Ezra Klein Grills CA’s Possible Governors | The Ezra Klein Show

0:00 in part because she does turn to the research,

0:02 she turns to the practitioners to inform the prior priorities she takes on.

0:07 So bottom line, uh to set her up for her remarks,

0:10 I will just say she knows intimately

0:12 the challenges that any next governor will face

0:14 on housing and also perhaps a few good

0:17 ideas on where real change just might be found.

0:19 Assembly member Wixs.

0:40 Hello Oakland.

0:44 Hello housesers.

0:47 I am so excited to be here today.

0:50 Welcome to the California Gubinatoral CANDIDATE HOUSING FORUM.

0:59 MY NAME IS BUFFY Wixs and it's my real name and I'm very happy to be here.

1:06 I want to thank the Housing Action Coalition, some woos,

1:12 UC Berkeley's Turner Center, the San Francisco Foundation,

1:20 and the Ezra Klein Show.

1:27 So when when I got elected in 2018, I knew I wanted to work on housing.

1:32 I was in my early 40s.

1:33 My husband and I, with a toddler,

1:35 had just purchased our first home in the Bay Area,

1:38 and it was a soul crushing experience, as I'm sure many of you can attest to.

1:46 And you know, I don't come from a lot.

1:49 I grew up in a mobile home in rural California

1:53 and I was embarrassed about this when I was a kid.

1:56 I didn't want to invite people over for slumber parties.

1:59 I dreamt of a house made of wood.

2:03 But it wasn't until I was older I

2:04 realized that that mobile home that my parents purchased

2:07 for $12,000 in 1978 provided for me the housing

2:12 security that allowed me to focus on my studies,

2:15 to go to community college, to graduate from university.

2:19 to go work for President Barack Obama's White House,

2:22 to run for office myself, to win to get into the legislature,

2:26 to become the housing chair,

2:27 and now to be the appropriations chair in the California State Assembly.

2:38 That mobile home allowed me to become me.

2:43 It was the housing security I needed to become my best self.

2:47 And for far too many families in our state,

2:50 that opportunity is far too out of reach.

2:54 And so when I got elected in 2018, I was the first time elected.

2:58 Had never been elected before.

2:59 But I started asking a lot of questions.

3:02 Why do we have tens of thousands of people on our streets

3:05 experiencing homelessness in one of the richest places on Earth?

3:10 Why do we have some of the highest homelessness

3:12 rates and lowest home ownership rates in the country?

3:16 Why are we 2.5 million homes shy of where we need to be.

3:20 And I quickly realized two things.

3:23 One, California's road to housing hell was paved with very good intentions.

3:29 Laws designed to slow construction had achieved their express purpose.

3:34 And the second thing I realized was that there were very powerful

3:38 entrenched interests in Sacramento that were

3:41 perfectly content with the status quo.

3:43 It was serving their narrow self-interest.

3:47 So, you know, we've made huge strides on policy in the last eight years,

3:53 but that change hasn't been easy.

3:55 And as someone who's not just bore witness

3:57 to this, but who's been on the front lines of it,

3:59 I can also tell you the politics of this is really difficult.

4:03 It means sometimes disagreeing with your friends.

4:06 That's hard to do in politics.

4:09 You know, we've put serious teeth into our state

4:12 laws requiring our local municipalities to plan for housing,

4:16 often against those local municipalities who don't want to do that.

4:21 We've achieved success in upzoning, in streamlining,

4:25 permitting, and reforming our Byzantine environmental review process,

4:30 often against our friends in labor and in the environmental community.

4:35 We've made most headway with ADUs and backyard casitas.

4:40 ADUs, backyard casitas, but again with vocal opposition from local nimi groups.

4:47 And so there's more to do, right?

4:49 We have to figure out the financing questions around housing.

4:53 Construction costs are still very high.

4:55 Home ownership rates are low.

4:57 But the point is this.

4:59 In my experience, in order to make the change that we want to see,

5:03 we have to be laser focused on results,

5:07 not what our special interest groups want.

5:11 Our special interests should be our special interest should be our poor,

5:18 our workingclass, our middle class families in California.

5:27 And I know this is a hard issue, but this requires leadership that's willing

5:34 to spend their political capital on this.

5:37 It requires leadership that is comfortable being uncomfortable.

5:43 And it requires leadership that will realign

5:47 a political coalition to get to yes.

5:51 So, thank you.

5:53 Yes.

5:54 Yes to housing.

5:57 So, one of these people that's about to walk out on stage,

6:01 I believe, is going to be our next governor.

6:04 It's not as reclined, so but one of these candidates that's about to walk

6:09 out on stage is going to be our next governor.

6:12 This is a very hard job.

6:15 This person will not be perfect.

6:18 They will make mistakes.

6:21 But what we, the voters, want to know, what we expect is that they will not just

6:26 hold the line on the progress that we have made,

6:29 but are they willing to break some

6:30 glass with decisive and aggressive action to advance

6:34 a pro-ousing agenda so that all of our families

6:37 can afford a roof over their head.

6:45 And we need to be held accountable to results and solutions.

6:49 And I say this as a lawmaker who loves to get my bills signed,

6:52 but I believe we need more ribbon cutings and less bill signing ceremonies.

7:01 So, let's spend the next 90 minutes getting

7:03 to know who's the biggest pro-ousing goorol candidate we have.

7:08 It is my total honor and privilege to introduce

7:11 to you the moderator of this forum, Mr.

7:15 Ezra Klene, and the candidates who are participating in this event.

8:02 All right.

8:03 Hello, Oakland.

8:11 All right.

8:11 Welcome to the beautiful Calvin Simmons Theater.

8:14 We are thrilled you're here.

8:16 We are thrilled that all of you are here.

8:19 Uh the candidates on the stage tonight are according

8:21 to the polls the five top Democratic candidates in this race.

8:26 Tom Styer, Javier Bera, Katie Porter, Matt Maym, and Antonio Via Regosa.

8:32 Give them a hand.

8:40 I should say we invited the top Republicans too.

8:42 Unfortunately, they could not make it tonight.

8:45 There have been there have been a lot of debates lately,

8:48 a lot of debates this week.

8:50 This is not one of them.

8:52 What we're doing here tonight is a forum and on one topic,

8:56 a topic that deserves 90 minutes of our attention,

8:58 which is California's housing crisis.

9:01 We're going to have three sections.

9:03 Each section, I'm going to spend about

9:04 six minutes talking with each candidate in turn.

9:07 I'll ask follow-ups if we have time.

9:09 I want to give people the opportunity to hear

9:11 all of you thinking through these issues aloud.

9:15 At the end of that six minutes, a bell will sound like this.

9:20 That bell slightly breaks my heart.

9:22 I'm a podcast host.

9:23 I want to give you all 90 minutes each.

9:25 Uh but you're going to get very mad at me if I don't keep this fair.

9:28 So, we're going to try to keep it very fair.

9:31 We are asking candidates not to jump in or interrupt each other.

9:34 You are free to criticize each other in your answers, but if you do it,

9:39 that candidate you criticize is going to get a minute

9:41 to respond and you are not going to get more time.

9:43 So, strategize accordingly.

9:47 And to the audience,

9:48 please hold your very much merited applause here until the end.

9:53 Candidates have not seen the questions here in advance,

9:55 nor have any of the organizations that are co-hosting the event.

9:59 With all of that out of the way, let's get to the reason we're actually here.

10:03 Governor Gavin Newsome came into office in 2019

10:06 with a promise to build millions more homes.

10:09 And in the years since, dozens of proousing laws have passed,

10:13 some of them written by heroic legislators in this very room.

10:17 And yet, the number of new homes being built

10:20 in California is basically the same as when Newsome took office.

10:24 Housing is a slow and hard problem to solve.

10:28 that some of these bills may just take time is true.

10:31 But we've also seen that they will take leadership and courage that even

10:36 good laws that we need encounter resistance and headwinds along the way.

10:40 So all of you want to build more homes.

10:43 You all have detailed plans to do so.

10:45 So the question of tonight is what has to happen

10:48 to convert these good intentions into homes that people can live in?

10:52 And how do we protect those in need or at risk in the meantime?

10:56 We're going to begin by taking on something you all identify as a problem.

11:00 The very high cost of construction in California.

11:04 And Mr.

11:04 Star, we're going to begin with you.

11:06 A Rand study found that the cost per square foot of constructing

11:09 an apartment in California is over twice that of constructing it in Texas.

11:14 Why do you think that is?

11:16 And what would you do about it?

11:19 So I know that in fact what's driving that up

11:23 is the way that we construct the cost of labor,

11:26 the cost of materials, and the cost of financing.

11:30 And for us to drive down the cost per square foot of housing to a place

11:36 where we can afford to build these houses and people can afford to buy them,

11:41 we're going to have to make some real changes in the way we're going about this.

11:45 So let's talk about two of them which is one about the construction

11:50 on site and we are we are building houses and we are

11:55 building apartment buildings the way we have been doing it for a hundred

11:58 years and there is new technology to do this where you basically

12:04 construct manufacture the uh parts of the house offsite the way you'd construct

12:12 or manufacture a car and then you assemble it onsite and the estimates

12:18 that people have both from the real world of having done it

12:22 but also projecting what they think they could do start at 20%.

12:28 And they go up from there and these are real

12:32 things and these are companies that are like manufacturing companies.

12:35 So therefore they need revenues and orders and the state

12:38 of California can do that and it can change the building codes.

12:43 The second thing in order to drive down the cost of housing is about finance.

12:47 And the state of California has has a number of finance programs.

12:51 In fact, Buffy Wixs is proposing a $10 billion housing bond,

12:55 which I think is incredibly important.

12:59 And I should say,

13:00 excuse me, excuse me, hold it till

13:03 And I should say that the nonprofit community bank

13:06 that my wife Cat Taylor and I started in Oakland,

13:09 California, has financed 17,000 low-income housing units.

13:13 We need to use finance much more aggressively to drive down the cost of housing.

13:19 And the the third thing I'll say is this.

13:22 The cities and counties in in California are

13:26 do not want to have housing in general.

13:28 As someone said to me one time,

13:30 they'd rather have a used car lot than they would a new housing uh you know,

13:36 a new apartment building.

13:37 The reason is used car lots don't go to school.

13:40 Used car lots don't take health care costs.

13:43 And so a real reason that housing is so expensive both

13:47 in terms of the time that it takes to get permits,

13:51 but also cities and counties will charge very large

13:56 fees up to 20% of the cost of the house

14:00 so that they can sort of preload the cost

14:02 of having new inhabitants uh in their community.

14:06 I've said that I will on day one call a special election to close

14:13 a corporate real estate tax loophole worth

14:16 over $20 billion to the state of California.

14:19 So that instead of when we're talking about

14:21 a new housing facility in a city or county.

14:24 It's not an unfunded liability, an unfunded mandate.

14:28 It's a funded mandate.

14:30 And we can then work with the cities

14:32 and counties and they can stop dragging their feet.

14:35 So, we're going to come back to the city and county question,

14:37 but I want to jump in on modular for a minute.

14:40 Modular housing has been promised and hoped for for a long time.

14:43 Uh, a lot of politicians have hyped it up.

14:45 Investors have invested in it and been disappointed.

14:48 The big companies in the space have often failed.

14:51 Cater raised two billion in private capital, went bankrupt.

14:54 Viv failed.

14:55 Integra failed.

14:56 Factory OS, which is biggest one in California,

14:58 was recently rebranded and recapitalized.

15:01 So, this is pretty central to the way you think about housing.

15:04 Why do you think it will be different?

15:06 Why do you think they failed actually and what

15:08 have you learned that would make it different now?

15:10 Well, let me say this.

15:11 There is a reason they failed and there's a reason that most startups fail,

15:14 Ezra, which is they don't have revenues and they don't have orders.

15:18 And so the question is, A, does the technology work?

15:23 B, does it drive down costs?

15:25 and C do they have enough orders so that they're

15:28 making money and able to sustain themselves and then

15:31 to finance themselves into much bigger um enterprises and the answer

15:36 is the state of California can change the building codes.

15:39 the state of California can give those orders

15:42 and we can actually drive this business

15:45 so that in fact not only do they do what they say they can do,

15:48 but they can get economies of scale going forward to get

15:52 the kind of size that it needs so that we can really

15:55 get what they say they can do because the estimates right now

15:58 are we can drive down the cost per square foot by 20%.

16:01 But I can tell you because I've talked

16:03 to them that the people who run these companies

16:05 see that as a first step and they can think they can go much further than that.

16:09 And let me say this, there are 40,000 units in San Francisco,

16:14 California that are permitted that are zoned

16:17 that are not being built because they

16:19 can't afford to build them to a price that people can afford to buy them.

16:22 So this is actually the ability to drive down this cost is

16:26 an absolutely critical part of building you

16:30 know multiples of what we've been building

16:32 for the last four years and in fact solving the housing crisis and putting

16:37 it in a place where working people working families can afford to buy.

16:42 So it's really getting this right is a critical part of the mix.

16:45 Thank you Mr.

16:45 Styer.

16:46 Mr.

16:46 Bera, yesterday you released a comprehensive housing plan.

16:49 You say in it that it costs too much to build a home in California.

16:53 You also say in it that you want more

16:54 union labor in home building and higher wage standards.

16:57 For Democrats, there's a pretty wrenching trade-off here.

17:00 An analysis from the Turner Center found that those kinds of standards,

17:03 notably paying prevailing wage,

17:05 increase a cost per unit of housing by about $94,000.

17:08 How do you both cut the cost of housing

17:10 and increase the wages behind it at the same time?

17:14 Well, I think the legislature and Assembly Member

17:16 uh Wixs took the first measures that we need

17:18 to get us to that point where we can do is make sure that we are building,

17:22 we're building with men and women who are skilled

17:25 and we're doing it at a price that we can afford.

17:27 And so, as we've seen, if you do infill housing,

17:30 and you make sure that if you have housing

17:33 units that will be up to a certain height, up to usually about eight stories,

17:37 if you're going to do that, then you have the right to be able as a developer

17:41 to try to get the the labor that you need and try to negotiate a good price.

17:45 If you go beyond that, you're talking about major construction.

17:48 Prevailing wage will be the standard.

17:50 I think that's a good approach.

17:52 And then what we do is provide to those that are

17:54 in the lower uh height housing the opportunity

17:58 to uh go out and do private actions if

18:01 you find that there are violations of labor laws.

18:03 But I will tell you this, we should not

18:06 believe that we have to build homes by making it

18:09 so it's impossible for the carpenter who builds a home

18:12 to never be able to afford to buy it.

18:13 Uh I'm going to make sure that those workers who are

18:16 building those homes can actually think about buying those homes themselves.

18:20 And it all it takes is for us

18:21 to work together to make sure we are dropping costs.

18:23 It's far more than just labor.

18:25 There are a lot of things that are

18:26 involved here and we would we would tackle those.

18:28 So I take that point but tell me then about how you balance

18:31 the cost because what you are describing

18:33 here if you begin paying prevailing wage, you begin paying higher wages.

18:36 You do increase the cost structure.

18:37 We all want to see higher wages.

18:39 I take your point very much.

18:40 The people who build a home should be able to buy a home.

18:42 There's nothing there's nothing to disagree with in that.

18:45 But you have to cut the cost of construction somewhere.

18:49 You got financing, you've got labor, you've got materials.

18:53 If you are increasing a cost driver, what are you decreasing?

18:56 And by how much?

18:58 Well, if we could get rid of the Trump taxes,

19:00 the tariffs uh that are now being found illegal,

19:04 that would help us reduce the cost of building materials.

19:06 If we could stop going to war in foreign lo

19:09 the cost of construction in California was high before Donald Trump.

19:12 It was high, but not as high as it is now.

19:14 And we could lower those costs.

19:16 transportation of building materials is very

19:18 expensive and so let's not disregard

19:20 that we need Washington DC to be helping us but to your point

19:23 and remember again labor costs for most homes that are going to be

19:27 built will not be based on simply the highest rates that you have

19:32 in the large mega uh projects uh the legislation that was passed

19:36 by assembly member Wixs provided different ways to do this which would make

19:40 the labor cost affordable for developers we also have to deal with financing

19:44 we have to have a stable force of financ fin source of financing.

19:47 We can't just do it one time.

19:48 I think the the measure that u Assembly Member Wixs

19:51 is going to try to put on the ballot is good.

19:53 I think the measure that former Assembly can describe

19:56 what that measure is just for people not following.

19:58 10,000 uh $10 million uh billion dollars, excuse me,

20:01 of bonding financing so that you could start building affordable housing.

20:05 uh the 40,000 units that Tom mentioned that are ready to go

20:09 except the financing that $10 billion would be readily available to get

20:13 those shovel ready projects up and running which helps give confidence

20:17 to the California families that are looking to get into a place.

20:20 But what is bringing the cost of construction down here?

20:22 I'm hearing I'm hearing new bond programs,

20:25 but the cost of construction is too high.

20:27 That's what your plan says.

20:28 What brings it down?

20:29 So, one, you you go after the red tape.

20:32 So we try to streamline and again

20:33 the legislation that the legislature passed over this last

20:37 year helps reduce some of the uh red tape that you have at the state level.

20:40 We have to tack it at the uh local

20:42 level because of the the high fees that are imposed.

20:45 You have to also make sure that they aren't trying to use

20:49 uh their ordinances to try to prevent us from being able to build.

20:53 Remember that most home most housing that's

20:55 built today is reserved for single family homes.

20:59 Very little construction is done with apartments and condominiums.

21:03 Very little to buy other than single family homes.

21:05 We're never going to reach the number we need

21:07 if we continue to only build single family homes.

21:10 And that's why the legislation that allows us to really build out,

21:13 do the infill where we know we have

21:15 transportation will give us an opportunity to increase

21:18 greater amounts of housing at affordable rates

21:21 for people who need to either buy or rent.

21:24 And I think that if we do that and come

21:25 up with a stable source of funding into the future,

21:28 so it's not just a one-time housing bond that people can

21:31 count on, developer developers will begin to have confidence that we

21:35 are looking to give them a predictable predictable means of being

21:38 able to finance these projects and have them pencil out.

21:41 Thank you, Mr.

21:42 Bera.

21:42 Miss Porter, you've often said on the trail here that time is money.

21:45 Something I hear from developers, too.

21:47 The rand study I mentioned found that it takes about

21:50 27 months to complete a multif family housing project in Texas,

21:54 37 months to complete it in Colorado, and 49 months in California.

21:59 Why does it take so long here and what would you do about it?

22:02 So, first I love that you're talking about this Rand study

22:06 because this is the second time that we've had a housing

22:09 event where we were asked essentially what makes construction costs higher

22:15 and I think some people still haven't read the study because

22:19 what the study I have read the study what the study

22:23 point and we we got asked about it before and nobody

22:25 read it and doesn't seem like they have since the study

22:28 is very very clear that the the speed is the driver.

22:32 Now, that's not to say there aren't a lot

22:34 of things that were mentioned that contribute to the speed,

22:37 but if Colorado, if we could be 22 months faster, which is what Colorado does,

22:42 which does care about the environment and does have good worker standards,

22:45 then the estimates are we could take 10 or even 20% off the price,

22:49 and that was market rate.

22:51 So, yes, we need more housing,

22:53 but we also need that h we more housing is a tool to less expensive housing.

22:58 And so I think it's really important to think

23:00 about all the different tools in your toolkit.

23:02 I strongly support the pending legislation

23:05 that would create one uniform statewide permit,

23:08 making it easier for local everyone to have the same permit,

23:11 easier for the state to monitor those denials.

23:14 I also think it's a really good idea to limit

23:17 how many sort of last second add-ons can come.

23:21 So I think right now you ought to have to if you're a city and you get a permit,

23:25 you have should have 30 days.

23:26 That's the proposal in the legislature.

23:28 You could argue it could be 45 or 60

23:30 to say this is what the fees are going to be.

23:33 This is your contribution for sewer.

23:34 This is your contribution for school and then you cannot do what we

23:38 see now which is just a little bit more and a little bit

23:40 more and a little bit more which is a little bit more delay

23:43 and then a little bit more cost until pretty soon the project is unaffordable.

23:46 So those are just a couple of ideas.

23:48 I also do think there are innovations in architectural design

23:52 particularly for multifamily that could

23:54 be really helpful especially smaller multif

23:57 family where we're seeing you things that are four units have

24:00 to apply the same standards essentially as something that's 400 units.

24:04 So that also adds to the time unnecessarily without providing much

24:09 benefit of those smaller unit projects which we need a lot of.

24:12 We yes we need all of the big units too

24:14 but we've got a lot of different geographies in California.

24:17 They're going to solve this problem different ways,

24:19 but they all need to do it much faster because time is money.

24:24 There's a difficult irony you see not only in that study,

24:27 but it comes up again and again in my own housing reporting.

24:29 There is no form of housing the Democrats feel more strongly about,

24:33 support more unanimously than affordable housing.

24:36 Affordable housing costs more to construct per

24:39 square foot than market rate housing does.

24:41 When you look at that same study that we are hyping up here on the stage,

24:45 what you see is that it costs about twice per uh it costs twice

24:49 as much to construct a square foot

24:51 of market rate housing in California in Texas.

24:53 Four times as much to do a square foot

24:56 of affordable housing as market rate housing in Texas.

24:59 Now that affordable housing is being built partly on the public dime,

25:02 why is it so much more expensive here to do affordable housing than market rate?

25:06 What do you do about it?

25:06 This is not a surprise because look,

25:08 affordable housing projects face more delays.

25:12 They face more obstacles.

25:13 They face more community resistance.

25:15 They face more restrictions on zoning.

25:17 People don't necessarily want them in a lot of our communities.

25:21 And so the other piece of this is that land becomes more

25:24 expensive every time you have uncertainty

25:26 about whether something is going to happen.

25:28 The costs go up.

25:29 The other issue is that affordable housing

25:31 developers are piecing together financing from seven

25:35 different pools of money that are all

25:36 designed to make a contribution and you just

25:38 assume get the seventh thing and you're ready to go and then the seventh

25:41 one expires or you lose that funding or someone changes the term of a program.

25:45 So one consolidated bigger pot of money which

25:50 is more similar to what market rates using, right?

25:52 They're going to Wall Street,

25:53 they're getting the the money and they're using it.

25:55 One consolidated pot of pot of money would help.

25:58 The other thing is the state should be putting land up for affordable housing.

26:03 That is the ma that is one of the major factors.

26:05 It's one of the hardest ones to solve.

26:07 You can actually solve labor by not going backwards on housing in labor policy,

26:13 which the other candidates both have.

26:15 I think we ought to be trying to drive down the cost of construction,

26:18 but the land is the a tricky piece.

26:20 The state should contribute land for affordable housing.

26:23 When you say the other candidates are

26:24 going backwards on labor, what do you mean?

26:26 So, I have not I have said that I do not think

26:29 today or now is the time to do prevailing wage and residential.

26:34 And when we were in front of the labor fed, I was the only candidate.

26:37 I don't believe you were in front of the labor fed.

26:39 So, I just want to make it clear.

26:40 But those of us who were in front of the labor fed, I was the only one who said,

26:44 "I'm not doing skilled and trained in full today for residential housing because

26:51 it's going to drive up the cost." And I took the heat from labor.

26:56 I stood up to labor.

26:57 And I Lorina Gonzalez got, you know, it was right there.

27:01 And I am not scared of anybody because I've got

27:04 three teenagers that I do not want living on my couch.

27:08 And you all seem very lovely, but I don't want you living on my couch

27:12 or a street corner or in someone's attic.

27:15 I want you to all have housing where you can flourish.

27:17 And so you cannot There is a pathway to keep building that workforce.

27:23 There is a big need,

27:24 a huge need to enforce labor violations and abusive labor practices,

27:29 which unions have often been very helpful at doing.

27:32 You could also do that through actually having

27:34 government oversight of wage violations and and workforce violations.

27:38 And that would be my approach.

27:39 Thank you, Miss Porter.

27:40 Mayor Mayan, San Jose has been able

27:42 to approve over 20,000 new homes for construction,

27:45 most of which did not get built because economics didn't work out.

27:49 What could Sacramento do to get those 20,000 homes built?

27:55 Well, thanks for doing this, Ezra.

27:56 There's no more important issue.

27:58 Just want to say good evening to everyone.

27:59 It's great to be in Oakland.

28:01 Thank you all for coming out and being pro housing.

28:03 Uh, this issue is very personal for me.

28:06 I grew up in a house remembering my parents argue about how we

28:09 were going to pay the mortgage and we were lucky to have a mortgage.

28:11 My sisters have since moved out of state

28:14 because they couldn't afford the cost of living here.

28:18 Uh, so you asked about the state and first let me

28:21 as I come around to what we can do across the board,

28:24 let me just share what we've done in San Jose because I came

28:26 in to this problem of we've approved 22,000 homes and they're not getting built.

28:31 So we're saying yes and we're celebrating the beautiful

28:33 rendering and it's in the paper and everybody's excited

28:36 except the neighbors who say we don't want it

28:38 and it doesn't matter because we don't break ground.

28:40 And if you look at the Rand study,

28:42 its time and its fees are the two big levers we have control over.

28:47 and the state can impose upon cities some standards

28:52 and requirements and caps that can hold us accountable.

28:55 Now, we didn't wait for that in San Jose.

28:57 In the last two years,

28:59 we have moved our multifamily housing approvals in our downtown,

29:04 all of our planned growth areas along all

29:06 of our transit corridors to what's called a ministerial approval.

29:09 Meaning, it's essentially by right.

29:11 Doesn't go to the planning commission, doesn't come to the city council.

29:14 It's just a weekly hearing in the planning department and you get told to go.

29:18 It actually exempts SQA.

29:20 So you're just you're building by right if you conform with what

29:23 we've zoned and we've zoned for dense multif family housing in these areas.

29:27 We have dramatically reduced the timeline for building.

29:31 So I am deep in this right now as a mayor of a big city.

29:35 We just had a 560 unit project get approved in no time.

29:40 Came in, got the approval.

29:42 They're ready to go.

29:43 So that's speed.

29:44 Now the state can impose those standards and set deadlines and use its

29:49 ability to basically impose effectively a builder's remedy by right and say if

29:54 you don't meet these turnaround times city or county the developer is going

29:58 to by law have the right to build a conforming project on fees.

30:03 We have accumulated I mean I can tell you in my city

30:06 over 10 pages worth of fees that look good on paper.

30:09 It's to mitigate every imaginable.

30:11 It's traffic and and park fees and affordable

30:15 housing fees and they all sound good.

30:18 On their own, they're all justifiable and they're they're well intended,

30:21 but you stack them up and they're adding 10 to 20% to the cost of housing.

30:27 We had a really tough conversation on our city council.

30:30 I came to our council and said,

30:32 "We've got to cut the one-time fees in order to get the housing

30:36 in the ground." And the good news is if we build the housing,

30:40 we make up the revenue over time.

30:42 We have more property taxes, more sales taxes,

30:45 more workers, more jobs, more dynamism.

30:47 We we eventually in the long run are better off.

30:50 But it's a tough trade-off to make because

30:52 you get yelled at by the park advocates,

30:54 by the affordable housing advocates, by every other advocate you can imagine.

30:58 We had a council member literally lose his seat

31:01 not long ago in San Jose and our last

31:04 mayor lose his council majority over a fee reduction

31:08 because it was framed as a giveaway to developers.

31:10 But but there's still a number of big of big projects that have

31:13 not been able to go forward because the economics aren't working for you.

31:16 So we what could you do as governor to make it work for cities like San Jose?

31:19 So to finish the point, Ezra,

31:21 we we cut the fees by over 2/3 and 2,000 homes got under construction last year.

31:28 Another 2,000 are securing financing as we speak and will break ground.

31:33 And what the state can do is cap local fees.

31:36 A lot of these fees are not really fees.

31:39 We allow these bogus nexus studies

31:41 that employ a cottage industry of consultants.

31:44 No offense to any of the consultants in the room.

31:46 um that the nexus is pretty loose.

31:49 Nobody's getting $65,000 worth of value out of the neighborhood park.

31:54 I'm sorry.

31:54 I love our parks, but I think what we ought to do is

31:58 cap fees at a much lower level state top- down policy and require

32:04 that a city that wants to impose a higher fee actually produce

32:08 to the state a feasibility study that shows that the project can still pencil.

32:12 Because this is the problem.

32:14 We don't control interest rates.

32:15 We don't control the cost of timber, but timelines at the local level and all

32:20 these fees are completely levers within our control and we've

32:24 made excuses for far too long and it's

32:27 blocked tens of thousands of units in our cities.

32:31 Thank you, Mr.

32:31 Maym.

32:32 Uh Mr.

32:32 Beosa, your campaign site defends Prop 13, California's cap on property taxes.

32:37 You talk about holding the line on property taxes.

32:40 Prop 13 pushes cities to raise fees on new housing because

32:43 they aren't collecting enough in property taxes to pay the bills.

32:46 It pushes them to prefer retail

32:48 and commercial building over residential building.

32:50 It pushes against home owner selling because to sell

32:52 to lose what is effectively a tax break.

32:55 I know Prop 13 is popular.

32:57 It's easy for me to sit here and talk about it.

32:59 But you say you're willing to do the unpopular things to fix the housing crisis.

33:02 Why isn't Prop 13 reform one of them?

33:05 First of all, I didn't vote for Prop 13.

33:08 I'm on record opposing Prop 13 since 1978.

33:13 Uh, look it up.

33:14 Am I misreading your campaign site?

33:16 Well, I do believe that we need to hold property taxes down,

33:20 but let me uh explain.

33:24 First of all, Tommy Styer is right.

33:26 What he was talking about, it's called the fiscalization of land use.

33:31 And because of Prop 13, we have a situation where we reward a small mall,

33:41 strip mall, more than we would housing.

33:44 So many cities push back against it.

33:47 So with respect uh to I'm saying with the laws we have today,

33:52 hold the line on property taxes, but I think we need to fix the whole

33:56 broken tax system along the lines of think long.

33:59 Think Long has said that what we have today when we passed Prop 13,

34:04 commercial properties were paying 60% of the freight.

34:07 Homeowners were paying 40%.

34:09 Now it's the other way around.

34:11 We uh property can't move.

34:15 People can.

34:16 It's why I've opposed uh the billionaire tax

34:19 because I said they're just going to leave.

34:21 But I do believe we need to fix Prop 13, but fix the whole broken tax system.

34:27 But within the laws that we have today, Ezra, yes.

34:31 Hold the line on property taxes.

34:33 So, walk me through how you would fix that tax system.

34:35 Well, big pardon?

34:37 Walk me through how you would fix that tax system.

34:38 How do we fix it?

34:39 Yeah.

34:39 As you're saying, you want to do it more comprehensively than Prop 13 reform.

34:43 We need to fix Prop 13.

34:44 I just told you we went from 60% commercial uh to now uh to now 40%.

34:53 I'm sorry.

34:54 today.

34:54 We said back then homeowners were paying 40%.

34:58 Commercial was paying 60%, now it's the other way around.

35:02 We got to change that.

35:03 That's one.

35:04 Two, I I do believe that we have

35:06 to address the fact that people that bought a home

35:09 before 1978 uh don't have to pay the same

35:13 taxes that people who buy a house today do.

35:16 And that that's not fair either.

35:18 We want to keep those costs down,

35:20 but we have to address the fact that my generation was benefited

35:25 by the greatest generation that made sacrifices so we could buy a home.

35:29 And by the way, I bought a home at 25 years old.

35:32 I was working at a nonprofit.

35:34 Today, young families can't buy that because

35:37 the average down payment is $140 to $160,000.

35:42 But fixing the the broken tax system,

35:44 uh we got to address the fact we don't have a service tax.

35:47 Almost most states do.

35:50 We got to fix the the upper income tax.

35:52 They're they're those people are leaving and we've

35:55 got to address the fact that we overrely.

35:57 I'm the only person on this stage that's

35:59 actually been the speaker of the California State Assembly.

36:02 I had to balance two budgets with a surplus and I did both times.

36:07 The fact is we can do that in times of you know good times and bad

36:13 times we can't because the people at the top

36:16 are paying the vast majority of the taxes.

36:19 So you think long has put a proposal to spread

36:22 them across the economy so that we're not overrelying

36:26 on the upper income tax so that we can tax

36:28 more and incentivize cities to build housing not strip malls.

36:33 Great.

36:34 So it sounds like you want to move the line on property taxes.

36:36 Do you think the system is not working as it currently stands?

36:38 The system's not working.

36:39 Yes.

36:40 And how then does that give you some movement on fees?

36:43 Right.

36:43 We've heard a couple of the candidates on stage talk about the various

36:46 fees that are layered on in part because of the way property taxes work.

36:49 How do you approach those?

36:50 When when Matt and I are on the stage,

36:53 we tend to agree a lot because he's right.

36:56 Impact fees are killing us.

36:58 About 150.

36:59 Can you describe what impact fees are for people who are he mentioned it?

37:03 parking fees, all the fees that every group says, all good things, by the way.

37:08 And your book, the the essence of your book is

37:11 that Democrats don't build anymore because we're looking for perfect.

37:15 And perfect doesn't exist.

37:16 That's what happens when you have the kind of experience the two of us do.

37:20 At the end of the day, I built more market rate, workforce, affordable,

37:25 and homeless housing in eight years in the middle of a recession

37:28 than they did in the in the 12 years before me.

37:32 The downtown skyline went from 20,000 people to 60,000.

37:36 I'm the first person in the United States of America, mayor,

37:39 to do uh transit oriented development districts

37:42 so that we're building housing along transit districts.

37:45 So, what Buffy Wixs and Bob Hzburg are here are doing there.

37:50 These are the things that we need to do to drive down costs,

37:54 to build housing, and to make sure that young people can buy a home again.

37:59 Thank you, Mr.

38:00 Vosa.

38:01 I I want to talk a bit about one of the difficult fights that a lot

38:06 of housing projects have run into, which

38:08 is the conflict with cities and counties.

38:10 And Mr.

38:11 Bera, you were state attorney general

38:13 when California began suing cities over housing.

38:16 You sued Huntington Beach.

38:18 You led the San Mateo case.

38:19 It expanded the Housing Accountability Act zone of authority.

38:23 Governor Nuome has now threatened lawsuits against 15 more cities

38:26 and counties for dragging their feet or opposing state housing law.

38:30 Do these lawsuits work to build more housing?

38:33 I mean, Hunten Beach, it's been just years of legal wrangling, not new build.

38:38 And if they don't, what enforcement tools would you want

38:41 to use or create as governor to align cities with the state?

38:48 Ezra, you have to use every tool you have and certainly litigation is one.

38:52 You hate to have to go there.

38:53 You would hope that you would

38:54 have cooperation between state and local government.

38:58 Local governments have for any number of reasons

39:00 decided they want to be able to control

39:03 what happens when it comes to housing

39:05 in their jurisdiction and they do have tools, zoning laws.

39:08 Uh we talk about these fees that they

39:10 try to collect to help them with infrastructure.

39:12 But what I would say is we have to have an agreement,

39:15 a state local government agreement that there has to be a clear path

39:20 on what the state of California will do when it comes to housing.

39:23 Every local government must then fall in place

39:25 to make sure they're doing their fair share.

39:27 The lawsuit against Huntington Beach was because

39:29 Huntington Beach had its own housing element plan.

39:32 It itself had made the made it clear that they needed

39:36 to build several hundred units of new housing and then they reiged.

39:40 And so when we sued them, we said you it's in your own plan.

39:43 You're just not willing to do it.

39:44 The reason we won is because they were violating the law.

39:48 The case against Sanontto County was simply to make

39:51 it clear that the state has a role when

39:53 it comes to housing because while we all are

39:56 Californians and we're like Angelinos or Oaklanders or whatever else,

40:00 we all have to be able to live and and work and survive in California.

40:05 So, the state of California has a role to play.

40:07 I defended the the law that said that every

40:11 jurisdiction is accountable to meet its housing uh responsibility.

40:15 And we prevailed in court and found that that law was constitutional,

40:18 which set the foundation for us to now be able to push and see

40:22 the legislation that has now become law that's going to let us bill more.

40:25 But has that law given access to the kinds

40:28 of penalties that are needed to make it work?

40:31 I mean, the Huntington Beach case is interesting because

40:33 the state and Hunting Beach have gone back and forth.

40:36 There was elections in Hunting Beach.

40:37 It led to more opposition and to my knowledge,

40:40 it has not led to the housing being built.

40:42 that there is some absence of sanction that is sufficient to make

40:47 the cities that don't want to do it agree with the state.

40:49 Two issues, Ezra and this I say as the former

40:52 chief and law enforcement officer for the state of California.

40:55 The difficulty with enforcement is sometimes the penalties,

40:58 the fines are never enough.

40:59 It's almost a cost of doing business to violate the law.

41:02 You're willing to pay the cost of the fines to not have to go in that direction.

41:06 The second problem is, of course, it takes forever.

41:08 And so I I take when I've been attorney general or or when

41:13 I was secretary of health and human services on the healthcare side,

41:15 the approach I took when there's a law

41:17 in place that requires you to do something, I would first give you leash.

41:20 I'd say I'm going to give you incentives

41:22 to do what you're supposed to do under the law.

41:24 At some point though, those incentives go down and at some

41:27 point we cross over and now becomes penalties.

41:29 And the penalties grow the longer it takes you

41:31 to conform to what the law says you have to do.

41:33 Incent them to come forward.

41:35 And if they don't, then start penalizing them for not coming forward.

41:38 Let me pick up on the incentives.

41:40 One of the lines I thought was interesting in your plan is quote,

41:42 "We will use a carrot approach as well.

41:44 Cities meeting their obligations should be first

41:46 in line for state resources." Which state resources?

41:51 Well, we do have some funding that would be available right

41:53 now in existing uh comm housing and community development uh agency funding,

41:58 but it's running out.

41:59 We do need to have a a funding source.

42:02 The initiatives that are on the ballot to create bonding authority

42:06 would help us have some of that funding that we would need.

42:08 But we would have to certainly make sure we're generating the source of funding.

42:11 The legislature does provide the state with some money.

42:13 It's not nearly enough.

42:14 But there is an opportunity to make it clear the funding that the state has will

42:19 first and foremost be allocated to those who

42:21 are conforming to their their state law obligations.

42:24 those who aren't the money that you could have gotten

42:26 is going to those who are actually fulfilling their housing requirements.

42:30 And let me uh pick up the question from the other side.

42:32 So you have cities, you know,

42:34 and again I'll use Huntington Beach as example and say we don't want to do this.

42:37 The representatives you're dealing with there are

42:39 elected on a platform of not doing this.

42:42 Why is it the state's prerogative to tell them what to do?

42:46 Well, the state same reason kids have to eat their broccoli.

42:49 I mean we have we we all have to we have to live by rules.

42:52 I I guarantee you everyone would love to be able to cross

42:55 through an intersection and not have to worry about the red light.

42:57 But we have rules.

42:58 I I live in New York.

42:59 Nobody worries about the red light.

43:02 Thank God this is California.

43:04 See, we we're not we're not Look, we're a society that believes that we we

43:09 must and we teach our kids to follow rules.

43:12 And if you're a city and you see

43:15 the housing crisis and you're not following the rules,

43:18 then get ready because I'm going to enforce.

43:20 I will use the powers of the state, working with the attorney general,

43:24 working with our housing and community development uh agencies and working

43:28 with those who are willing to push the envelope to say,

43:31 I'm going to give you a reason to do this building.

43:33 I'm going to give you an incentive.

43:35 I'll put you in the front of the line, but at some point,

43:38 you're going to pay the price because we need to build.

43:41 Mayor Mayhem, building on that, we we do see

43:44 repeatedly this dynamic where big housing bills passed in Sacramento,

43:47 then cities and counties find ways to delay or evade them.

43:51 You're a mayor right now, also running for governor.

43:54 How would you handle this tension between local

43:56 control and state goals differently than Governor Nuome has?

44:03 Well, I think actually I think Governor Nuomo has been a champion for housing

44:07 and and while I he and I have disagreed publicly on some other policy areas,

44:11 I think he's been bolder on housing than than other um past governors we've had.

44:17 And I give him a lot of credit for that.

44:18 I mean, my philosophy is that we should use our housing element process

44:24 and and the RENA targets to uh tell

44:28 cities and counties what is expected of them, the the policies, the programs,

44:34 and the zoning and the space they need to create

44:37 for housing and the ability to approve it quickly.

44:40 I talked about capping fees and we should give local control up

44:45 to the point where they lose the privilege of having that local control.

44:51 We I can tell you from experience we were on the receiving end of this.

44:55 We had a number of critiques of a housing element that started

45:00 uh under my predecessor and then around the time I came into office.

45:03 Can you describe what a housing element is?

45:05 This is a policy document that we as a city and and counties

45:10 as well have to submit to the state to basically show that we have

45:16 zoned to create room for new housing and that we have programs and policies

45:21 at the local level that will in fact enable that housing to get built.

45:25 And we had some critiques of our plan and it was a slow back and forth,

45:31 a slow process for getting it passed.

45:33 And like most other many other cities in the state,

45:37 we did not meet one of the deadlines for approval.

45:41 And the state has an accountability mechanism

45:44 that I would suggest is much more effective.

45:46 It's not fun to be on the receiving end of it,

45:48 but is much more effective than lawsuits,

45:50 which is what's called builder's remedy.

45:52 And I think that the the a lawsuit should be the last resort here.

45:57 I I feel very strongly that our next

45:59 governor cannot bring a lawyer's mindset to this problem.

46:05 It is a market failure.

46:06 It is a it is a process failure.

46:08 It's the cost stack.

46:10 It's the efficiency.

46:11 It's innovation like modular.

46:13 But in this case, when cities fail to meet permitting deadlines,

46:17 when they try to use fees and local building codes to block housing,

46:21 when they don't deliver on actually enabling housing to get built,

46:26 I think the state should override and create by mechanisms for developers

46:31 to move ahead projects whether or not the city likes it.

46:34 I think that's an accountability mechanism that's more effective, frankly,

46:38 because what we see with these lawsuits is they drag on for years.

46:42 they get appealed and eventually maybe the court

46:44 tells the locality go back and update your policies,

46:47 update your general plan, update your your housing element or whatever it is.

46:51 And we're not actually seeing housing get built.

46:53 Hunting and Beach is not building more housing.

46:55 To your point, um San Diego, I think, was sued I think when um Mr.

47:00 Berero was the AG and one of the projects

47:04 with 2,000 units still hasn't gotten built.

47:06 So, I think the law the legal path is

47:08 not particularly effective if we actually want to build housing.

47:11 Let me ask you about the other side of this question

47:14 which is persuasion and the relationship between the state and the cities.

47:17 Obviously it is better if there is alignment rather

47:20 than you have to go to builder's remedies or litigation.

47:23 So do you think there are ways to bring cities along?

47:27 I mean do you think there are you're obviously a very pro-ousing mayor

47:30 but you presumably know other mayors and you have seen these fights up close.

47:35 Are there things a governor could do

47:36 or things you would do as governor that would

47:39 that you think could lead to more cohesion

47:43 between the state goals and the city's preferences?

47:47 Yeah, I think we're going to need we've

47:49 talked a we touched on uh financing tools

47:53 and as you all probably know during the great

47:55 recession redevelopment went away went away in California.

48:00 And I think that what redevelopment offered was this tax increment financing,

48:06 meaning you could project future property tax increases,

48:10 the increment, and then pull that value forward

48:14 and bond against it to make local upgrades.

48:18 And I think we need to revisit having that tool in a limited fashion.

48:21 I think there some cities and counties got into trouble and racked up big debts.

48:25 And so there need to be guard rails.

48:27 But that is a way for cities to build the infrastructure that they need

48:33 without having to put all of that incremental cost on each new project upfront.

48:38 And I think it's a mechanism that could

48:40 be used to unlock more affordable housing,

48:42 more of the horizontal upgrades that would enable cities and counties

48:48 to u see the fiscal benefits of building housing faster.

48:53 Mr.

48:53 Pacer, you were mentioning there over the question

48:54 of whether or not the litigation is effective.

48:56 you have one minute to expand on that.

48:59 And I believe we as Matt didn't identify the project specifically,

49:02 but this was a project in the San Diego County

49:05 area that was in the hills in wild wildfire risky areas.

49:10 Uh it was a pretty large development, several thousand units.

49:13 It had one route for egress.

49:16 And we went to the developer and we went to the county and said,

49:19 "This is a safety hazard.

49:21 This is something that could lead to the loss

49:24 of life if indeed we have a wildfire.

49:27 This was when I was AG between 2018

49:29 uh 2017 and 2021 way before Palisades and Aladena.

49:34 And we simply said to them,

49:36 if you're going to build that many housing units and people are

49:38 going to be living up there and there's a wildfire that hits,

49:41 you better have a way for these folks to be able to save their lives.

49:44 Having one route of egress was not going to do it.

49:47 So we said to them, if you're not going to take care of this, guess what?

49:50 We're gonna have to sue you.

49:51 We tried.

49:52 We tried not to do the litigation, but sometimes, Matt,

49:54 it does help to have someone who knows how to enforce the law.

49:57 Uh, Mr.

49:57 Veros, you were mayor of Los Angeles,

50:00 a city very close to my heart as a UCLA graduate, and I grew up an hour south.

50:05 There you go.

50:05 Um, LA has not exactly been a model of pro-ousing policy of late.

50:12 Uh, Mayor Karen Bass signed ED1, which expedited affordable housing,

50:16 then started rolling it back because of local

50:18 opposition when it seemed to work almost too well.

50:21 Uh, LA passed measure ULA,

50:23 a transfer tax on the sale of properties over $5 million,

50:26 which seems to have cut the development of multifamily properties.

50:30 SB79, which increases housing density around transit, passed in Sacramento,

50:34 and LA city council passed a reasonzoning to slow it down.

50:38 What would you do as governor to make

50:40 Los Angeles an engine of housing progress again?

50:43 Well, as I said and I'll say it again,

50:45 I built more market rate workforce affordable homeless housing in eight years

50:51 in the middle of a recession than in the 12 years before me.

50:54 The downtown skyline changed from 20,000 to 60,000 people.

50:58 I agree.

50:59 Look, I'm opposed to the ULA.

51:02 The ULA is is a transfer tax, everybody.

51:05 What it says, it sounds good.

51:06 It's it's they call it the mansion tax.

51:09 It says that homes over 5 million, you have to have a 5% transfer tax.

51:15 Um you can't buy a mansion in LA, number one, uh for 5 million,

51:20 but number two, it doesn't just impact uh single family dwellings.

51:26 It impacts multif family dwellings.

51:28 It impacts commercial.

51:30 Speaking of Rand and UCLA, my alma mater,

51:34 they did a study and that study showed that we've

51:37 had an 84% drop in um construction since the ULA.

51:44 And let me be clear, as I understand it,

51:47 I had more cranes than anybody uh in that 8-year period of time for housing,

51:53 the airport, community colleges, schools.

51:56 Today we just opened up the first leg of something I said 20 years ago.

52:01 I said, "Dream with me.

52:02 We'll be a build a subway to the sea." And we built it.

52:05 And by the way, abundance when we were

52:07 talking in the green room or whatever that was, one of the things I told you,

52:12 fair enough.

52:13 I was doing abundance in 2012.

52:17 I went 10.

52:18 I went to Obama and I said,

52:21 "Reward cities and counties that are putting up their own money.

52:25 allow us to access lowcost loans to build transit

52:30 and then I said put NEPA and SQA together

52:34 to cut time because you said it the the what

52:37 drives up cost is time or impact fees are

52:42 SQA you know do do you know that under

52:44 SQA you don't need to it's supposedly the California environmental

52:48 quality act you don't need to sue on environmental

52:51 reasons NEPA you do you can sue from Richmond, California.

52:56 I mean, Richmond, Virginia for a project in Richmond, California.

52:59 Yes, you can.

53:01 It's broken.

53:02 I've been taking it on for 20 years uh nationally

53:06 and lately that with Buffy and some of these people,

53:09 I love what they're doing because this is what we have to do to build.

53:12 Let me ask you about the politics of of Los

53:14 Angeles because I do take the legislators there,

53:17 the mayor's there as responding to to to local local demands.

53:20 I remember speaking to Mayor Garcetti at one point

53:22 and there was pressure after Los Angeles passed Measure HH.

53:27 Well, they got the money to build,

53:29 but a lot of places didn't want it built where they were.

53:32 And so there there is a a a push

53:35 here even in a city where housing is very expensive.

53:38 So, you know, you you know that city as well as anybody.

53:41 Like, how would you persuade both a mayor of Los Angeles and the people

53:44 of it that the things you want to do are good for LA?

53:48 You know, there's a lot of agreement here.

53:50 Uh, have you ever said something about using a carrot and a stick?

53:53 I agree.

53:54 That's what I did.

53:55 I I love using carrots.

53:57 I loved going into neighborhoods talking uh about the need

54:02 to build the housing or homeless facility or wherever it is.

54:05 I love working with them and compromising with them.

54:09 But in the end, I understood one thing.

54:12 If you want to be popular, get a dog.

54:17 Yes.

54:17 You've not met my These are jobs where you got to make tough calls.

54:21 I made those tough calls.

54:23 That's how crime went down 48%.

54:25 It was the most violent big city in America when I got there.

54:28 That's how graduation rates went up 60%.

54:31 I rocked the apple cart and I made the tough calls

54:35 and that's what you have to do when you're governor part.

54:37 We passed all these laws but we got to implement them.

54:40 And I agree with you.

54:42 I that you know Gavin has without question been a housing governor.

54:47 We passed the laws but now we need the leadership to actually implement

54:51 them which is why I've said we

54:54 need an accountability account housing production accountability

54:58 board within uh the housing department to make sure they're meeting not just

55:04 their housing element but actually building the housing

55:07 that they say that's in that element.

55:10 Thank you Mr.

55:10 Verosa.

55:11 Mr.

55:12 Styer, I've broadly been asking questions in the section about how to manage

55:16 opposition coming from parts of the system

55:18 and California is a very complex system.

55:20 The governor does not control.

55:22 Of all the candidates on the stage,

55:24 you have the least experience dealing with California's many,

55:27 many layers of government, overlapping authorities, stakeholders.

55:31 You've never held public office before.

55:33 It's very relationshipbased system.

55:35 Many people I've talked to who like your ideas

55:38 are worried you'll get overwhelmed by the system.

55:40 It overwhelms even people who know it very well.

55:43 What's your answer to them?

55:45 Well, I have two things to say.

55:46 One, as your is your uh you should know that for the last 11 years,

55:53 we've had 20 people in Sacramento working

55:56 on legislation and being part of this system for the whole time to trying to put

56:02 together coalitions and work for progressive policies.

56:06 Second of all, I've done I've run

56:08 three ballot initiatives in the state of California.

56:11 All of which have required a coalition of legislators, of unions,

56:17 of you know interest groups, including many times chambers of commerce,

56:21 including uh you know in in in the case of getting a tobacco tax,

56:27 getting the people in the medical associations.

56:31 But let me say this too.

56:33 listening on this stage,

56:35 we're talking a lot about how we're going to incent cities and counties.

56:39 You're talking about in my mind two different things.

56:41 One is how are we going to organize the agencies within the state government?

56:45 How are we going to relate to the cities

56:48 and counties around the state of California?

56:50 And those are two separate questions.

56:52 The first one, this the governor's step of bringing all

56:56 of the housing into one place is a good first step,

56:58 but not not nearly enough because a large

57:00 part about the problems in timing and cost

57:03 of housing have to do with multiple overlapping

57:06 agencies who have different goals and conflicting goals.

57:11 So, that is a good first step.

57:13 But in terms of the cities and counties,

57:15 there's been a sense on this stage that they're doing something wrong.

57:18 That it's basically nimiism.

57:20 They don't want to do it.

57:22 and therefore they obstruct.

57:24 And what I was trying to say the first time is this.

57:26 There is an element of that of course,

57:28 but there's also the element that they can't afford to do this.

57:31 That they are getting every housing development is an unfunded mandate.

57:35 And I'm the only person on the stage who's saying I'll pass

57:38 a proposition to bring over $20 billion to the cities and counties.

57:42 So it's no longer an unfunded mandate.

57:46 And to a large extent, when you're asking how do you get along with people,

57:49 a lot of it is about relationships.

57:51 And I'm sure that we would have in my administration

57:53 and I have particular people in mind um who

57:56 have long relationships here and would be part of what

57:59 I would think of an office of intergovernmental affairs.

58:02 But the other question is this.

58:04 When you talk about carrots and sticks,

58:06 you got to have some carrots and I'm talking about $22 billion worth of carrots.

58:10 So two things on that carrot.

58:12 So something like that, huh?

58:14 On that carrot.

58:14 on that carrot.

58:16 Uh there was a very similar proposal on the ballot a few years ago.

58:21 It failed.

58:23 Uh $22 billion is also higher than most

58:25 estimates of how much money that would bring in.

58:27 So if you put this Prop 13 reform or the closing of what you call the Trump tax

58:32 loophole on the ballot and you support it

58:35 and as often happens with well-meaning ballot measures to increase taxes,

58:40 it fails, then what happens to the rest of the plans when the money isn't there?

58:43 So, let me see this.

58:44 Say this, Ezra.

58:46 As you know, because of you've done your research, I've done this three times.

58:50 And three times people have asked me questions where this was

58:52 a much tougher proposition than the one that is split roll.

58:58 You mean ballot measures?

58:59 Yes.

58:59 And I've done it.

59:00 When you think about ballot measures,

59:02 it's a question of is there funded opposition?

59:05 And I've done it against oil companies that are

59:07 as funded in opposition as you're ever going to get.

59:09 And people told me we were crazy to do it.

59:11 and we got 70% of the vote.

59:13 We did it the tobacco companies where the legislature had failed for 20

59:17 years to do it and we got over 60% of the vote.

59:21 And we also beat the out ofstate

59:23 companies who weren't paying fair state income tax.

59:25 So an answer to your question,

59:27 I've done it three times in the state of California and one

59:29 I've done it three times outside the state of California and one.

59:32 I look at this and I say this is a question is can we

59:35 convince the people of California that this is

59:38 something necessary that the money is absolutely

59:41 necessary and that it's just and in both of these cases I believe

59:44 that to be true and I'm overwhelmingly confident

59:46 that we can do it because the truth of the matter is what everybody's talking

59:50 about here when we're talking about doing

59:51 redevelopment which is what Matt said which I think is a good idea that's

59:55 a billion dollars a year not enough we're talking about we need to build

1:00:00 a lot of houses and We need the cities and counties to come along with this.

1:00:04 Basically, we need to fund them to be able to do it.

1:00:07 And then you're asking what's your, you know, what's your stick?

1:00:11 And Javier was saying, you know, well, we can sue them.

1:00:13 And he did say it was last resort.

1:00:15 But the truth of the matter is that's doesn't get it done in the time frame.

1:00:19 Money is actually how we're going to get this done because

1:00:22 the answer is going to be you do it, you get the money.

1:00:26 You don't do it, you don't get the money.

1:00:28 You do more than your share, you get more than your share.

1:00:30 This is a real We need the ability.

1:00:33 You're talking about relationship.

1:00:34 I'm talking about incentive.

1:00:36 How do we actually incent people?

1:00:38 Everyone's assuming these guys are doing something wrong.

1:00:40 And there is nimiism.

1:00:42 But the truth is when I've talked to mayors, they've said,

1:00:45 "I don't want to do this because I can't afford to do this.

1:00:47 And if you bring the money, I'll be behind you all the way." Miss Porter,

1:00:51 you and I both lived a couple blocks away from each other in Irvine, California.

1:00:56 Irvine's an unusual city, a master plan community.

1:00:59 The Irvine Company assembled the land in the 19th century and held it

1:01:04 and then shaped it in this way that would be almost impossible today.

1:01:09 And I say almost because somebody's trying to do something similar right now,

1:01:12 which is a California forever project.

1:01:15 This tech billionaire, excuse me,

1:01:17 this tech billionaire backed effort to build a new master

1:01:19 plan city of 400,000 in Solano County in Solano County,

1:01:23 I'm sorry, on land assembled somewhat like Irvine was.

1:01:26 Uh there's been a lot of local opposition.

1:01:29 The way that land was acquired was sort of unusual and secretive.

1:01:33 I have two questions for you here.

1:01:34 As as governor, what do you what would you think of California Forever?

1:01:38 What would your what would be your relationship to that project?

1:01:40 And more broadly, what do you think of the kind

1:01:42 of master planning projects that led to Irvine?

1:01:47 Yeah.

1:01:48 So, I've actually asked to meet with the California Forever

1:01:51 people because the first thing is you got to listen.

1:01:53 You got to find out.

1:01:54 You got to dig in the details.

1:01:55 you got to read the study.

1:01:56 You got to ask the hard questions, right?

1:01:58 And I I think they might be scared I'm bringing

1:02:00 a whiteboard and so they keep they keep not responding,

1:02:03 but I'm really coming in in a place of wanting to understand it.

1:02:07 Um, so look, I think some of that is nimiism.

1:02:11 And I would just say to those on the stage

1:02:14 who don't think there's very much nimism, I invite you to visit Huntington Beach

1:02:20 for yourself because I used to represent Huntington Beach.

1:02:24 And a lot of those cities in Orange County, as you know, are very anti-ousing.

1:02:29 Now, Irvine, interestingly, is not one of them.

1:02:32 They are still building.

1:02:34 We are adding people.

1:02:35 From when you live there to when I live there,

1:02:38 the population has doubled or tripled.

1:02:40 And that is because they have they control enough of the factors

1:02:46 that they don't get gobsmacked with all of these additive things.

1:02:49 And so there is something to having that kind

1:02:52 of like bigger bigger reach around all of the factors.

1:02:57 But let me give you another example of where this doesn't work.

1:03:00 And this is where I thought you were going with California Forever,

1:03:03 which is Tahone Ranch.

1:03:05 Now this is a really interesting.

1:03:06 Are you familiar?

1:03:07 This is a really interesting example.

1:03:09 This was like one of the largest I think it's

1:03:12 still today the largest contiguous private land holding in California.

1:03:16 Pretty pretty amazing.

1:03:18 And it's outside of Los Angeles.

1:03:20 They have been trying to develop and I went and I visited and I saw it.

1:03:24 They have been trying to develop housing

1:03:26 there work forcepriced housing for 30ome years.

1:03:32 And they own the land.

1:03:35 Like there's no there there there's not anybody to permit them, right?

1:03:38 They just keep getting sued.

1:03:40 They got sued on SQA.

1:03:41 They resolved 30 29 of the 33 objections and then

1:03:46 they went to court and they lost on one of them.

1:03:50 And do you know what happened?

1:03:52 Back to zero on all 33 objections.

1:03:57 So yes, there's something to sort of saying you can get your arms around it,

1:04:01 but we we have to do a lot of a lot of other tools.

1:04:03 One thing I do think about master planning is that it can

1:04:06 be a way to deal with some of that impact fees because Irvine,

1:04:10 as you know, in any given strip mall in Irvine,

1:04:13 if you're standing there and you've just walked

1:04:16 into one store and you walk out and you think,

1:04:17 "Shoot, I need to go get that other thing, Irvine Company, Big Brother,

1:04:22 will have put that thing across the parking

1:04:24 lot in the strip mall." It's like actually scary.

1:04:27 And it's not for everybody.

1:04:29 It is really not for everybody.

1:04:31 But I think the fact that I live in and I'm raising my family

1:04:36 in a very different model of housing and living in a place like Orange County,

1:04:40 which has got everything from the worst nimi in the state to some

1:04:44 of the fastest growing pro-ousing cities in the state

1:04:47 is a really good perspective as governor.

1:04:49 I mean, I said the other day to someone, you know, well, they're like, well,

1:04:52 you're not really from like a big thing in California like,

1:04:55 you know, some people.

1:04:57 And I said, "Well, Orange County is

1:04:59 the sixth most populous county." And they said,

1:05:02 "In in California?" No, in the United States, people.

1:05:08 San Diego County is the fifth most populous county in the United States.

1:05:11 And they're making some progress on housing there.

1:05:14 So, yes, you're absolutely right.

1:05:16 Like, I think there are limits to what you can expect from master planning,

1:05:20 but I do think innovation in housing is important.

1:05:23 And at its core, if you take them at their word, which is where I would start,

1:05:28 might not be where I'd end,

1:05:29 but it's where I'd start the conversation with California Forever.

1:05:33 What they're saying is, let us innovate.

1:05:35 Let us show people what a different model

1:05:38 of living and working and recreating can look like.

1:05:41 And I think we need imagination about what housing could be so

1:05:45 that we're not just fighting about

1:05:48 40story apartment buildings and single family.

1:05:50 There are so many other permutations of housing.

1:05:53 long-term leases, which is something Europe has that we don't

1:05:56 have that I I campaigned on this in my Senate race.

1:05:58 I'm campaigning on it now.

1:06:00 We need more housing innovation.

1:06:01 And at its heart, that's what I think some of these projects offer.

1:06:06 We're going to take a quick commercial break now.

1:06:07 We will be right back.

1:06:15 Hey, hold up.

1:06:17 This is your minute.

1:06:19 It's your minute in this life.

1:06:22 on this day.

1:06:24 It's your day to play.

1:06:29 To play, to play, to make, to make, to move, to move through, to explore.

1:06:39 It's your morning to share, your weekend to shape,

1:06:43 to cook, to soak, to listen to, to wait.

1:06:48 It's your body to rest, to nourish, to grow.

1:06:53 It's your mind, you know.

1:06:55 It's your place, your country, your life to love, to rise, to dream, to change.

1:07:05 It's your world as much as anyone's.

1:07:09 It's your world to understand.

1:07:15 All right.

1:07:16 Welcome back, everybody.

1:07:17 Welcome back.

1:07:20 No, no more fun cross talk.

1:07:22 We're back to housing.

1:07:24 Uh Mr.

1:07:25 uh Bisera, as Secretary of HHS, you oversaw one of the federal agencies

1:07:31 is most directly involved in homelessness policy.

1:07:34 The B administration largely embraced housing

1:07:36 first as the dominant federal framework.

1:07:38 California spent something like$ 24 billion on homelessness from 2018 to 2023,

1:07:43 mostly within that framework.

1:07:45 and the unsheltered population has continued to grow.

1:07:49 What went wrong?

1:07:53 We didn't focus on outcomes.

1:07:55 Uh there the accountability wasn't there.

1:07:57 $24 billion was there, but the outcomes didn't result.

1:08:01 We didn't see that people were moved off the street fast enough.

1:08:04 We didn't provide the services they needed.

1:08:06 To me, the homelessness crisis is much a mental health

1:08:10 crisis as it is someone needing a place, a shelter.

1:08:13 and we didn't provide the types of resources to make sure we could

1:08:17 stand people up and make sure they wouldn't go back to the streets.

1:08:20 Uh I I also believe that we have to do

1:08:22 far more to prevent people from ever becoming homeless.

1:08:26 I don't have control of the streets of Los Angeles,

1:08:29 of Oakland or the counties as governor.

1:08:32 What I can control is the monies that we send and try to demand accountability.

1:08:38 But the most important thing I I believe

1:08:40 and this is where I will focus as governor

1:08:43 is trying to help that person that is on the very edge of losing their housing,

1:08:48 whether it's their home or their apartment that they're renting.

1:08:51 Because there are people who under some circumstances,

1:08:54 you lose your job unexpectedly.

1:08:56 You're trying to get back to work and it's taking you a little longer.

1:08:58 You used up your savings.

1:09:00 You're on the verge now of losing your apartment that you're renting.

1:09:03 You have a medical emergency.

1:09:05 You break your piggy bank open.

1:09:07 You use it all up.

1:09:08 It's not enough.

1:09:08 You still have a big bill.

1:09:10 All of a sudden, you have to make a decision.

1:09:11 Do you pay the bill or do you stay in your home?

1:09:14 And I believe those are the folks that if

1:09:16 we provided more support and I would create

1:09:18 a stabilizing fund that would be there

1:09:20 for to help those Californians who are in a home,

1:09:24 make sure they don't lose their home.

1:09:26 It will cost us far less to invest in someone

1:09:29 maintaining their housing than trying to pull them off the street,

1:09:32 get them to stand up, provide them the services,

1:09:34 get them to temporary shelter, and then help them get re-mployed.

1:09:37 And so, let's invest in prevention before we start

1:09:40 talking about just trying to pick people off the street.

1:09:43 You excuse hold it till the end.

1:09:45 You you mentioned that seeing you mentioned seeing

1:09:48 much of homelessness as a mental health question.

1:09:51 One of the difficult questions within that conversation is the role of coercion.

1:09:57 Is the role of coercion.

1:09:59 What do you do when people are on the street having

1:10:01 mental health problems and they don't want to go in for treatment?

1:10:04 They don't want to go into a home.

1:10:06 What would your approach to that be?

1:10:07 First, I think we have to give everyone an opportunity to have an out.

1:10:12 And when I established the 988 program,

1:10:15 and I hope some of you are familiar with it,

1:10:16 it's like 911, but for mental health crisis and suicide prevention,

1:10:21 and if you dial 988 or actually text or chat,

1:10:25 you'll get someone who will help you,

1:10:26 not as police officer, but as someone who can provide you services.

1:10:30 We do that.

1:10:30 We have a dedicated line for veterans who are hurting.

1:10:33 We had we had, but this administration took it away,

1:10:36 a line for LGBTQI who wanted to be

1:10:39 able to speak to somebody would understand their concern.

1:10:41 We have to give people an out, an opportunity.

1:10:44 But what happens too often is we don't do that and then we don't do

1:10:49 the second thing is to make sure that we tell folks we are your keeper.

1:10:53 I am my brother and my sister's keeper.

1:10:55 We will not let you languish in the streets.

1:10:57 And if you keep saying no and it's clear that you need help,

1:11:01 then it's really our responsibility as civilized people to make

1:11:04 sure we provide our brother or sister some assistance.

1:11:07 And so I think we have to get to that point.

1:11:10 We don't let people make that decision when it's

1:11:12 clear they're not making the right decisions for themselves.

1:11:14 When you say that you want to see Hold up, hold the applause.

1:11:17 When you say that you want

1:11:18 to see more accountability in the homelessness programs,

1:11:22 that's not a new thing to hear from leaders, right?

1:11:25 It's not like Governor Newsome doesn't want accountability

1:11:27 in the homelessness uh policies that he puts forward.

1:11:30 When I've talked to mayors of major cities, they talk about this.

1:11:33 So, very specifically, what would you do that has not already been done?

1:11:38 very similar to the the carrot and stick approach

1:11:40 which I use by the way at HHS we had

1:11:43 to help doctors switch from paper recordkeeping prescriptions their medical

1:11:49 records to digital to finally join the electric electronic world.

1:11:54 A lot of folks said we can't afford it and so what we did was we scaled it.

1:11:57 We said, "Look, we're going to give you incentives to uh

1:11:59 change your practice into one that can uh function electronically,

1:12:03 and we're going to give you incentive,

1:12:04 incentive, incentive, but at some point, it's going to become penalty, penalty,

1:12:07 penalty if you don't join the real world." Uh we would do the same thing.

1:12:11 There's a locality.

1:12:12 You're not, you have programs, but they're not resulting in success.

1:12:16 Then we have to terminate those programs or stop the funding.

1:12:19 I will then scale those programs that are working.

1:12:21 I'll take the money from the programs that aren't working,

1:12:23 and I'll scale those programs that are working.

1:12:25 And that's what you have to do is you have to carrot the stick,

1:12:28 but I will use the stick at the end of the day

1:12:30 because taxpayers are paying for folks to be pulled off the street.

1:12:34 Mr.

1:12:35 Styer, you said the most compassionate thing we can do is

1:12:38 revive the interim housing to get people where they want to be.

1:12:41 It's not a new strategy building

1:12:43 interim housing from shelters to other approaches.

1:12:46 And it tends to run into two problems.

1:12:48 One is that communities often don't want it and they fight it very very hard,

1:12:52 much harder than they fight a normal apartment building or something like that.

1:12:56 Another is that many unsheltered people refuse to go into it.

1:12:59 These are often uh very very restrictive spaces.

1:13:03 You can't bring your partner, you can bring your pets.

1:13:06 So, how do you solve those problems that have made interim

1:13:08 housing not the answer that many people hoped it would be?

1:13:12 Well, let me take a step back, Ezra,

1:13:14 because I agree with Javier that keeping people off the street

1:13:20 is the first thing because no one gets well on the street.

1:13:23 The street itself live being homeless is an incredibly stressful,

1:13:28 vulnerable, and dangerous condition.

1:13:30 And so when you think about the mental health issues of homeless people,

1:13:36 only one in seven people who becomes homeless has a mental health problem.

1:13:40 But virtually everyone who stays on the street for a long time develops one.

1:13:45 So I agree with what Javier was saying which is we

1:13:48 need to keep people off the street because it is much cheaper

1:13:52 and he was talking about it from the standpoint of money

1:13:54 but we're als it's also much cheaper from the standpoint of mental health.

1:13:58 And so that is the first thing.

1:14:00 The second thing that I've said is we need

1:14:02 to get people off the street as fast as possible

1:14:06 before the dangers and vulnerability on the street multiplies

1:14:10 the problems that those people have when they originally become homeless.

1:14:14 And the reason that I've said emergency interim housing

1:14:17 and I would dispute exactly how you characterized it is this.

1:14:21 This the strategy that the state of California

1:14:24 has right now is shelters and permanent assisted housing.

1:14:28 People hate going into shelters because they actually think they're dangerous.

1:14:33 They have no privacy.

1:14:34 They're not allowed to bring their pets.

1:14:37 And it's something many, many people on the street would prefer to be

1:14:41 on the street than to be in a shelter.

1:14:43 The difference about emergency interim housing is you actually have privacy.

1:14:48 You have a room with a key.

1:14:50 You are allowed to bring your pet.

1:14:52 You don't have to be clean.

1:14:54 There is shared food and laundry services and there's wraparound services.

1:15:00 And what I believe is true is that the the majority not 100% of the people

1:15:04 on the street are willing to go into emergency

1:15:07 interim housing to the tune of somewhere around 70%.

1:15:12 And so in fact when we look at this the the strategy

1:15:16 we've had which is shelters and permanent assisted housing it has failed.

1:15:20 and and those permanent assisted housing, as you said,

1:15:23 in terms of the cost of low-income housing,

1:15:26 it costs somewhere between $750,000 and a million dollars a key.

1:15:30 So, what I'm talking about is something that is much cheaper, much faster,

1:15:35 that people like much, much more than the strategies that we're employing now,

1:15:40 and in fact deal with the biggest issue we have,

1:15:42 which is being on the street itself

1:15:44 is incredibly dangerous and causes multiple problems.

1:15:48 So my actual goal is to get keep people off the street,

1:15:51 get people off the street for their sake

1:15:53 to be compassionate and also because look SB79 Buffy

1:15:58 Wick's bill which I strongly supported and continue

1:16:00 to support is about building densely around public transportation.

1:16:06 For that to happen and for people to want to live there,

1:16:08 we need safe, fun cities, walkable cities where kids can walk.

1:16:12 and it's absolutely critical that they feel safe walking down that street

1:16:16 and that in fact that's the kind of fun community Californians want.

1:16:19 Let me ask you about interimm housing not even as an emergency question.

1:16:23 You you read American history and you all you know you've got

1:16:26 Abraham Lincoln in boarding houses all across uh his travels as a lawyer.

1:16:31 You used to have a lot of housing

1:16:33 that worked more almost like college dorms do today.

1:16:36 You had a lot of housing where people

1:16:37 would come in and there were shared bathrooms, there was a shared kitchen.

1:16:40 And it was a lot of people in a in a single home.

1:16:42 And we functionally zoned a lot of that out of existence.

1:16:46 And so things that were very very very

1:16:48 lowcost housing that exist in between what we think

1:16:51 of as a home or an apartment now

1:16:52 and the street no longer exists because we made them illegal.

1:16:57 Should we make them legal?

1:16:58 Should interim housing be more than an emergency measure?

1:17:00 Look, I actually think that's where we're, you know,

1:17:03 flexibility in housing is how I would describe what you're saying.

1:17:07 And so the obvious thing right now is ADUs, additional dwelling units.

1:17:12 It's a flexible way of sticking a new unit in your backyard.

1:17:16 Originally, it was for your, you know, a family member,

1:17:18 but now it's very much as something you

1:17:20 can rent out that's additional housing for your community.

1:17:24 So to a very large extent,

1:17:25 emergency interim housing, flexible, it's it's honestly to me,

1:17:29 it sounds pretty I hate to say it, but it sounds like a college dorm.

1:17:32 And so to a very large extent it is taking

1:17:36 away from a very rigid sense of what housing is

1:17:39 supposed to look like somehow that our existing system is

1:17:43 supporting without taking into account that we're in a new world.

1:17:46 We're not going to we're going to build tiny little houses.

1:17:48 We're going to build ADUs.

1:17:50 But what is critical from my from my standpoint is that we get a lot

1:17:54 of units that we get these get people off the street for their own sake.

1:17:59 That we are actually compassionate about it.

1:18:00 but also that we're building a society that people

1:18:03 look great cities are a lot of fun.

1:18:07 We need to make sure that our cities are great cities.

1:18:10 Miss Porter, before people become homeless, they are housed.

1:18:15 And what tends to happen is that they have an income shock or a health

1:18:21 crisis or something happens where they can

1:18:23 no longer pay their rent and they're evicted.

1:18:26 Over half of California renters households spend

1:18:28 at least 30% of their income on housing.

1:18:30 Puts them in danger of that kind of thing happening.

1:18:33 We've talked a lot here about increasing the supply of housing to reduce costs.

1:18:36 In the best case, that takes time.

1:18:39 So, what is a policy that you want to see to help people

1:18:42 afford the home they already live in in a time of stress or strain,

1:18:49 whether they're an owner or a renter?

1:18:52 How do we pe how do we help people

1:18:54 not fall out of the housing situation they're in now?

1:18:58 So, a lot of my career,

1:19:00 all of my career before I ran for office was about this exact question,

1:19:06 studying families who fell into bankruptcy

1:19:08 or were facing eviction or foreclosure.

1:19:11 That was my life's work.

1:19:12 That's how I got to know Elizabeth Warren,

1:19:14 studying these families, talking to them, researching them.

1:19:16 And it's the things you mentioned, job loss, income loss,

1:19:20 it's medical debt or sickness that leads to the loss of income.

1:19:23 It's family breakup, change in the family structure.

1:19:27 These are the same drivers of bankruptcy

1:19:28 that are the drivers of foreclosure and eviction.

1:19:31 So the there's some really good research on this.

1:19:34 This is not something that we don't know what to do about,

1:19:37 but we have not had the willingness from our leaders to scale it up.

1:19:42 So the very most effective way to keep someone in their home

1:19:47 or in their apartment is to give them direct cash assistance.

1:19:53 Period.

1:19:54 That is the very most effective way.

1:19:56 Everything else is complicated and expensive and slow.

1:20:00 So let me give you an example.

1:20:02 Somebody scrapes up their rent because they they

1:20:05 they got they don't want to get evicted, right?

1:20:08 And then they can't afford any food.

1:20:10 They can't afford their bus fair.

1:20:12 They're late to work.

1:20:12 They get they lose their job.

1:20:14 Scraping up the rent didn't do any good.

1:20:16 So, there's really good research on this.

1:20:18 The Audacious Foundation just funded a huge project here

1:20:21 in California to do pilots all around the country.

1:20:24 The average cost of this kind of cash

1:20:27 foreclosure or eviction prevention is $6,000 a family.

1:20:32 That's the median cost.

1:20:34 Compare that to a million dollar or $800,000 a unit.

1:20:39 So long before we get to the interim housing,

1:20:42 which I think is right, we should keep doing that.

1:20:44 And I, thanks to Mayor Mayanm, got the chance to see some of that.

1:20:47 Um, and I've seen it in a few other cities since,

1:20:50 but we've got to stop the we got to put the shovel down on homelessness.

1:20:53 We're just make the problem keeps getting worse.

1:20:56 And so I think that those kinds of programs really work.

1:20:58 And California should not have 97 different programs

1:21:02 with 52 different forms and nine nine fill-in- thelank questions.

1:21:07 We just need to give people a handful of money for a very short period.

1:21:10 And most people are not permanently homeless.

1:21:15 They become permanently homeless because they lose the housing they have.

1:21:19 So if they could stay put for just a little while until they get

1:21:23 better or they find that new job or they get back together with their partner,

1:21:28 whatever it is, they will never find

1:21:30 themselves in that situation in the first place.

1:21:32 Let me ask you about that.

1:21:34 And by the way, I did a lot of this when I

1:21:36 worked on the statewide foreclosure prevention

1:21:37 eviction prevention program with Kla Harris.

1:21:39 This was a big part of what we asked the banks

1:21:42 to do was they had cheated people into these loans.

1:21:45 They were cheating them on the way out.

1:21:47 My research exposed that.

1:21:48 But a big part of what we said to the banks

1:21:50 is give them cash so that they can figure

1:21:54 out then whether they're going to be able to keep

1:21:57 this house or they're going to need to make a transition.

1:21:59 Give them 10 grand and 20 grand.

1:22:00 In that case, the banks were wrongdoers, so we could ask for big amounts,

1:22:03 but give them that money to make that housing transition.

1:22:06 Let me ask you about that fractured nature

1:22:09 of California's homelessness and income support and rent support programs.

1:22:14 I remember I wish you could ask Chad Biano about this.

1:22:18 I I remember talking to uh someone who had run

1:22:21 homelessness prevention in LA and I remember saying to me,

1:22:25 "Look, everybody thinks I have a billion dollars to spend.

1:22:28 I wish I had a billion dollars and you would let me spend it.

1:22:31 There's a billion dollars and I can't spend it because it's

1:22:34 coming in so many sources and it's audited in so many ways.

1:22:38 And I hear this again and again and again from public servants

1:22:41 that if you would let me do my job, I could do it.

1:22:44 But instead, I spend all my time managing

1:22:46 these overlapping authorities and these different people I report to.

1:22:49 So, how do you actually unify some of these authorities

1:22:53 and and and give the people we have tasked with these incredibly moral,

1:22:57 important, difficult jobs the authority to do them?

1:23:01 So, I mean, the state can think about doing some of this in our own programs.

1:23:05 So, replacing five and six different programs designed to help you

1:23:09 meet your basic needs with something called Cal Ne or Cal Necessity.

1:23:13 It's one program.

1:23:14 It's one chunk of money and you trust families

1:23:17 to figure out what they need to do to stay afloat.

1:23:21 And by the way, poor people, low-income people are really,

1:23:26 really good at juggling money because they have to be to exist.

1:23:31 And the opposite per the opposite perception

1:23:34 that we can't trust people with cash,

1:23:37 we can't give low-income people cash is racist, it's sexist, and it's wrong.

1:23:42 and it costs us a fortune.

1:23:45 So you could take that same approach.

1:23:47 So broadly, let me just say I drive a minivan.

1:23:49 You might know the license plate is oversight.

1:23:52 So I've thought a lot about this.

1:23:54 We do oversight backwards.

1:23:57 And in our state and in most government agencies, it's burying people.

1:24:01 It's death by a thousand paper cuts, but they still bleed out.

1:24:05 you are much better crushing and I

1:24:09 really crushing cheaters and trusting most people

1:24:14 to do it right in the first place and that would be my approach.

1:24:17 Mayor Mayan, you have in San Jose done quite a lot in flexible housing to try

1:24:23 to help with homelessness and and so I want

1:24:25 to ask you a sort of open-ended question here.

1:24:27 What have you seen work better than you thought that should scale

1:24:31 statewide that if you were governor you would really put resources behind it?

1:24:34 and what have you tried or what does the state support that you have

1:24:38 not found is effective and you would like to somewhat move away from it?

1:24:43 It's a great question and you know I'm actually going to start

1:24:45 not on interimm housing because I think Katie's description of prevention was

1:24:51 right on and we have partnered with our county and a local

1:24:55 nonprofit called destination home who you know this is the model we

1:25:00 created arguably the nation's leading prevention

1:25:03 model and Notre Dame University studied

1:25:05 it and showed that up to I think the longitudinal data was

1:25:10 maybe three or four years by the time they did the study

1:25:12 over 92% of households who were helped with one-time rental assistance paired.

1:25:18 By the way, the one thing I would just add is the importance of the the case

1:25:22 management really supporting someone and helping them

1:25:25 bridge past the um the job loss,

1:25:29 the health issue, the unexpected debt that came along,

1:25:32 the the cars that broke down, whatever it is.

1:25:35 um really, you know,

1:25:37 over 92% remain housed and don't need ongoing public subsidy.

1:25:42 It's incredible.

1:25:43 So, it is very cost- effective and we've reduced inflow uh by 50%

1:25:48 as a related to those um who are um coming off of our streets.

1:25:54 We're getting to a point where with enough supply of interim housing,

1:25:58 we can get to functional zero unsheltered homelessness,

1:26:01 which has been my biggest focus has been to say,

1:26:04 you started, Ezra, with well, where did all the money go?

1:26:06 effectively tens of billions of dollars.

1:26:09 And I think we made a mistake politically in trying

1:26:13 to convince voters that if they invested in something we need,

1:26:17 which is the development of new affordable housing,

1:26:21 that they would suddenly see all the tent encampments disappear.

1:26:25 And it was it's just it's it's not either or.

1:26:28 But the truth is one solution is very slow and expensive and only so scalable,

1:26:32 frankly, at least with that mechanism.

1:26:35 And as the tent encampments persisted,

1:26:36 I think we lost a lot of public support for the approach.

1:26:40 And so what has worked in San Jose,

1:26:42 and I've stood in room after room, we have built 23 interim housing sites.

1:26:48 And I've seen rooms with hundreds of angry

1:26:51 neighbors red in the face shouting and saying,

1:26:54 "We're going to recall you." And my commitment to them has been,

1:26:59 "We're going to make your neighborhood better,

1:27:01 not worse off." And this is I think the details matter.

1:27:04 What we've been able to demonstrate to residents around those 23 sites.

1:27:09 And we're not perfect.

1:27:10 I'm sure if I say this, someone's going to tweet

1:27:12 at me with a photo of something that's gone wrong.

1:27:14 So, I'm just going to acknowledge that upfront.

1:27:16 But what we've done is we've been really radically pragmatic.

1:27:20 When we buy that old motel that's run down and we

1:27:22 convert it into transitional housing or we buy those modular units,

1:27:26 some of which are now stacked and built at 300,000

1:27:29 a unit and and you could live in them long term.

1:27:31 They're very nice.

1:27:33 Some of which are are literally just tiny sleeping cabins.

1:27:36 We made a commitment to the neighbors in a radius

1:27:39 around that site that there's going to be a local preference.

1:27:42 If you're homeless in that area, you get first dibs on that housing.

1:27:46 Number two, after a period of time of outreach

1:27:48 and moving people in in a smaller radius,

1:27:51 we're going to create and enforce a no encampment zone.

1:27:54 Because with the early sites,

1:27:56 what didn't work was allowing people to still choose to camp a block away

1:28:01 from that interim site and it completely visually

1:28:04 undermines that trust and belief that we're making progress.

1:28:08 Not everybody loves the idea of a no encampment zone,

1:28:10 but that's how we got community buyin.

1:28:13 And what we've seen, and this was the case I made, but we had to prove out.

1:28:16 And it took I want to thank my colleagues and others

1:28:19 um down in San Jose for having the courage to do this.

1:28:22 We were finally able to show people and they felt that when we

1:28:25 built interim housing and got people

1:28:27 stabilized indoors and connected to case management,

1:28:31 calls for service for crime, 911, for blight 311 plummeted,

1:28:36 which actually makes perfect sense, common sense.

1:28:39 You get people stabilized indoors and not

1:28:41 in an unmanaged tent encampment with noise and fires and drug use and all

1:28:45 the challenges and everybody's quality of life is better.

1:28:50 But I will say the thing that we've done that has not worked super well

1:28:54 is as we have tried to throw

1:28:56 local public dollars at building new affordable housing,

1:28:59 you pointed it out, our cost to build's 30% higher than the private market.

1:29:03 Frankly, if I could go back, I would have encouraged us to buy the older

1:29:07 housing stock that's $300,000 a unit rather than build new

1:29:12 at a million a unit when the private marketplace could have

1:29:15 built if we had just incentivized them at 600,000 a unit.

1:29:21 So, I think we should be buying and preserving the older stock,

1:29:24 buying down affordability.

1:29:25 Let's do funded inclusionary requirements and buy

1:29:28 down affordability on new market rate units but not subsidize at the least

1:29:33 efficient with no cost controls or innovation.

1:29:36 I just I don't think it's scalable and I think we lose public

1:29:39 trust when we just keep throwing money in an inefficient way at the problem.

1:29:44 M Mr.

1:29:44 Voso Antonio is fine.

1:29:48 I'm gonna I'm going to maintain formality here.

1:29:50 The the New York Times is a whole style guy I have to follow.

1:29:53 Uh the tenant protection act is going to expire during the next governor's term.

1:29:59 That law caps annual rent increases to 5% plus inflation.

1:30:03 Some tenants have seen the rents jump by nearly 10% per year.

1:30:07 All in uh a recent bill to cap rent at 5% a year failed in the legislature.

1:30:12 There's a lot of lobbying um in both directions on that.

1:30:16 Rent caps are a tough issue.

1:30:19 Both sides make good points on this.

1:30:21 Rent what did you say?

1:30:22 Rent caps.

1:30:23 Rent caps.

1:30:24 Yeah.

1:30:24 Um, what is your view on them?

1:30:26 Particularly in a place like I mean we're, you know, in the Bay Area,

1:30:29 you have all this new AI money sending prices skyrocketing

1:30:33 and a lot of people do not work in AI.

1:30:36 They're not part of that.

1:30:37 So, how do you think about the Tenant Protection Act and and how

1:30:41 should the the annual rent increase caps be decided as a temporary situation?

1:30:48 I'm I'm for it.

1:30:49 uh that we they passed that uh temporary protection act,

1:30:55 rental protection act because people were starving,

1:30:59 they were going on the streets,

1:31:00 we had co uh all of those things came to play at the same time.

1:31:06 But I think you look at any study, you've been in the job that I've had uh over

1:31:14 the the years and one thing is clear, we need supply.

1:31:19 uh if you want to bring down rents over the long term, you need supply.

1:31:23 So that's why I always say you need market rate,

1:31:26 you need workforce, you need affordable, and you need homeless housing.

1:31:31 I want to speak to something that you raised though and you

1:31:35 poo pooed and that is that you know when some of this started,

1:31:41 it was in the middle of a recession and Jerry got rid of redevelopment.

1:31:47 redevelopment was a tool.

1:31:49 Tax increment financing was a tool for us for economic

1:31:53 development and for housing and particularly for the affordable housing.

1:31:57 But one of the things I want to say about

1:32:00 this conversation because I've heard you speak uh to the others.

1:32:04 We spent $24 billion at the state level and the fact is homelessness went up.

1:32:10 The LAO the legislative analyst did an analysis.

1:32:14 Only two programs worked.

1:32:16 a program that we're all for.

1:32:18 Rental assistance help these people when they have lose a job,

1:32:22 cars broke down, whatever it is,

1:32:25 um from going homeless in the first place and home key,

1:32:29 which is temporary housing.

1:32:31 But right now, the average unit and and this is where getting back to your book,

1:32:37 abundance, this is where the Democrats get it wrong.

1:32:40 I I really appreciate the street team here.

1:32:42 We're we're we're looking for perfect.

1:32:45 Everybody, the average unit in LA for permanent supportive housing is $850,000.

1:32:51 Your kids can't afford that.

1:32:53 We can build tiny homes.

1:32:55 We're doing it in San Jose.

1:32:58 We're doing it in LA for a h 100,000.

1:33:00 The the fact is what we're doing is

1:33:04 we're we're looking for perfection and it doesn't exist.

1:33:08 In Santa Monica, it's 1.2 million.

1:33:11 That's what the average unit is.

1:33:12 That doesn't work.

1:33:14 So, I loved your point and I had

1:33:16 forgotten boarding houses because I before my time.

1:33:21 My at the end of the day, we should have an all of the above approach.

1:33:26 That's what happens when you're practical.

1:33:28 I tell people I came out of the civil rights movement.

1:33:31 I was a labor leader for 25 years before I got elected.

1:33:34 I am unabashedly a progressive.

1:33:37 But after being a big city mayor for eight years, the one thing I know,

1:33:40 the only way we're going to deal with this is an all of the- above solution.

1:33:45 Let me speak about something we haven't spoken about yet.

1:33:49 Democrats love to talk about Ronald Reagan made

1:33:52 this problem worse because he got rid of mental hospitals.

1:33:57 We Democrats have been in office for 28 years.

1:34:00 Why don't we build mental facilities?

1:34:03 We did the care courts and there's no

1:34:05 accountability at the county level to, you know,

1:34:09 start to use the care courts to make sure when parents want

1:34:13 parents who love their kids or a wa spouse who loves their partner,

1:34:20 wants to put them in an institution, it's almost impossible.

1:34:26 And you know, one flew over the cuckoo's nest was one example.

1:34:30 Crazy.

1:34:31 But the other example is that we there are

1:34:34 too many that with nobody goes to lock mental facilities.

1:34:38 So part of the problem is that we have to understand

1:34:43 there are too many people on the street and you're you're right.

1:34:47 Uh I've been with Hope of the Mission and let me tell you something.

1:34:52 A lot of these people that are on drugs

1:34:53 and mentally ill now they weren't when they first got homeless.

1:34:57 But after being homeless and threatened to be raped

1:35:00 and beaten up and no food and everything else,

1:35:04 yes, they start getting on drugs and they

1:35:07 have developmental illnesses and and a drug problem.

1:35:11 So we have to have those services.

1:35:13 But if we keep on doing what we've been doing,

1:35:18 just saying only this works or that works,

1:35:21 we're never going to get deal with this problem.

1:35:24 And what I say is this.

1:35:26 What is compassionate, humane or progressive about people living in their poop?

1:35:32 About people, you know, getting beat up at night and stabbed.

1:35:36 There is nothing progressive about that.

1:35:38 Nothing.

1:35:39 Thank you, Mr.

1:35:40 Verosa.

1:35:41 Uh, that is our final question.

1:35:43 So, I'm going to end with a variant of what I always do on the show,

1:35:47 which is, what is one book you'd recommend to Californians?

1:35:51 And we'll go in order of the room here.

1:35:54 Mr.

1:35:54 Styer, we'll begin with you.

1:35:56 The book I'm recommen You got to use your mic.

1:35:58 The book that I'm recommending is called

1:36:00 The Hour of the Predator and it's a statement.

1:36:04 It's a non-fiction book about how the power in our society and around the world

1:36:10 is changing and it is an absolute plea for us to preserve our democracy.

1:36:16 Mr.

1:36:16 Mr.

1:36:16 Bera, uh, let me give you something uplifting after this conversation and, uh,

1:36:24 there is a a book called Rain of Gold by Victor Via Seenor,

1:36:28 which is all about how if you just put your mind to it,

1:36:32 you can lift up your family and have success.

1:36:35 It's the American dream in this book, and it's rain of gold.

1:36:39 I love that book, Miss Porter.

1:36:42 I read for fun.

1:36:44 So, I would tell you that I think the banger book

1:36:48 of the year that really encapu encapsulates in a fascinating mindbending way

1:36:56 all of the frustration and rage that women and gender stereotypes put

1:37:02 in onto us and that we have to navigate is Yester Year, which is a fiction book.

1:37:08 It just came out.

1:37:09 It's a 36-hour stay up all night,

1:37:12 don't do your campaign work because you're reading it.

1:37:15 Banger of a book.

1:37:16 And it's a debut novel, which I also think is important to support

1:37:19 new authors and new voices yester year.

1:37:22 Much more fun.

1:37:26 May or mayhem.

1:37:27 All right.

1:37:27 So, in this audience, this is totally unoriginal,

1:37:30 but the truth is I just read Why Nothing Works.

1:37:33 I think you just interviewed Mark uh Dunl.

1:37:36 I know.

1:37:36 I told I literally just read it.

1:37:37 It's on my nightstand.

1:37:39 Um, and it was great.

1:37:40 It was it was really it got me thinking

1:37:42 about this mix of top-down more centralized get stuff

1:37:48 done approach versus also that bottom up individual kind

1:37:53 of liberties and and using the law as a tool.

1:37:57 And it just it really made me think a little more critically

1:37:59 about whether or not we have the right mix in California right now.

1:38:02 I think the answer is kind of no.

1:38:04 And Mr.

1:38:04 Posa, ours was the shining future.

1:38:08 Your colleague David Leanhart wrote it uh about

1:38:11 a year and a half almost two years ago.

1:38:14 It's a book that is critical of Democrats uh among other things.

1:38:18 And what it says, we forgot to be the party of working people.

1:38:23 Uh we forgot to fight for an economy that's not working for enough people.

1:38:27 Uh we forgot that issues like affordability are

1:38:31 front and center uh of what people care about.

1:38:34 They care about all the other things we stand for and I always have,

1:38:39 but they care about they can't eat, pay rent, pay for gas, or buy a home.

1:38:46 And so I love that book because it's reminding us about another time

1:38:51 when you had a GI Bill when you you helped people buy homes,

1:38:55 when we were doing things to make the economy work for all of us.

1:39:00 Please join me in thanking the candidates here for a wonderful conversation.

1:39:55 How you doing?

1:40:00 Hello everybody.

1:40:02 before.

1:40:03 If