How did an entire state price itself out for entry-level home buyers?

Heck, that effect was the entire reason for Bloody Kansas, with pro- and anti-slavery people moving into the territory in order to influence its politics. It's why the Free State Project exists. It's why some politicians want to decrease immigration, and others want to increase it.

I'm curious why you think it doesn't exist. It's hardly an extraordinary claim, and makes perfect sense: people from a place have the habits of mind common to that place; when they move elsewhere, they retain those habits of mind for some time. Even if they were outliers at home, they are more likely to be like their former neighbours than a random subset of their new ones (ever noticed how much you have in common with a fellow countryman you meet whilst travelling abroad? It's the same effect).

And when there is a tremendous influx of people from one particular place into another particular place, then one will be more likely to find people from the former place in the latter — that's just math.

Maybe you find this good, but I don't: we should try to figure out what makes a state the sort of place people move from rather than the sort of place people move to, and replicate that.

(in California's case, I think it's the sort of place people move to because they must and from because they can)

Which is not ideal, but on a $600k+ ($29k is 5% or less) home, let alone a $1m home, that simply isn't the primary cost driver.

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The whole article seems like it's poorly written or actively attempting to mislead. It's not until 1/2 way through that you learn:

Prop 13 stymies local tax increases, which means housing is an enormous cost for cities because they can't recoup their costs through property taxes. Instead, taxes go to the state government.

I dunno, could you imagine that severing the link between new development which increases local costs (schools, roads, utilities, police) and local income could affect cities' interest in building housing? Unlike complaints about environmental impact costs, this seems like a much more plausible explanation for the lack of housing.

Then the article finally explains that building impact fees are the only way local cities have to recoup their direct costs, which explains their rise. Why wasn't that in the first 1/2 of the article?

Also, prop 13 means rising prices are all to the good for home owners. In most (all?) other states, rising property prices mean homeowners pay more tax, which creates an incentive for homeowners to oppose too large an increase in home prices.

Finally, the complaining about the Zero Net Energy mandate is misleading as well when it presents it only as a negative. A few minutes research will show that it's intended to curb the growth of energy requirements. Power plants are big, expensive, and tend to pollute a lot. If we want to have 45m people in CA, we have to be judicious about how much pollution our state can withstand. And someone has to pay for those new power plants we will have to bring online if we don't curb power usage growth.

But I was considering a counter point the other day. Homeownership here means mid level engineers who have lived here a decade or two often have access to seven figure credit lines. What effect does this have on the entrepreneurial side of things here?

To be clear, I am not putting this fourth as a fully formed belief, but it is an interesting argument, I think, and worth talking about.

They're basically forced to build a (relatively) big expensive house so that the final cost seems reasonable despite the $50k in fees buried in it. Hence why they aren't building entry-level priced houses - they're too cheap to hide the fixed fees.

I was trying to make this point a few weeks ago here on HN, in a discussion on Prop. 13, and got pushback. I take this quote as evidence that it's common knowledge among people in the housing industry. Prop. 13 disincentivizes cities from adding housing.

Prop. 13 needs to be fixed. The way it should have been done is this: in a year in which property values increase by more than 2%, instead of limiting the tax to 2% more than the previous year's, we limit the payment due to 2% more than last year's payment due. The locality receives a lien on the difference, but that lien does not become due until the property is sold.

So in an area in which property values have been rapidly rising, a homeowner who sells their property will have to share their windfall to some extent with the locality. But those on fixed incomes are still protected: their annual tax payments don't increase any faster than they would today.

Common objections:

"People will take out home equity loans that will have to be repaid at sale, leaving them with a cash loss."

A property tax lien is a public record. Banks will take the liens into consideration when deciding how large a loan to offer. This is standard practice already.

"The liens will accumulate to the point that they will be greater than the owner's gain on the property, giving them a strong disincentive to sell."

No, this wouldn't happen, because the lien is only on 1% of the excess gain (the amount the value increased over 2%). If, for one example, the value jumped in the first year and then went flat, the payment would continue to grow at 2% annually until it caught up to the value. The only scenario that generates a lien larger than the owner's gain is if the market has been up but then drops sharply just before the owner wants to sell -- in short, if there was a bubble. Well, bubbles produce lots of dislocation; I don't think they make for a good argument against this proposal.

"Prop. 13 will never be modified."

Well, it certainly won't if no better alternative is put forth!