of them is either to pay "just a little more" with followup promises that the added costs will, as we say here, "for sure" banshee out when you consider the stuff programs they sometimes fund. But at least we're good people with our integrity intact, so hooray!