Single family zoning was implemented back in the days when California was a red state. California is still a very red state; there are more Republicans in California than most of the U.S. South combined.
Perhaps, but also it was Berkeley that invented single family zoning. There are some skeletons in the Progressive movement from a century ago, whether its eugenics or an idea of eliminating tenements, which enabled things like the destruction of the Urban Renewal movement in the following decades!
And for fixing the current housing problems, there are still a good chunk of Republican representatives in the state legislature and they are even more strident in defending zoning and keeping out apartments than the Democratic representatives. At the local level, though, I think that housing issues are an axis that is pretty non-partisan, with only small amounts of partisan influence on the beliefs of people. I think the YIMBY groups have tried really really hard to keep it from becoming partisan, because even if it does become a partisan issue and move some deeply Democratic places, it would then cement Republican places against the issue and it would be nearly impossible to make overall progress on the issue.
epistasis|6 days ago
And for fixing the current housing problems, there are still a good chunk of Republican representatives in the state legislature and they are even more strident in defending zoning and keeping out apartments than the Democratic representatives. At the local level, though, I think that housing issues are an axis that is pretty non-partisan, with only small amounts of partisan influence on the beliefs of people. I think the YIMBY groups have tried really really hard to keep it from becoming partisan, because even if it does become a partisan issue and move some deeply Democratic places, it would then cement Republican places against the issue and it would be nearly impossible to make overall progress on the issue.