Is California Affordable? Here's Who Says Yes

Do you feel like you can afford to live in California?

If you said no to that question, you’d be in good company: 43 percent of Californians would agree with you.

The one part of the state where they’d be less likely to feel the crunch? The Bay Area — land of some of the nation’s most crushing housing and child care costs — where 65 percent of registered voters said, yes, they feel as if they can afford to live here.

Still, 77 percent of Californians acknowledged the state’s housing crisis, including 85 percent in the Bay.

And that’s compared with 52 percent of Los Angeles County residents who said they felt as if they could afford to live in the Golden State and 53 percent of Inland and Valley residents.

Those are a few findings from Quinnipiac University’s first California-specific poll.

Quinnipiac is known for its national election polling, as well as a source for public opinions in states like New York, New Jersey, Florida and Ohio. But until now, not California.

Doug Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said that’s mostly a function of momentum.

Tim Malloy, assistant director of the poll, said the university had always had its eye on the West.

“For a long time, we’ve been talking about it,” he said. “The last several months, there’s been a confluence of issues — the wall, immigration, global warming, climate, housing home prices and potential presidential candidates — it’s got everything.”

California, Malloy said, is a microcosm of the country.

Still, he said, he was a little surprised by some of the results.

For instance, one number that got a bit of attention: While 58 percent of Californians said they’d be excited if Sen. Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, only 40 percent said she’d make a good president.

“She’s very, very well-known,” Malloy said. And if people would be excited for her candidacy, “why the heck wouldn’t she make a good president?”

Schwartz said one more statistic that struck him as curious was that 43 percent of voters said forest mismanagement was more responsible for the severity of wildfires than climate change. The same percentage said the opposite — that they thought climate change was more responsible than forest mismanagement.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.