Despite political promises, Californians are stressed about their finances

SACRAMENTO — After voters in November sent a clear message that the rising cost of living remained a top concern, California lawmakers came to the Capitol vowing to take decisive action.

“Our task this session is urgent and clear,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) told lawmakers at the start of the 2024-2025 legislative session in early December. “We must chart a new path forward. And it begins by focusing on affordability.”

Despite proposed legislation to help make California a more affordable place to live, however, voters in the state are growing increasingly pessimistic about their financial future, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times. Nearly half of California voters feel worse off than they were last year, and 54% felt less hopeful about their economic well-being.

When asked to name the most important issues for state leaders to be addressing this year, the cost of living, housing affordability and homelessness topped the list — far above concerns about crime and public safety, taxes and immigration, the poll found.

“The number one issue is an economic issue. It’s the cost of living,” Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll, said. “Both Democrats are and Republicans are in agreement on that one.”

Californians’ fears about their future, and their current financial well-being, dramatically increased after President Trump moved back into the White House in January, DiCamillo said. Within months, Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on goods imported from countries worldwide, sending turbulence through the global economy, and his administration began slashing federal agencies and programs.

The shift among voters was driven largely by partisan allegiance, and in California Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by a nearly two-to-one margin.

In August, before Trump’s election, 46% of Democratic voters in the state were upbeat about their financial well-being. In April, just 9% of them felt that way, according to the poll. Optimism also dropped among voters declared as “no party preference,” but to a much lesser degree. Among Republicans, just 9% were hopeful before Trump’s election, and that leaped to 57% in April.

“I’ve never seen this before,” DiCamillo said. “I’ve been polling for over 40 years in California and the last five years or so, everything seems to turn on party. If you ask people, ‘Is it sunny outside?’ the Democrats will say one thing, the Republicans will say [another]. It’s just unbelievable.”

In Sacramento, the Democratic-led Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom know that addressing California’s high cost of living is imperative, and that not doing enough to address voter concerns may have consequences. But any hopes of quick financial relief have been lost to the slow, deliberative political process of lawmaking in the Capitol.

Democrats have introduced a raft of new bills to save Californians billions in utility costs, limit extra fees for renters and cut red tape for building permits, among other measures, to target the growing financial burdens plaguing residents.

But the pending bills are not expected to make a dramatic shift in California’s longstanding economic problems that voters care most about, such as the housing affordability crisis, homelessness and the general cost of living.

Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher of Yuba City said the financial struggles of many Californians is the result of years of misguided, liberal leadership, and dismisses the Democrats’ latest push in Sacramento to repair that damage as too little, too late.

“My read of most of those bills is they don’t do a whole lot,” Gallagher told The Times. Most of them tackle fringe issues, he said, instead of getting at the meat of the problem. “In order to actually do something about affordability, [the Democrats] have to go back on their previous ideas.”

Trump’s victory in November was credited, in part, to his campaign promises to address the high prices and economic uncertainties confronting many Americans. The economic upheaval over the past five years is a major reason for the pessimism many feel today.

Fiscal policy meant to keep household budgets afloat during COVID-19 lockdowns caused higher inflation and drove up prices faster than usual, said Jerry Nickelsburg, faculty director at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. Since 2020, inflation rates have fallen, but voters notice the steep increase in everyday expenses, like gas and groceries.

Growth in worker pay during that time has not kept pace. Food, beverage and energy prices increased by 28% compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, said Sarah Bohn, vice president of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

“We feel these at the pump, in utility bills, and at the grocery store,” Bohn said before an Assembly committee in late March. Inflation cut a 26% rise in wages down to net 2.9% since January 2020, she said.

“To me, those are all the facts we need to understand why Californians are frustrated financially. Earning 26% higher wages but feeling like you’re treading water at the end of the day? That is very frustrating,” Bohn said.

California is one of the most expensive states in the U.S. to buy or rent a home — the crisis has worsened in the last decade with rising housing costs and rent increases, and some policies like the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, have been used to stifle new development since the 1970s.

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Rent in California is 50% higher than the national median, according to U.S. Census data. One in six middle-class renters in California are now spending over half their income on housing, according to the PPIC, a nonprofit research center.

For years, Democrats have tried to carve out loopholes in existing laws and promote new developments to address the housing shortage. High prices have contributed to homelessness and the growing trend of Californians leaving for cheaper, not greener, pastures in neighboring states, according to recent PPIC analysis.

“California has really strangled itself by making it so hard over the years to build enough housing,” Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told The Times.

This session, Wiener introduced Senate Bill 677 — which failed in the Senate Housing Committee earlier this month — which could have expanded SB 9, a “duplex bill” from 2021 that allowed people to split their single family lot into two lots, and build up to three additional units on the property. The committee did advance another of Wiener’s bills, SB 79, which proposes allowing homes between four and seven stories to be built near major transit stops.

SB 681, part of the Senate Democratic Caucus’ affordability package and introduced by Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward), proposes several measures that address the housing crisis: quadrupling the renter’s tax credit for the first time in decades, cutting out additional fees renters pay for owning pets and other junk fees not listed in a rental agreement, addressing zombie mortgages — home loans appearing years, sometimes decades later after the debtor believes the loan has been forgiven — capping homeowner association fines at $100 and making the Permit Streamlining Act and Housing Crisis Act permanent.

Other legislation backed by the Democratic leadership would streamline applications for new housing developments, ban extra fees on rental payments and expand affordable housing for farmworkers.

SB 254 from Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), chair of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications, is “the Legislature’s most ambitious effort yet to rein in rising energy costs and put ratepayers first,” he told members of the committee last week. The bill, in part, forces the California Public Utilities Commission to provide a public statement justifying any approved rate hike, and also require investor-owned utilities to finance $15 billion for wildfire mitigation and connecting customers to the grid.

The legislation is opposed by San Diego Gas and Electric, among others, who said it doesn’t address the underlying issues causing rates to go up and could be unconstitutional.

California Republicans offered their own solutions to affordability issues, including a bill from Gallagher that would have forced the Public Utilities Commission to cut electricity rates by 30% and AB 1443 sponsored by Assemblymember Leticia Castillo (R-Home Gardens) that would make earned tips tax-exempt. California Republicans also had a bill that expanded upon the renter’s tax credit, similar to the measure in Wahab’s SB 681.

Gallagher criticized the new Assembly committees created to focus on housing, child care, food assistance for those in need and reviewing the state’s push for low-carbon and renewable alternatives, arguing that discussing the issues rather than taking quick action was tone-deaf.

“Californians don’t need more government committees, they need real action that cuts their costs. Legislative Democrats have spent decades making our state unaffordable,” Gallagher said. “The faces change, but the party and the broken ideas stay the same — blocking housing, raising taxes, and driving up costs for working families.”

Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.