Californians are increasingly worried about the rising cost of housing and are willing to move past the Legislature and back dramatic changes to boost residential construction in the state, according to a new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The numbers should be a clear warning to state politicians that voters want action, said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the institute and the poll’s director.

“Housing policy is an issue that the Legislature has struggled with so much, yet people have a 2-to-1 support for changes,” he said. “The California public is looking for a solution. They just want to see something done.”

A bill by state Sen Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, to allow denser development around transit hubs and in neighborhoods zoned for single-family housing was put on hold until 2020 last month by the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee. State Sen. Anthony Portantino, a Democrat from La Cañada Flintridge (Los Angeles County), blocked SB50, saying that “this isn’t the right fix at this time.”

Californians don’t agree. The poll found that 62% of the state’s adults surveyed favored requiring local governments to change zoning rules to allow apartments and condominiums near transportation and job centers, with 30% opposed.

Almost the same percentage called for forcing local governments to approve new housing before receiving state transportation money, an idea that Gov. Gavin Newsom has floated but was not contained in SB50.

There was less support for reducing environmental regulations to allow construction of more affordable housing, but even that idea had strong backing, with 47% in favor and 30% opposed. Opposition was strongest among Democrats, with only 38% support, and in the heavily Democratic Bay Area, with 40% backing.

“There’s very strong support across different regions of the state” for changes, Baldassare said. “I don’t know how the people could be any more clear.”

There’s little mystery about why housing is sparking such concern. Among California adults, 52% say housing costs are putting a financial strain on their families, up from 47% in a poll taken last year. While the number is highest (66%) among those with annual household incomes of less than $40,000, even 37% of those making $80,000 or more say housing is taking a worrisome bite from the money they make.

The cost of housing “is not an abstract issue to people; it hits them directly,” Baldassare said. “It affects a wide range of Californians in a wide variety of financial circumstances.”

The poll found that 54% of Bay Area respondents said housing costs were a financial strain. The total was 43% in the Central Valley, and jumped to 58% in the Orange and San Diego counties area.

The call for more affordable housing is strongly bipartisan, something that is increasingly unusual in a state — and country — sharply split along partisan lines, Baldassare said.

“At this point, I look for examples of where there is agreement across party lines,” the pollster said. Housing policy “is one of the rare examples where we do see common ground.”

More bipartisan backing shows up in the reaction to Newsom’s budget plan to spend $1 billion to fight homelessness in the next fiscal year. Overall, 74% of adults surveyed support the governor’s effort, including 44% of Republicans. Although the GOP total is lower than the 87% of Democrats and 67% of independent voters who back Newsom, it’s far higher than the 26% of Republican respondents who like the governor’s entire proposed budget.

“Homelessness is a problem that is viewed as going out of control,” Baldassare said. For a large percentage of Californians, the $1 billion shows that the governor is trying to do something, he added.

The 39% of adults who approve of the job the Legislature is doing is down from 49% in January and 46% in March. That could be linked to a belief that its leaders are all talk and no action when it comes to dealing with the problems most important to the state’s residents, Baldassare said.

“There’s concern and frustration about government’s inability to make improvements,” he said.

The poll is based on a telephone survey of 1,713 California adults taken May 19-28. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth