Supercharging Housing

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. It's time to build again, folks. Fascism never made America great, but when progressives build, that's where you'll find American greatness. This week marks our 10-week anniversary, so we're commemorating it with five very special episodes. One episode a day, all week. Happy 10-week anniversary, YIMBY Democrats for America. Today we're featuring highlights from our conversations in the fall with United States Senator Brian Schatz, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, and U.S. Congressman and founder of the YIMBY Caucus, Robert Garcia. You'll hear fiery calls for building America and standing up to fascism. A little warning, there is plenty of explicit language. I think you'll find it inspiring. It's a montage tonight on Radio Abundance. Let's get to the show.

0:50 You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. Now let's get to the show. Please welcome your host for the evening, YIMBY Democrats for America Executive Director Steve Boyle. And to kick things off, here's Steve. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I hate these guys. Hello, and welcome to Radio Abundance. My name is Steve Boyle. I'm the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of YIMBY Democrats for America. It has been an epic two and a half months. So we are celebrating all week with an episode a day. On Monday, we celebrated with an all-new interview with Colorado Governor Jared Polis. And we recapped our 10-week sprint so far, including big sold-out events in San Francisco, an amazing virtual collaboration with Zellner Myrie's campaign for the mayor of New York City, and an incredible new Wall Street Journal article, a trend story about abundance in the Democratic Party, that highlighted our sold-out event, showcased our mission to build America and defeat fascism, shouted out our vision for Progressive Abundance, and dropped our name and a quote from me, of all people, right next to quotes by Ezra Klein, Congressman Ro Khanna, Congressman Richie Torres, and Congressman Josh Harder, founder of the Build America Caucus, the all-new Build America Caucus, which shares its name with one of our missions.

2:15 On Tuesday, we shared origin stories. We told our origin story and my origin story of hosting elected officials like Governor Polis, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, U.S. Congressman Robert Garcia, U.S. Congressman, excuse me, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, California State Senator Yimby Pioneer Scott Wiener, and Barack Obama speechwriter and Pod Save America co-host, co-founder of Crooked Media John Lovett. We hosted them for all-new housing-focused interviews in the fall for the Kamala Harris campaign. And on Tuesday, we shared some clips and highlights from all of those interviews where each of those amazing leaders shared their Yimby origin stories in their own words, so do check it out.

3:05 Yesterday was our actual official 10-week anniversary, and to mark the occasion, we released our first live episode of Radio Abundance, a panel conversation featuring heroes from Inclusive Abundance, the San Francisco Democratic Party, Yimby Action, SF Yimby, California Yimby, the Bay Area New Liberals, who are part of the Center for New Liberalism, the United Democratic Club in San Francisco, and Abundance Network. It is a raucous and moving conversation filled with personal stories. You will hear a cheering crowd, a sold-out crowd in San Francisco, laughing and hooting and hollering along with us. It's a real treat and a beautiful expression of the culture of abundance that we are working so hard to build.

3:52 So thanks to Derek Kaufman and Inclusive Abundance for catalyzing and sponsoring and underwriting that event. And thanks to the Bay Area New Liberals and the Center for New Liberalism for their sponsorship as well. Tonight, we're bringing back United States Senator Brian Schatz, Congressman Robert Garcia, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham for a compilation of their remarks and their stories and their impassioned arguments and more than a few curses and rallying cries from the fall. These interviews are from just before the presidential election, so know that they're a few months old, but I'll be damned if they don't hold up. I think you're going to love them, and I guess we'll find out in three, two, one.

4:46 When you talk about bureaucracy, there's a lot of bureaucracy and red tape. You know, the Honolulu City Council in opposing legislation that the Hawaii legislature was proposing to just allow densification, allow three ADUs per property. They introduced a resolution opposing all of these reforms, and they used language that could have been like from a Stephen Miller press release. You know, you hear Republicans say that a lot, but let me tell you, as Democrats, we need to understand that a lot of these regulations came through Republican administrations to keep people from building new houses for low-income people and for working men and women. These are Democrats in good standing running the Honolulu City Council in blue, blue districts, not understanding that they are almost accidentally embracing the talking points of our ideological adversaries.

5:42 So we have to look at the red tape very carefully and just see what it means to be able to unravel some of this red tape. I think what we're going to have to fight is still, I'm pretty progressive. I'm definitely on the more left side of the party and a member of the Progressive Caucus. And where I have to do work with some of my members is also getting them to understand that you can be over-regulated. And we can actually be putting in policy that actually is not that you think will be helping the climate and our sustainable goals. We're actually hurting them long-term by being so careful that we're not providing housing and therefore kind of breaking up these dense cities that we should be creating. So I think that there's a lot of work to do there. The main thing that we need to get out of is this mentality that housing is a scarce resource that has to be distributed among the public in such a way that deserving people get housing and undeserving people don't get housing, right?

6:40 There should not be one unsheltered person here. Housing is a scarce resource because we've made it scarce. Young people are sleeping in their cars, first of all. And I have many college students and many young people who are not college students with children living in their cars. There is enough money to finance the development of housing because everybody is willing to pay rent or pay mortgage. And if you just size the project and locate the project in such a way that someone says, yeah, I'd pay $1,800 for that or $2,700 for that or $700 for that, there's enough housing that can be built. Housing is infrastructure. It's a human right. But it's also an issue around equity because when you talk about fair housing, and Lord knows I do a lot on fair housing. And there's discrimination, big time discrimination based on zip codes, based on race, based on gender, women and children.

7:31 And so we've got to get rid of these discriminatory laws. And the basic premise of the Yes in My Backyard movement is to say, we reject the premise of scarcity. You can have nice things. It is actually the government in this instance that is making it hard for us to all have the thing that everybody needs, which is a roof over their head. Everyone has a mother, a sister, a daughter, a brother who need a little help. What really made this so clear for me was I served one term on the California Coastal Commission when I first got it when I was just coming into politics. And I was stunned at how all of these good progressives kind of turned their back on building any housing or any good projects because they didn't want to build on any sort of green space.

8:17 I think what progressives have to really do some thinking is we want a beautiful, green, sustainable, climate-friendly environment. We also need housing for people. You can do both. And so this idea that our organization, the California Coastal Commission, which I believe needs major, major reform and a major focus on actually building housing in a way that's smart along some of our coast, it is important. And so it's those kind of hard conversations that we have to start having, opening up and not allowing state agencies or federal agencies from stopping housing. I've had a little bit of an argument with some other people about this kind of, I think it was on the Ezra Klein podcast, where he's like, you know, there are legitimate downsides to like people living in your neighborhood. Maybe it's more crowded, whatever. Bullshit. That's not true either. That's not true either.

9:02 We have to find ways to do this because this is our, I say, responsibility as an American. We are a brother's keeper. We are a sister's keeper. Obviously, I admire Ezra. I appreciate being on this podcast, but it's just not true that your neighborhood is somehow ruined by human beings living nearby, right? And so, you know, I live in a very urban environment in the city of Honolulu. And I like joke because it's like almost geometrically impossible to have as many neighbors as I have. I think I have like seven neighbors because it's like diagonally. And some of them are single family homes and some of them are two-story walk-ups and one of them is a three-story walk-up. One of them is a passive park, right? And like, that's okay, right? And so the idea that everything should be orderly as to look like an ancient like French town or a Disney resort, that's an aesthetic preference and you can have it.

9:54 And if you're in Martha's Vineyard, you can talk about the unique historic character or the blah, blah, blah. But for the rest of us, like we just want to be able to live like somewhere close to where we work or where our kids go to school. One thing that I think we all struggle with in this country today is particularly post-COVID is still feeling anxious and isolated. This whole thing about places being full, right, is this kind of like horseshoe theory of politics where somehow that's like a leftist view, I guess. But it's also, again, the kind of thing that the anti-illigration right talks about. And so we just have to use the kind of vernacular of the progressive left. We have to sit with that. We have to think about what it means to say that we are full.

10:41 If it came out of the mouth of, you know, Donald Trump's former Secretary of Homeland Security, we would know exactly how to understand it. But if it comes out of the mouth of like some, you know, Biden voter who lives in a fancy neighborhood in the exurbs, it like codes differently. And I don't think it should. Like it's a basically selfish view that those people are going to ruin our neighborhood. Not just, just I want to, I want to, no, I'm just venting, but it's fun. I was the statehouse member for Makiki Manoa for eight years. And the city council member got the first public swimming pool that had been authorized and paid for like in more than a decade. It was quite a long time in between swimming and neighbor, so-called neighborhood board, right? Which didn't have like raw authority, but like it was very hard to get something to actually happen if the neighborhood board was against it.

11:32 Voted, and it was close, it was like 16 to 15, barely, to accept a swimming pool in their neighborhood. This is the densest statehouse district in the, one of the densest urban areas, the state of Hawaii. Obviously, it's warm all the time. They were worried that it was going to be an attractive nuisance, which is to say people from other neighborhoods were going to drive over and use our pool. And who knows what kinds of people those were. And a guy named Joe Biker, who I still know, who ended up running for Congress unsuccessfully, but just a very decent guy, just stood up and go, what the hell are we doing here? Andy, the city council member, finally got us the pool that we've been literally asking for for eight years. And now we're going to reject it because like somebody from a valley over might enjoy it. And I think he swung the pool in our direction.

12:19 And it's now right on the corner of Cameroku and Wilder and a huge public amenity. And if anything, slightly underused, not an attractive nuisance. Housing is a universal topic to get people excited about. It's not just about doing it in our backyards. It's about doing it in the cities and towns we love and about making sure they're vibrant and they're keeping young people. Now people of all ages, you want you want doctors to move to rural America, have neighborhoods, have a place for their families to come. Heather McGee's book goes into detail about how lots of people would rather drain the pool than share the pool. Think about that. People would rather drain the pool than share the pool. And if we're the progressive party, if we're the party of kindness and opportunity and inclusion, if we imagine a future where we generate all of our own clean energy and add that there is an economic future for my kids and their kids, then we're going to see it, right?

13:14 We're going to see windmills and there's going to be like some new housing development. And we just have to envision a way in which we can all live together and not assume that these resources are actually scarce. Sometimes it is the private sector that is hoarding or gouging, but sometimes it's the government that is at least assisting in creating the shortage. I had read about a bill in Arizona that the Department of Defense went to her and said, you should veto this bill because there's an impact to military bases in Arizona. It was basically an up-to-date bill for the state of Arizona. So it was vetoed. And so I stepped in and I talked to the members of Congress in Arizona. I was like, do you guys care if I can engage on this? I think this is total bullshit. And I wrote the DOD and I said, how did you guys oppose this bill that the governor vetoed?

13:59 And they came back and basically said that there's a community that reached out to them that didn't want this bill, that they were concerned that there would be too many problems and the DOD agreed. And so the DOD stepped in to veto essentially a pro-housing bill in Arizona. Right now, there are federal agencies that are engaging in public comments, conversations to governors, to state legislators that we just don't hear or know about. This one blew open to good reporting. The Atlantic covered it. Other news organizations and covering the story in Arizona. So I learned about it. But that's happening all the time at the federal level and state level. You're having these agencies engage in public comment, in phone calls and conversations that are really causing this housing crisis we're having across the country and certainly in California.

14:45 So these are ways that we can engage relationships. This is a bipartisan thing. Bring Republicans, bring Democrats on board. And I agree with you. I never would have thought I'd be supporting deregulation, but here we are. Look, I'm the chairman of the committee that does the operation for public housing and all that stuff. And I support all the public spending on housing, but it's not just spending that we need. We also just need to give people permission to build the kind of housing that we all want and desire. If we really want the nurse and the firefighter and the elderly and the students to live next to us, then we need to allow someone to build that thing. Well, I think housing and at the city level, oftentimes the voices that are opposed to more housing construction or upzoning, we're almost always the same voices that are engaged in local politics.

15:31 And they're usually the loudest on a variety of issues, not just on housing. And the moment they were trying to build housing for everybody, they became assholes. All those people, by the way, who have the lease are the most to vote for measures that actually increase housing as well. So it's just an interesting, you know, dynamic that it's those very same people who also might have the lowest income that also are willing to tax themselves for more housing. We need more housing, but that's only one piece of it. We need where we build new housing, where we can help people and invest in our people. We have to build a social structure also. We have to have good education, good health care, good paying jobs for living wage. So this is a community effort. There are a lot of issues that go into housing, which we must address. I think DOT and HUD are two agencies where we could see some really great reforms come in.

16:21 I think it's interesting, like, I think housing and urban development for so long, I think people have viewed that agency, you know, as an agency that just gives out, you know, basically going out and just giving out really important work, right? It provides vouchers, it provides housing assistance, trying to build affordable housing, and it does all of those things. But, you know, HUD, housing and urban development, I mean, we can really have an agency that also builds and that thinks about cities and that actually is creating urban spaces, and it's actually working to actually deregulate the complexity of development. I mean, everybody's everything, right? Like, so think of it like in the transportation context, like people talking about drivers versus pedestrians, like, what are you talking about? I'm a driver and a pedestrian, it depends how I'm getting around that, right? Sometimes a transit rider, sometimes an Uber driver, something I'm not as a cyclist, but like, I'm pretty much everything.

17:10 So homeowners are likewise, you know, have mixed motivation, right? Like, they might have their lovely home, and they might have, like, some reservations about how the neighborhood might change, but they very likely have kids who are trying to figure out how the hell to make the math work. And so if you allow people to do an accessory dwelling unit, then suddenly you're like, huh, I was anti, you know, I was a little nifty, but now I think I can have my grandkids on my own property. And so I just think we have to make the kind of societal level argument for housing and understand that the more localized, the more granular you get, the more likely you are to get an actual neighbor who, like, maybe we're not going to be able to win. But the political strategy here is to make sure that if you're a block away, as opposed to right next door, if you're even three doors down, maybe you wouldn't favor this, but you're not going to go to war, right?

18:04 And I just think that's all we have to do is not turn this into highest salience issue on the planet, but just to get everybody to kind of, like, look at each other and go, like, what are we doing here? Like, we're really going to, like, maintain a, in a blue county, in a blue city, in a blue state, we're really going to maintain some shortage of housing because of, you know, 12 people who show up at every community meeting, you know, reconstituting themselves as a new nonprofit to save such and such. You know, there are legitimate interests in saving things, but some of this stuff is made up, and I just think we need to call them out. We need to supercharge housing in America. I had my people over parking bill, for example, a lot of folks like, why are, you know, in parking regulation, and why not? If cities aren't meeting challenge, their challenge of building more housing, the feds have got to start sending some national standards.

18:54 And then I believe where we can really make an impact is when we end up linking grants to our standards, right? So, like, I think this can happen at DOT and many other places where we should be linking multimodal transit. We should be linking access to rail, to the creation of density. All of that should be linked to how your application is being presented and how progressive it is as it relates to housing, to sustainability. And we would, I think, make much more progress in building more housing and construction. A personal story, when I was on public assistance, which I was in college raising two little boys, they're my age now, and I was able, though, to buy a house on welfare. There was a program for people like me, okay, struggling, single mom on public assistance.

19:42 I believe it was called the 235 program, but it allowed banks and realtors to work with a possible homeowner to be able to bring down the down payment, to be able to restructure the monthly payment, and I never defaulted on it. I always paid my taxes, but I had the help of my own government. And I never would have been able to finish college, send my kids to school, start a small business, all of that. And that house, of course, now, you don't know how, you don't want to believe how much is worth now, but it was $19,000 then, right? And that was a lot. And so I was able to do that. So there just has to be a realignment, and so much of this is generational. We'll be able to invest in more infrastructure, more public safety, more healthcare centers.

20:27 And so I see it as a win-win. And Atlanta's a good example of, like, the political upside of being a growing place, right? That we've got these two. We've got a Jewish United States senator from Georgia and a Black United States senator from Georgia. And that doesn't happen without, you know, Atlanta growing. I want to see people living in my communities, wherever I'm living, because I know that that's going to make them happy and settled. But also it will help my community be more of a community that is more developed and more loving and will enrich and enable people to have a better life for everyone. And I think that's what this country is about, it's finding a better life for everyone.

21:13 I think California has to be pious here. I think a number of the states that are currently not considered swing states, if you have this mass departure, because we've simply made it impossible to live there, then, to your point, we're going to live with the political consequences, you know, beyond housing. We can do it all. And, you know, we don't want the issues of racial equity and economic equity to be a barrier to building more housing stuff. You know, one of the reasons that I sort of go out of my way to be almost provocative rhetorically is that I do think we need to change politics, too. It's not just a matter of passing, you know, laws at the federal level or incentive programs at the federal level. Like we as a progressive movement have to have a reckoning about what is our view about housing?

21:59 Do we want more of it or do we want less of it? And that is the binary choice in front of us. So I think almost the most important thing for any political leader is to start to shift that political conversation so that everybody, you know, if you're a 23-year-old who's working for the city council, may eventually want to run for office. Like there should be a space for a pro-housing progressive to do so. The other part is the incentives, right, is that we, of course, have the YIMBY program through HUD that is basically $100 million annually to incentivize states and counties to, you know, deregulate their housing process. And so, yeah, there are incentive programs, there are subsidy programs on the federal side. But again, this is going to come down to state land use law and county ordinances and procedures and rules and hookup requirements.

22:47 And, you know, I think there's an overall in the state council right now of the land use ordinance, which I'm not criticizing. But, like, they are determining the height above ground that a beehive must be and the distance from the setback that a beehive must be, which, by the way, is, like, not trivial. People do try to, you know, have beehives in urban areas. And if I were next to one, I would probably want to, you know, make sure. But I'm just saying, like, it's so damn granular and everybody's trying to get it exactly right. And, by the way, a damn shame that some of the more blue states, or, excuse me, some of the more red states are building more housing and more clean energy simply because they're just making it easier. And so why don't we help everybody and why don't we lift everyone up and make all of our communities safe like homeowners in these beautiful neighborhoods have?

23:35 And that's what we want. What I really love about what's happening right now within these spaces is there's finally a connection between kind of the academics that are engaged in the YIMBY work and particularly communities of color and lower communities on the ground that are experiencing the brunt of unaffordable housing. And you're starting to see these connections being made and more diversity within the YIMBY movement and more uplifting of, you know, of working class people. And I think that is where the magic happens. So I think that's, I think, what the future of the YIMBY movement should also be is going to be a diversity of understanding kind of the shared struggle of working class people that are and unhoused people that are that are suffering from not having left housing.

24:20 The YIMBY movement has seen such growth in the last few years. I'm really excited that the YIMBY movement has also linked up with some of the more kind of progressive elements of the things that we believe as YIMBYs. I think, you know, being pro-housing, being pro-transit, being pro-climate, understand the link between all of those, I think is really exciting. I think that now younger people, diverse communities are organizing, I think, in a much better way. So you're seeing this kind of more reaction from these communities in supporting projects. And so now I've noticed even in my own community that there's much more support for housing projects today than there was when I wanted to be mayor because there's more people more organized. And I think that the other, I think, interesting thing has been, you know, in many ways, the YIMBY movement wants to stay bipartisan.

25:09 It's like, I get that it should. In fact, the caucus that we're forming in Congress is going to be bipartisan. But I do think that at least those that are on the left of, and I think most of the YIMBY movement is generally more left of center, but includes everyone. But those on the left have also learned to build alliances with folks that are for development, anti-regulation, that just want to build. It takes too long to build. I have a lot of friends that are quite conservative or mods of Republicans that are also YIMBYs and that are also very much into kind of deregulating the process and observing the process. And building that coalition, I think, has helped get us to where we are today. And so I think now you find much more bridge building between the communities than you did in years.

25:55 I look at, like, our Cal 3 YIMBY group here in California. I was just at a reception for them maybe a couple weeks ago. And they have tons of lots of officials there and tons of community groups. And I was impressed that the YIMBY movement in our state has grown. I've been all over the world, and I've seen in campus of refugees. But I've also seen in Kenya where there's a huge, quote, slum, but it's a neighborhood now, a couple million. It started with just a few people being unsheltered. And once they got there, then they developed their barbershops, their social systems. And when affordable housing was being talked about and created, guess what? Nobody wants to move. That's home. That's their neighborhood. Okay? And so we have to understand the mental health issues and the issues that are associated with people if they're transient and if they're in the streets and if they don't have a place to live.

26:46 Because wherever people go, they want decent, safe shelter, but they also want a community. And what I saw now in Kenya, how this community of a few people has grown to millions of people. They have their restaurants, barbershops, beauty shops, churches, all in this slum. And that's because it's home. And so we have to understand, again, my mental health background, the emotional and mental issues around home. Okay? And home is where the heart is. And if people stay unsheltered for two weeks, a month, that becomes home. And people want to live in a place that's home. And so we have to be careful in how we deal with this. And we have to be sensitive, but we have to have alternatives in making sure people know that we care for them, we love them, and we want them to live the life that everyone deserves in this rich and wealthy country.

27:36 That's not where the other side is going. The other side is more of the same. It's less about you. It's nothing about you or your family. And I'm on the side and the team that's all about all of us and our families. Thank you all very much. You're doing the work that needs to be done to, well, to make sure that our freedoms aren't taken away by Donald Trump. I mean, I hate to even raise this right now. But, you know, he's on a roll. Given all that's going out there that's aimed at tearing down government's role and our credibility for doing really meaningful work for families of all sizes, all natures, all backgrounds, and all incomes. He wants to destroy this country and set up a dictatorship. We know that. You know that. He's taken away our freedoms already, the reproductive freedom, our voting rights they're trying to dismantle, our right to organize they're trying to dismantle, all of our rights.

28:28 This is about your freedoms. This is about your rights in addition to housing. So just know the big picture is what you're doing is protecting our freedoms and protecting our democracy. And I just want to thank you all so much for that. You guys are great. No, no, I'm really glad. So I'm glad you're doing this. And I'm glad that you invited me to be with you. But I'm glad so many people are listening. You guys are wonderful. You guys are all doing great, great work. So thanks for that. Amazing. So thank you. Thank you guys for all the work you guys do. Seriously, it's awesome. And thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you. I'm deeply grateful. On to victory. You've been listening to Radio Abundance. Join the movement for Progressive Abundance at YimbyDemocrats.org. Yes, we can build again. Yes, we can trounce the fascists. Yes, you can be the difference.

29:15 This is AI, by the way. You think these jokers actually got Obama? Check in with me in a few months. It'll happen. Thank you for listening to Radio Abundance, a new podcast by Yimby Democrats for America. Now it's time for you to join the movement. We're building a big tent, and it's going to take all of us. Join us, and together we'll fight to build America, defeat fascism, and unleash the era of Progressive Abundance. Join the movement at YimbyDemocrats.org. Happy 10-week anniversary, Yimby Democrats for America. Here's to everything still to come. I'll see you soon.