California is bleeding nearly a million K-12 students by 2031 as families flee unaffordable housing — but the state's landmark zoning reforms produced almost nothing (266 projects out of 6.1 million eligible parcels), and the students who stay face a UC system where a 2022 funding compact replaced the Master Plan's institutional design with graduation quotas that are pulling research faculty into teaching remedial material.
Read Top Post →SB 9 opened 6.1 million parcels to duplexes and lot splits — and produced 266 projects, a utilization rate of 0.004%. Two companion laws for commercial and faith-owned land recorded zero projects. Cities passed 140 local ordinances designed to neutralize SB 9 without outright defiance, and the state’s enforcement rarely went past a letter. California legalized the housing that might have kept families from leaving. It just never got built.
Jul 01, 2026 · 8 min
The 2022-2027 Multi-Year Compact between Sacramento and the UC system replaced the Master Plan’s careful matching of students to institutions with a blunt graduation quota tied to state funding. The result: research faculty hired to work at the frontier are now teaching high-school-level material, while the tiered system that once gave every Californian an affordable pathway — community colleges, CSUs, UCs — loses its coherence. Fewer students entering a system that’s also degrading from within.
Jun 15, 2026 · 10 min
