Too Much Giddyup, Not Enough Whoa

Local housing policy in California does not suffer from a lack of ambition. Cities have plenty of that. More than their share, perhaps, as new housing laws are churned out with such dizzying regularity that it’s hard for rental owners to keep pace with the constant changes. What’s missing is restraint. The willingness to stop, reassess, and remove policies that no longer, or never did, serve their intended purpose.

After years of piling regulation on top of regulation, too many cities’ housing systems now resemble dense, overgrown regulatory thickets. Tangled, prickly and increasingly detached from the outcomes they were built to produce. Each new rule is rationalized, each fee is justified, and each mandate is declared necessary, until the point is reached where the system's most reliable result is the quiet funneling of rental owners toward the exits. All while insisting with great confidence that this is protecting the public.

Regulatory Makework 

In policy circles, activity is often mistaken for progress. Passing a new law feels productive. Expanding enforcement signals resolve. Adding oversight reassures constituents that something is being done.

By contrast, stopping, or even pausing, feels dangerous. Not dangerous in the human sense of the word, but politically dangerous. 

Repealing a rule suggests it may not have been necessary in the first place. Simplifying a process implies that complexity wasn’t required. Admitting that a policy missed its mark undermines the comforting belief that good intentions reliably produce good outcomes. All of these are inconvenient realizations, which helps explain why such accountability is rarely undertaken. 

The result is a system that can only grow, never correct.

The Courage to Remove, Not Just Add

Still, housing laws in many California cities are in dire need of reform. But true reform calls for not just adding new laws or modifying old ones but also eliminating some as well. It requires identifying which policies actually improved housing outcomes and which ​ones merely created friction. It means distinguishing between oversight that prevents abuse and oversight that simply consumes time and capital. It demands humility to acknowledge that some well-intentioned rules now do more harm than good.

This kind of reform does not lend itself to slogans. It does not generate applause lines. And it rarely fits neatly into campaign literature​, which is all the more reason we don’t see it more often.

Housing Is Not a Moral Abstraction

Housing policy is often discussed in moral terms, which is understandable. Shelter matters. Stability matters. Fairness matters. But housing is also physical. It is built, maintained, financed, and managed by people making decisions in the real world. Policies that ignore this, or that recast housing providers as adversaries instead of important contributors to the housing supply, eventually collide with reality itself.

​A flawed policy cannot fix its own failures by demanding that reality try harder. No amount of regulation can compel investment where risk is too high. No volume of paperwork can substitute for reinvestment. And no enforcement strategy can produce housing where incentives discourage its existence.

The Quiet Exit No One Tracks

One of the least discussed consequences of regulatory overreach is the quiet exit. Small housing providers sell. Investors redeploy capital to other cities or states. Owners stop improving properties and begin planning their departure.

These exits rarely make headlines. There is no announcement. No violation. No enforcement action. Just the quiet transition to a market in which fewer and fewer are willing to participate in a system that feels burdensome and relentlessly adversarial. By the time the city notices, the damage is already done, and the economic impact of quiet disinvestment is already being felt.

A Different Measure of Success

A serious housing policy would measure success differently. Not by the number of forms filed or penalties issued, but by whether housing supply grows or shrinks; whether maintenance improves or declines; whether reinvestment accelerates or stalls; and whether participants stay engaged or quietly leave.

These are harder metrics. They invite uncomfortable answers. But at certain points in time, like now, they may be the only metrics that matter.

The Reform Cities Avoid​ …​ The Pause

The most meaningful reform that California cities with complex housing regulations could undertake is not a new law or new program, but a structured pause. A deliberate review of existing policies with one question in mind: Is this helping, hurting or doing nothing at all?

And if the answer is “hurting” or “nothing,” the response should not be defensiveness. It should be repeal.

At a certain stage, the problem is no longer insufficient regulation but insufficient restraint. Cities that refuse to examine the regulatory framework they’ve built will continue layering onto systems already straining under their own weight. The result will not be protection but attrition. Slow, quiet and rarely acknowledged. 

The choice for policymakers is not between compassion and protection, but between thoughtful correction and managed decline.

This message was printed in the January/February 2026 issue of Rental Housing Magazine. Wayne Rowland is the Board President of the East Bay Rental Housing Association.