A serious conversation about California’s housing crisis is long overdue. An ongoing lag in home construction, aggravated by the excessive regulations the state is unfortunately famous for, will continue to deny millions of Californians affordable housing opportunities until the problem is taken seriously by state and local policymakers.

Over the last decade, production averaged fewer than 80,000 new homes annually, far short of the 180,000 new homes needed to be produced annually to keep up with need, according to the draft form of the Statewide Housing Assessment produced through the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Comparatively, between 1955 and 1989, California averaged more than 200,000 new homes annually.

California’s housing crisis comes down to simple economics. There is a growing demand for and limited supply of housing. The practical consequences are felt by millions of Californians every single day. Homeownership rates in California are the lowest they have been since the 1940s. Most renters are rent-burdened, paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rents, while nearly one-third pay more than 50 percent of their income toward housing.

Given the reality that roughly one in five Californians live in poverty, according to the census’ Supplemental Poverty Measure, a shortage of affordable housing coupled with the ongoing shortfalls in housing production has certainly contributed to the growing problem of homelessness seen across the state.

Last year’s point-in-time count, as reported in the 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, found the number of Californians experiencing homelessness to be 118,142, accounting for 22 percent of all homeless people in the country. California also has the dubious distinction of accounting for nearly half of all unsheltered homeless people — with 78,390 living without shelter. For large segments of the population who haven’t been pushed that far, longer commutes and higher costs of living have become a part of life.

California, even with its robust welfare state, will not be able to spend its way out of this problem. Over the long-term, the state will need to be a place where people can not only get decent paying jobs, but can afford a place to live.

The Statewide Housing Assessment highlights many of the reasons the state has gotten to this point — many of which are largely beyond anyone’s control, including weak market conditions and the high cost of land. But there are factors that are within the control of governments and individuals alike.

One of these is the harm of lawsuits brought under the California Environmental Quality Act. “Costly and expensive, CEQA lawsuits can delay a development for years and/or make the development financially infeasible,” the report notes, citing separate studies showing that residential developments accounted for large percentages of CEQA lawsuits. Statewide, according to a report by law firm Holland & Knight, one in five CEQA lawsuits are targeted toward residential developments. In Southern California, this proportion reaches one in three.

Other problems include ballot box zoning, community opposition to development, multilayered discretionary reviews, high impact fees and the inadequacy of many local planning departments to develop planning documents in a timely fashion.

The longer these problems persist, the more expensive life in California will continue to be, and the more difficult it will be to resolve.