Separate problems have to be addressed separately.

(1) For most people, the only way to begin to smooth out the California housing market's vast distortions and dysfunctions is to: (a) take away the ability of unreasonably NIMBY neighbors to veto housing they don't want nearby; (b) change zoning and permitting laws that make it difficult to develop housing, while at the same time preserve neighborhood character (admittedly this is a difficult balancing act); (c) not ruin the rental housing market by making life for reasonable small-business landlords difficult and encouraging them to quit the business (while at the same time not tolerating bad landlords' abuses).

(2) As for the enormous statewide problem of mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people, we must restore treatment in various types of facilities. Currently, unhoused people brain-damaged by drugs or otherwise seriously mentally ill can only be asked to accept treatment, and if they refuse, as many do, they’re not treated, because state law makes it almost impossible. Some are too incapacitated to be asked to consent and must be treated involuntarily if necessary, subject to judicial safeguards.

Anyone who purports to be able to offer a precise answer to this enormously complex issue is doing the voters a disservice. I cannot indulge in that. I will study specific pieces of legislation as they come before me.

We cannot repeat the disaster of the loss of in-person instruction that happened during Covid. As I understand it, private schools in California remained open for the most part and without dire consequences. The public schools or institutions that influence them seem to have panicked about having children in classrooms even when, again as I understand it, health authorities said it would be safe. In a recent study, California ranked 50th among the states in the loss of in-person learning, with only 19.2% of instruction in public schools taking place in classrooms during Covid. But I am not an expert in this area and do not claim to have a complete answer.

We need major infrastructure improvements. Among them, I would favor a pipeline or pipelines bringing water from British Columbia or the Great Lakes. To be sure, Canadians or other states would have to consent, but California is wealthy and could pay generously for water. It would be a form of trade, and trade is universally understood among economists to benefit all parties to it.

If pipelines prove to be politically infeasible, then we need desalinization plants and more dams. Desalinization is expensive and has a high carbon footprint, I gather. Dams have other environmental consequences. But to do as little as we have while the state's population has multiplied is foolish and courts disaster during future prolonged droughts.