On the premiere episode of Radio Abundance, we launch with a double-feature! First, the team sits down with Maryland Governor Wes Moore and his Secretary of Housing Jake Day to explore their fight to unleash abundance and build an alternative to Trump. Then, we chat with Congressman Jake Auchincloss about his work at the national level, the urgency of building housing, and what abundance means for transportation, healthcare, and the future of the Democratic Party.
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. Tonight's first guests are Maryland Governor Wes Moore and his Secretary of Housing and Community Development, Jake Day. They'll be followed by United States Congressman from Massachusetts, Jake Auchinclos. Try saying that ten times, Matt. All three of our guests tonight are heroic American veterans. They're also fine young men, progressive leaders saying, "Yes," in my backyard. You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. Now let's get to the show. Please welcome, for the first time, your hosts for Radio Abundance, Steve Boyle, Nia Johnson, and Armand Domoluski.
0:56 I'm Donald J. Trump and I hate these guys. Hi, everybody. My name is Steve Boyle. I am the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America. And welcome to Radio Abundance. In fact, welcome to the premiere episode of Radio Abundance. I'm Steve Boyle. I am here with Armand Domoluski and Nia Johnson. We are YIMBY Democrats for America. Today we're going to be sitting down with Maryland Governor Wes Moore, his Secretary of Housing and Community Development, Jake Day, and United States Congressman from Massachusetts, Jake Auchincloss. We're really excited to chat with them and to share with you those interviews. But first, I thought we should take a moment to introduce ourselves and who it is that you will be listening to today and on future episodes of Radio Abundance. So we're going to throw it first to Armand Domoluski. Armand and I met in San Francisco very briefly years ago and then reconnected for YIMBYs for Harris, which Armand founded and which is the origin story for YIMBY Democrats for America.
1:52 Hey Armand, it's great to be working with you. Well, to be clear, I co-founded it with Nia. So it's a collaborative effort. During the election, which obviously did not go the way to, of course, it, there were a lot of groups out there. And I had the idea of kicking around and putting YIMBYs for Harris, particularly when Kamal picked Kim Waltz as her VP nominee. He'd done some really good things in Soda and housing, like around, you know, Sarah Fork. Some guy I know on Twitter just tweeted, "So you can be for Harris and tag me." And so I retweeted and I was like, man, he was interested, DM me. And a lot of people have slid into my DMs. So I was like, oh, you know, we're going to have this like a WhatsApp group. A lot of people joined the WhatsApp group. And then we ended up doing, we'll talk more later about it, but a large event that was a bunch of elected officials across the entire country.
2:44 We had U.S. senators, like Senator Ryan Schatz from Hawaii. Down to city council members, like, work up the team from Cambridge. Really early leaders of the EMB movement, like Senator Scott Wiener from California. And we raised in the end over $150,000 for Kamala Harris. And then we held other events like phone banks. And though the campaign did not win, we did really build something. And part of, I think, the narrative of what Kamala was doing, the role we played in helping support that. The national discourse and coverage over this and housing led to the creation of the EMB caucus. Congressman Arbor Garcia, who will be speaking to, making really housing up of the agenda for the Democratic Party. Since then, the effort has evolved to be about more than just housing.
3:35 There's a conversation right now about abundance and how to bring that EMB per housing philosophy to clean energy, transportation, to not just focus on how to distribute the scarce resources we have, but also to unlock new growth and new progress. And that's why I'm really excited that they're all here and contributing to work because I really see the natural evolution of what started in bars in San Francisco. It's years of EMB organizing to our EMBs for Harris and now EMB Democrats for America. And, you know, Armand, I think you brought together and unleashed a huge amount of energy in the fall that I think was really exciting to see. And really, I think, gave a home for a nascent community that was ready to step up of folks who are both EMBs and Democrats, the folks who want to build America and defeat fascism.
4:24 And there are a lot of us. We have a really vibrant community of thousands of super engaged people from from coast to coast, a super dynamic and chatty WhatsApp group, elected officials who are excited to get into this area. You know, that first event Armand mentioned, right, we turned out more than 70 speakers. And like Armand said, that was governors, senators, congresspeople and mayors. Yes. But that was also people working on the ground in local government, organizers, activists, authors, journalists and bloggers, influencers, a comedian. It is a dynamic movement. People were calling that event Yimby Taylor. The Wall Street Journal called it a breakthrough moment for the decade old Yimby movement. And when we got to sit down later in the campaign as part of mobilizing people for our phone banks, which turned to tens of thousands of phone calls, we got to kind of lure people by doing some interviews with elected officials where Governor Polis in Colorado, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in New Mexico, Senator Schatz, Congressman Robert Garcia got to speak in a way that I was.
5:23 My eyes were opened a little bit for all the all the criticisms that we and everybody else has for politics and politicians. I think there's a nice self-selected group of people who are Democrats and fans of abundance, who are both have deep knowledge of these questions and their intricacies, but also a lot of raw passion. And I know Nia had an amazing interview with Senator Brian Schatz where he kind of cursed up a storm and deep into the racial justice of housing. There is a pretty passionate dynamic movement out there, Amon, that you gave some life to. Before we hear a little background on Nia, I'm just curious how you got into Yimby and abundance politics. What radicalized you? Where did your Twitter following come from? I just want to know a little bit more about your origin stories and passions and where this is all going for you.
6:11 The simple answer to where my Twitter following came from is I have no fucking idea, but I still don't know why people are interested in things I have to say. I'm glad they are. You know, I started in college. My dad had worked at Harris, right? My family are refugees. And he was part of the East Bay community of post-contractors. And as kids, we'd always help other kids would like go somewhere abroad or whatever. We would work and help him move around, clean up on the site and stuff like that. I've always been close to typically the act of building homes. But then in college, the housing market collapsed. And so my dad, entire business collapsed. And we just made it really. It's like American middle class, like in the last few years too. So it's like a sense of like, we just made it.
6:59 Our home, you know, entire housing financial crisis. We were on the bridge. It was in our home. And so I, I studied economics. I really wanted to understand and learn more housing policy. And I really studied and followed in college. And then when I got out of college, my first real job was working as an economic analyst for a firm, an accounting firm, specializing low income housing tax credits and other tax credit policy. And one thing that I sort of learned there over time and by reading people like Matthew Glacius is that it wasn't just a funding question. So many of the projects that our firm was working on were dealing with opposition and people on the ground and like zoning rules and discretionary review and opposition.
7:47 And that got me really interested. And that got me really interested when I saw, not Sonia Charles speak at a panel. I went to go at Penn and see what it was all about. And Sonia is like a very unique person. And she has really gotten the ability to recruit people to things. And so within a week, my roommate was like, who's this strange woman? They're like falling around like the sunshine past school, personal planning commission. All things I didn't know existed before that. Since then, I ended up working in local politics. I worked on the campaign before super, then supervisor, now Senator Scott Wiener. I worked on the mayoral campaign for Mayor Linda Breed when she first ran, who became like a really big EMB elected. And while now, you know, I work in the private sector.
8:32 I'm a data analyst. I've continued to pursue this work as an activist, both on the ground, going to planning commission hearings, like my neighborhood groups, but also just online, trying to spread and expand these ideas. And in particular, I think now is really the moment where we want to take these ideas of unbiism or want to say yes to things and go beyond the aperture of just housing. I think we make a consistent thread in democratic policy making that we've said no too many times for too long and have developed a really strong regimen against about preventing bad things, but not a good enough regimen for saying yes to good things. I'm really excited about that. I hope I can help some small things. You mentioned, as Samia Traus, she'll be on the podcast in the next few weeks.
9:20 Her story is pretty incredible, right? She's a school teacher in San Francisco who was priced out of town and started to put together two things. One was that it was scarcity and that loss of housing and the ability to block housing that had created those surging rates in San Francisco that had immiserated so many people. And also that we had a voice and that the door is the door to government is weirdly open. You can show up to meetings and they have to listen to you for two minutes. And by the way, everyone who's blocking housing is showing up to those meetings and talking and they are listening to them. But you can show up, they will hear you. And if you bring your friends, they have to listen to all of you. And I think of Sonia really as the founder of the Yimby movement and the person to put things together and grow the movement and introduce our vocabulary and our names.
10:08 So it's all happened in a decade. So you're 10 years from a school teacher saying, hey, let's do something about this to, you know, not just the Harris campaign embracing three million new homes. And and it was their best and top polling message of the whole campaign. Even just watching the DNC last year, I pulled off the road when out of nowhere, Barack Obama started to talk about zoning and permitting. So it's been a pretty amazing surge. And we're here to continue that work and be foot soldiers and a voice and a vision for it. Nia had to beat our mind. And how does your piece of co-founding Yamisa Harris come about? She just saw this incredibly attractive man on Twitter. And she had to. Had to meet. Yeah. And he and he told her to talk to you. I'm not answering that.
10:54 I'm not answering that. All of her and I are good friends. Abundance train. All right, Nia. Yeah, no, actually, if you if it was Theo James, I would believe you. But, um, so I'm Nia. I'm Nia. I am currently founder of Party Ventures. We invest in the future of social and media and all. That's my day job. But I have been a GIMBY activist for a very long time. I got in just by being anti-car. I grew up in the suburbs of Massachusetts. I found it very boring. I was very much like that. I hate my town kid. And every 2000s email song, like, I hate this town. And why is everything so boring? And I think one day I just like randomly Googled. I'm like, why do the suburbs suck?
11:41 And I got like that James, like TED talk video where he just like goes on about how cars are like a terrible invention and have ruined American urban life. And I think from there I just got pilled. That happened, I think my sophomore year in college. And then I just had more about it. I just like learned about like how much we waste from being spread out, how much natural resources we have to use, how much gas we have to use, how much carbon we're putting out into the air, everything. And I'm thinking we're putting this much effort into making something boring. That makes no sense. So for me, I was radicalized from there. When I was in college, I majored in econ. And so I've been like an efficiency maxi forever.
12:29 It just all kind of collided. And then I got on Twitter and I met people like Armand and a bunch of other people. And then we got into a group chat and I learned about YIMBY and housing. And I just took off from there. You bring up something I think is, you know, that I think about a lot. Right. Which is, you know, I at least and I think perhaps all three of us, you know, you spend your whole life as a as a staunchly committed Democrat, a liberal, a progressive. You think constantly about how to confront climate change and the pain of seeing government fail to do that. We think a lot about affordable housing and affordability in general, the cost of living, how to deliver social and racial justice and equitability, how to lift people up, how we all can rise, how to build a better and more equitable economy, how to improve opportunities and outcomes for everybody.
13:22 And then to get to a point, Texas is lapping California on building clean energy and green energy and solar. It's humiliating to organize your life around. We need to confront climate change. We need to build green energy. We need to will in a better future. And to have that moment of seeing all blue cities and all blue states standing in the way of that and often standing in the way of saving the environment by using legislation that is meant to protect the environment is awakening. So, you know, I'll share my entry points into this world and introduce myself a little bit. My name is Steve Boyle. I do not have a background in politics. I come from the world of creative and artistic and entertainment entrepreneurship. I run a company called Epic Immersive that makes large scale immersive theatrical experiences, which basically means instead of sitting and watching a movie, we'll build out the whole fictional world and let you live in it with actors and stories and giant sets.
14:17 And that's everything from a 14 acre fictional city with 100 actors to a secret society underneath San Francisco to a four day adventure through the jungles and ruins of Mexico in collaboration with scores of local Mexican and indigenous artists. It's been an exciting life, but there are a couple of formative moments along the lines of what we're talking about that have led me to this place. The first, you know, in terms of a kind of a political awakening, you know, when I was 16, a week before my 17th birthday, I was in London and one morning I hopped on a train in the London underground on the tube to commute that never reached its destination. I was about 10 minutes in, uh, in Al Qaeda suicide bomber detonated. Um, I, uh, I saw things, uh, I wouldn't wish on anyone.
15:07 And, uh, I've told me a good story before. Well, then I'll, I'll briefly without hijacking the podcast. I'll tell you a little bit. I'll tell you about that. Right. I got on, uh, got on the commuter train at about, I think 8:40 in the morning at King's Cross station. And at the same time, uh, another gentleman, his name was Shahzad Tanwir, uh, with a nail bomb in his backpack, got in, uh, about, about 10 minutes in. Um, what I thought was that we'd hit a wall and derailed. Everything came through a crashing stop. It went dark and then, uh, the emergency lights flickered on and train cars started to fill with smoke. And we kind of tucked our, our mouths into our shirts in case the air was poisonous. And then it was a waiting game, right? There was debris. I didn't know it at the time, but I had, uh, blood on my forehead, somebody else's. And, uh, we sat there wondering what was going to happen next and how long we'd have to wait until somebody came.
15:58 And you could hear people screaming and screaming for help. And, uh, and a British person will never forget it. Although I wish I could remember the exact quote said essentially like, Hey, you know, can it wait? They're not going to hear you. No one here, you know, you can hear any faster. Just wait for emergency personnel to come, which is very British and stiff upper lip. And it sounded wise enough at the moment, uh, until we, uh, I was the closest person to the door. And we decided to force the door open for a little bit more air. And immediately on the other side of it was a woman. Um, and I will preface this by saying that she lives. Um, and it took me years to find that out. And it was an important moment for me. We have never spoken. Um, though I know who she is. She had been, uh, in, I believe the attacked car. She had been thrown from that car onto the tracks.
16:44 The train had run over her and severed her legs. She was bleeding out from her legs. And sorry to start this podcast on something graphic and not related to housing. But she looked me at the eyes and, and reached out to me with a, a bloody hand as the blood mucus dripped from her nose and said, help. 10 minutes later, emergency personnel came. They treated her. They treated other people. Finally, we marched a single file out of the car. We marched along those tracks to get out of the station. And as we did, you passed bodies. Um, some still, some stirring. We passed, uh, the car that had been attacked, um, which looked like a crushed tin can, um, with, with people inside being treated. And so I, I bring this up only to say that from an early age, for me, at least politics wasn't an abstraction.
17:33 And for that matter, neither was history. It was immediate. It was real. It is our lives. It touches everything we do. It is life or death. And we have to stand up and have a say in that. And also life is short and there is no time to waste. Just do the thing and say the thing. And then we continue a long story. You know, I lived in San Francisco. It's kind of where I got my career in my company and, uh, seeing how many of my friends in my artist community were driven out of this. I mean, it has hollowed out. So many people that I care about that were crucial parts of the culture of San Francisco are gone. And I blame scarcity and our surging rates. But the thing about scarcity and the zero mind summit creates is that those same people then are terrified of new housing and you get this actual problem. But my radicalization and yimbyism wasn't just, hey, we need to build more housing overall.
18:22 It was seeing how all of our conversations were about affordable housing. And then when the city stepped up and said, we're going to build up four stories of 100% affordable housing on this empty lot where this abandoned McDonald's people could still rise up. And say, no, not near me. And to see how we get in our way of our own problems and having that moment, too, of being someone who loves cities and thinks that they are the center of culture and dynamism and that we should be building not just the best cities in the world, but the best cities of history. And part of the reason that we don't have that 70% of San Francisco and its entire west side by a park that is bigger and better than Central Park by the beach is suburbia because of our own choices and our own rules that say it is illegal to build apartments in San Francisco.
19:12 It is illegal to build New York buildings today in New York. There's got to be a better way. And I'll finish by saying, you know, I live in two worlds. On the one hand, I am an ultra progressive, bleeding heart liberal San Francisco artist. I said 10 years ago that every year more than half our artists would always be women. More than half of our artists would always be people of color. We have always hit that. We will continue to hit that. We are huge on platforming trans artists. That is one of my lives. I have this other life where I am a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur and my clients are Apple and Google and Meta. And I've had people call me a centrist. I've had people call me a literary. I speak in both these worlds. I'd say the same thing to both. I understand a little bit of code switching and the vocabulary there, which is also how I know. And I will scream till I am blue in the face that people on both of the sides will yell at each other while saying the same thing in different words.
20:04 And connecting those dots has fueled my artistic career. And I think it is a really important barrier to break down in our politics in the coming years. We can't just rely on the ideas of the past. We need to chart a new way forward to meet the challenges of today. If we want to make it easier for more young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people in this country. That is a priority. Thanks, Mr. President. Now that we know the stakes, let's get on with the show. It's time for our first interview of the night. Wes Moore is the governor of Maryland. A Rhodes Scholar, a combat veteran, and former college football player, Wes served as a lieutenant and paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan.
20:54 Now as governor of Maryland, he's fighting for abundance with the Housing for Jobs Act. Secretary Jake Day also served in the U.S. Army deploying to the Horn of Africa, Latvia, and Estonia before serving two terms as the mayor of his hometown in Salisbury, Maryland. Today, he serves his country as Maryland Secretary of Housing and Community Development. Now, please welcome to Radio Abundance, Governor Wes Moore and Secretary Jake Day. And to kick things off, here's your host, Steve Boyd. Governor Moore, Secretary Day, thanks so much for being with us today on Radio Abundance. This is the premiere episode of Radio Abundance. And thank you so much for joining forces with us to launch YIMBY Democrats for America. Our twin missions are to build America and to defeat fascism. We know that we can't build a more progressive future if we don't build.
21:41 We know that we cannot defeat Trump if we don't present a better and alternative vision for American greatness. So this is a conversation about Progressive Abundance and how to make that a reality. I'd love to invite you first to say hi to our listeners at home and maybe introduce yourself and tell them a little bit about what you're working on. Absolutely. So, hey, everybody. My name is Governor Wes Moore. I'm the governor of Maryland, the 63rd governor of the state. And I'm here with my friend and colleague and partner in the work, our secretary of housing and community development, Jake Day, who's also a major in the army. He was also a former mayor who I was excited when I said, you know, how can I find the most aggressive person to really zero us in and lead us in housing? I mean, there's nothing like getting a former mayor to be able to to get in and lean in, but also someone who really has an extraordinary vision and is bringing this.
22:32 And so and we're excited because I mean, we we came in saying that we wanted Maryland to be remarkably aggressive when it came to growth. That economic growth and affordability has got to be the number one things that we can we can drill in and focus on. And we knew that you cannot get that without focusing on housing. And and honestly, for us, it's a it's a really it's a basic supply and demand conversation where where, you know, you have where 30 percent of young Marylanders were saying that they were considering leaving the state for one simple reason, housing costs. And a big reason why you have housing cost issues is because we have such a shortage that we have of units.
23:18 And so we've really been very systematic about where last year we put together the most aggressive package in in in recent history by any Maryland governor to address the issue of housing. And that was how you focus on things like density bonuses and transit oriented development and saying that, yes, there are places where we should not build with a place where we should build. We need to build and we need to incentivize the building. We need to both work with our locals and also incentivize developers to be able to address that. And also now saying where are there places where we know there's ample amount of jobs, places where we know that employment is hot, that there should be a place and an ability for people to be able to develop more and grow more, because it's both going to be about how can you create more protections and more options for renters, keeping the price down.
24:06 But also, we're very bullish on the idea of we want to create more homeowners. We want to create a better ownership society, because when people actually have assets, you have things you can tap into, you have things you can pass on. And it's also gives additional options for us to be able to really continue to fuel a an employment market. So we don't have our STEM graduates who are then going to our neighbors because they cannot afford to find a place inside of the state of Maryland. So we've been we've been very aggressive about being able to increase inventory, decrease housing prices. And we believe that's a strategy to really create mechanisms economic growth. You know, we have an audience that's pretty in the weeds on this. So I'm wondering if you can talk us through the details of how you're attempting to tackle this, both legislatively in terms of policy, but also in terms of your relationships and negotiations with with local governments and cities and counties and local neighborhoods.
24:59 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I can I can take the first part, Mr. Secretary, and then and then I'll end up to you as well as and one thing we knew that it had to we really had to create and work and incentivize housing of housing of all forms and of all types. Because if this was not going to be just looking at one specific geographic area, and it was not looking at one specific type of housing, because different types of housing is going to work for different areas. And so we come up with an all the above approach and frankly, an all hands on deck approach in the way that we're working with our federal partners, we're working with our local partners, we're also working with the private sector to be able to incentivize development, incentivize growth. And so we passed a series of different different legislation in the past year.
25:47 One is called the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act, which really incentivizes development in areas where building is desirable and the limits of the local jurisdiction deny the permits, you know, and really keeping that that they cannot be able to do it. It comes on recently restricted projects or funded by by light show and other affordable housing financing programs. We passed legislation that focused on unlocking new tools to strengthen our communities and address the housing crisis. And that includes the creation of the Maryland Community Investment Corporation, which has already hit the ground and running and making sure that we can capital that's necessary required. We passed legislation that supports renters and have increasing protection for renters because there's two things that we know about housing.
26:34 Housing is the number one creator of wealth. And it's also the number one driver of poverty when you look at housing insecurity. Well, really, we felt that there was a need to be able to address both sides of the barbell and of keeping people of keeping people house, creating a better pathway for for home ownership. And then also it's just in providing more capital and more incentives for for people to be able to go and develop in areas, knowing that some of the biggest challenges that individuals, not even just not even just the the the the construction companies go and build, but then also for people to get access to homes in the first place. And so providing additional capital and supports first time home buyers and providing more pathways for them to be able to get into housing was was an important priority for us, too.
27:21 And and Mr. Secretary, I want to pause and and see the thing that I missed as well. Look, Governor, thank you. I think you all can see why I've got the best job in America. I work for a governor who not only gets it, but who empowers us to be inventive and creative in the last few years. We have been equipped with sufficient resources from a from a budgetary standpoint. And and that that's key. I mean, we we see the growth. We see the economic development. One of the one of the one of the tools I mentioned is something called reinvest Baltimore, which is a transformative 50 million dollar a year initiative paired with a couple of other tools that is designed to address vacancy and vacant housing in Baltimore City.
28:13 We are we we've entered a collaborative relationship with the city, with community, with philanthropy and with business to try to address and raise significant resources to address a vacancy in Baltimore City. And I'm really excited about that initiative and the results it's showing on top of that. We've got we've got a great subordinate debt program. We've got great placemaking redevelopment tools that I think are some of the most flexible and well funded in the country. So all of that plays a critical role. But on the legislative front, the governor by by reading on housing through a three bill package last year and through the General Assembly passing those bills and the governor signing them into law.
29:01 I think it demonstrated that there is no third rail in the housing space or governor more. He is willing to answer. I don't need to talk about you while you're here. But look, you're doing it is he's willing to touch these things and and transform the landscape and the rhetorical landscape, which I think is so important because it's so easy for I think, you know, a legislature that gets confronted with big challenges every year to say, you know what? We don't want to touch that. And the people of Maryland expect us to touch this because it touches their lives. Housing is central to their experience. And so this is so important. And it's also why I'm so excited the governor has championed a bill this year called the Housing for Jobs Act, which is designed to take a next step.
29:53 And I think a really critical and huge step forward on saying, you know, bureaucratic regulatory processes that don't serve the crisis that we are in the crisis that Maryland families are facing is is something that is cannot be sacrosanct. We have to address those we have to address those regulatory obstacles. And it is the thing that is most in our control at the state and local. You know, we might not be able to influence the price of lumber or the interest rates, the global interest rate environment. But what we can do is influence regulatory obstacles. So on that note, how do you see state level policy initiatives like the Housing for Jobs Act fitting into a broader strategy for Democrats to reconnect with voters? Do you think that demonstrating effective governance on housing and economic opportunity at the state level offers a path to rebuilding the party's national appeal?
30:45 I mean, I can I'll take it first and you know, it's and it's a great question. And the answer is yes, because it's all about are you actually addressing the things that are impacting their lives right now? You know, one of the top issues that people talk about when it comes to affordability and why everything feels so expensive. Let's get at the root of one of the main reasons why things feel so unaffordable right now. And when you have people who are spending 40, 50, 60 percent of their monthly take home simply on housing, just simply on having a roof over their head, it's easy to see why people feel that things are completely unattainable right now. And the challenge is when you have such a massive shortage of housing, by definition, what's going to happen is it's going to drive the cost up.
31:32 And so the same thing that was costing X is going to now cost X times in a year's time. And that's what people start feeling that measurement of sweets. And I think the most important thing that we can do is to show people that we are listening and to show people that we are moving. And one of the biggest challenges we've had, and Secretary Dave pointed this out, is when you have this arbitrary red tape, when you have situations where people can just simply block. When you have situations where you have a local housing commission who can have more say over what happens than a governor or a mayor or somebody else, that becomes really difficult and really challenging to be able to make things happen. We believe that you can show real results by actually choosing to work together on things. And when you can work together on these things, you're actually able to address one of the most crucial issues that people are facing right now, which is housing.
32:24 And I think the ability to do that, the ability to show that we can focus on housing affordability, that we can focus on housing stability. That's show people that the party that figures that out is the party that's fighting for the people. Governor Moore and Secretary Dave, I watched the testimony that Governor Moore gave for the Housing and Jobs Act. And one thing that really struck me is that it seems to parallel a lot of like what California did with what's called the RHNA regional housing needs assessment process. And I was very involved in that, like trying to get San Francisco, their jurisdiction to sort of comply with those rules. And one section that sort of caught my eye, this unreasonable restrictions clause and the standstill provision. And one thing we found in California is that it's very difficult in practice to enforce this because when you have a zillion jurisdictions around, you know, the state, they pass laws all the time.
33:17 So I just want to ask, like, regarding the unreasonable restrictions clause and standstill provision, how are you thinking about making sure that that's enforced? Because you have a priority of value of action for developers, but developers often reluctant to sue because their relationships of the city or the county. And, you know, see past laws all the time and actually making sure that they're not affecting housing or zoning or so on consistently, it can be challenging. Yeah. Yeah, if I can. So the very first introduction of the unreasonable restrictions clause for us was actually in the Housing Extension Affordability Act last year. So we we've used that same language and we've spent a lot of time with jurisdictions talking about this. You know, we've spent time in the counties that are the communities that I think are are most concerned about what we're proposing, whether it's high growth jurisdictions like Frederick County or low growth jurisdictions or places where there's actually some population loss like Baltimore County.
34:22 You know, we are we're having these conversations with them about what is an unreasonable restriction. It's really about it's really about it. You know, you'll see with housing for jobs. One of the things that we're trying to achieve is performance. Right. So it's about time. It's less about an actual aisle and it's less about a provision that we think is is going to be interpreted as subjective. It's rather the the performance of those objective seeming regulations and seemingly reasonable regulations, but their performance as a as a delay tactic, whether intentionally or unintentionally to ultimately result in a de facto denial.
35:08 I think they're more likely to confront de facto denials through extended process years and years added to projects millions and millions of dollars added project. That's where we're really trying to change the game. I don't think many jurisdictions want to have the fight of of actually denying, particularly if this becomes law, if housing for jobs law. So I think we really want to end up in a place they want to end up in a place where they they are in conversation with developers at the table, don't want to be sued. Developer doesn't want to sue and you end up working through these things in a much faster, faster fashion as a planning commissioner. I can tell you would have been really helpful if staff were motivated to to find agreement quickly and produce agreements that we could endorse, you know, findings of fact that we could support recommendations that we could support rather than being put in a position where politics begins to influence and neighbors are yelling.
36:08 And and and we feel like we have to come back to topics again and again and again and inch our way through projects rather than try to comprehensively address problems in one meeting, in two meetings. It's exactly why the Housing Expansion Affordability Act reduced those the the total number of public hearings that could be had on projects, not to reduce public input, but to say, let's compress the timelines. Let's not use these processes to drag things out. Let's not use these processes to drag things out. I think that's really where the greatest effect will be on reducing delay and reducing process and trying to refine it into quick decision on critical projects. I want to ask, you know, we've been focused really on housing, but we really want to talk about abundance broadly.
36:58 And we've seen, you know, Governor Moore because of Yimbyism and other advocacy is like a great good champion for this idea that Democratic Party needs to be a party of abundance. But one thing that sort of gave some abundance advocates pause is when the governor criticized the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project that was intended to support like economic growth and clean energy. A lot of Yimby's felt this was a little bit contradictory to the message of abundance, in particular, the idea of like, oh, we need more consulting, more outreach, stuff like that. We know that you're a great abundance guy, Governor. So we're just wondering if you could explain that a little to us. Yeah, well, well, one is, you know, and let folks know that I am committed to exploring all available energy options.
37:46 And by the way, that includes nuclear energy. And it means that we have to be able to meet our environmental and our clean energy goals and drive down prices. And what I what I don't believe in is that you somehow have to choose between those things that you actually can say, yes, we can making sure we're hitting clean energy goals, we're hitting environmental goals and we're driving down prices. And those do not have to be mutually exclusive that that when we're talking about having sustainable and reliable infrastructure that can focus on both things like the reliability of the grid. That's making sure we're controlling cost and making sure that we're doing it in concert with our locals. I actually don't think that that is those are those are our challenge ideas. And I do think it's important to understand that, you know, when we're watching energy prices that are skyrocketing when we're watching ambitious goals, but you do not have a grid that can support it, that there has to be a way of being able to move fast and be assertive on what that looks like.
38:46 I also, though, believe that there's a way of going about a process and being able to being able to work with and inform locals and be transparent about a process does not mean allowing nimbyism to win. And that does not mean you're not going to get anything done. But what it does mean is it's the best way of being able to avoid organ rejection when you're going and moving in this way that is going to be smart. But at the same time, know that you need to have the people in the communities who also and the leaders there who also are serving as cheerleaders of that work as well. And so so I believe deeply that we need to be able to increase our energy options. I believe deeply that we need to be able to drive the cost down.
39:34 I believe deeply that we need to make sure that we have a grid that is prepared to support all these energy assets to include multiple clean energy options. And when I tell a clean energy options, it's not just wind and solar, it is also it is also nuclear energies as well. And at the same time, this can be done where the local community feels informed and engaged and not being done in a way that that that that that you get end up with a situation that you have a battle that is taking place between those who want to move and those who actually are trying to just stop everything. I feel like there is a third way of being able to get this work done. Can I just add that I think this is what it comes this is what it comes down to that the governor's point just now on on why optionality and why choice and expansion of sources is so critical on energy is we have to do everything we can and tie everything back to as Democrats.
40:36 We have to tie everything back to that household budget because people are suffering right now. They're going to suffer more as more chaos bleeds out of Washington. And and in that chaotic environment, I think ultimately and it may take months, it may take a year or two years. But as that chaos continues to bleed out of Washington, people are going to feel it at home. They're going to feel it in their utility bills. They're going to feel it in their in their medical bills. They're going to feel it in their insurance bills. And where we can win is by saying, you know, we're going to help you not feel it when you pay in rent and when you're not paying when you're not seeing that increase in your rent and your mortgage payment. And if we can start to have an effect on supply, we know we can have an effect on affordability.
41:22 I think it's one of the it's one of the few clear policy areas where where we can demonstrate a relatively quick return on our investment, on our political capital investment. And the same may be true in a slightly slower way with with utility bills. But all of those things are hurting people right now. And housing offers an opportunity, I think, to to gain some ground with with voters and with our constituents. One thing that I've noticed is that, like, I think we're in between, I think, culture shifts on the left in general. We're moving from, I think, this like 20th century, like, slow growth, skeptical of commerce, skeptical of these things are typically associated with abundance versus a different line of thinking that I think slowly but surely we're moving into.
42:08 But I think like a lot of things we're talking about requires that full paradigm shift away from that old mid century way of looking at things. What do you think is the way to communicate? Abundance is good. Increasing supply is good. Like things that used to be dirty words aren't actually dirty words. And really differentiating these ideas with the conservative version that everyone obviously rightfully fears. Well, you know, I think that that Secretary Day actually was hitting the nail on the head earlier. It's like, what are the things that can be done that can that can impact people's lives quickly to show that we're moving with a sense of speed and urgency and intentionality that I think their situation that their situation merits. And I think part of it goes down to the thing we need to be really careful of somehow acting like we're pretending where we're protecting what was because what was was not working for people.
43:02 And I think that's the message that people wanted to send, that this is not about saying we will stand by and defend the status quo at all costs. Because, you know, I'd like, you know, for example, I can I'd say I come from a background where we literally watched a status quo continue to put barriers in front of my family. There's a you know, I say there's a reason why I had to convince many members of my family to vote for me when I ran for governor. And it's not that we're not cool. It's that I had to convince many members of my family to vote. Because we have seen this repeatedly how systems that were in place that were intended to help and support did anything but. And so but I think that what we have to show is there's a difference between disruption, which is what we all believe in.
43:50 And destruction, which is what we're seeing right now. Right now, disruption and destruction are two completely different things. And I think that we've got to show why doing things like focusing on increasing inventory, which is going to drive down costs. Why doing things like addressing prescription drug costs? Why doing things about like how can we how can we address the issue of inflation? So people so people's basic standards of living and the basic cost to buy materials for your family that you can actually address it in a real way. That's what people are looking for. They're looking for results. And that's what I do believe that we have a unique chance, especially as governing partners, right, especially as folks in the executive branch where we have a chance to show what does an alternative actually look like to make hard decisions, to build more, to build a level of abundance and and affordability in people's lives.
44:47 And to show them what the alternative looks like between believing and and and and actually creating destruction in people's lives where their basic needs and their basic frustrations are still not being met. Well, just real quick, I think I mean, I think that's that's the right narrative. And I would add the only thing I would add to what the governor said is this, that, you know, more pie available for more people is part of how we we help people achieve the outcomes that they haven't been able to in America and haven't been able to in Maryland. And also, I think we are a more trustworthy partner to make sure that that pie as it grows in size is available to those who haven't had an opportunity to get their fair slice.
45:39 You know, we are the governor is leading on place based work in child poverty. We are working on a justice lens for all of our place based interventions. This is this is what we do as Democrats and we're trustworthy partners in in that sense. And now, simultaneously, we're saying, but we've got to grow the economy. And in order to have the resources to change and affect lives positively, we've got to have more resources available. So I think it's two pieces, one that maybe we're, you know, we're shifting and taking back from our opponents, you know, or historical opponents. Right. And another, which is core to our DNA and merging those two into a new a new approach for Democrats today.
46:28 I want to ask a final question here, because I do think that this one's an important one for us to leave on, which is you've answered both quite eloquently on what Democratic politicians can be doing in terms of both rhetoric and action to counter Trump. And for all of us ordinary folks out there who are desperate to do something to stand up to this regime, what can we be doing right now to build alternatives and stand up to some of the chaos and freefall that's happening at the national level? Um, I can, I can take it first. I mean, I think it's important for everyone to understand their own individual power inside this moment where, where we cannot get to a situation where everyone's looking around and saying, why isn't this person stepping up or why isn't this person doing this? Or what is this person doing without understanding the role that each, each and every one of us individually have.
47:15 And I do think, you know, and, and, you know, for both secretary day and I, we know we're, we're military guys. And, and, you know, one thing I think is one of the things that makes the military so special and so unique is every MOS or specialization, everyone has their job. Right. Right. So, so I, so, you know, you can be a combat arms guy, but the combat arms is not going to be effective if you don't have good Intel folks. Right. And if you don't have good combat engineers and if you don't have cooks and if you don't have JAG and your lawyers, like everyone has their job. And this is actually the moment where I think that we as a society have to understand that, yes, our attorneys general are going to have a very important job. I think our attorney general now, I think just collapsed.
48:01 I think it's like his 19th lawsuit against the federal government. He has a very unique job right now to make sure that many of these actions that we are seeing, but you know, we have to remember too, of all the actions that we've seen, particularly the executive actions, they fall into either ineffective, uh, performative or illegal. Right. So the attorney general has a very unique job to be able to help address the illegal, um, that we know that for the people on Capitol Hill, they have a unique role for governors or cabinet secretaries for people in state government. We have a very unique role and a very unique responsibility. And I'm thankful that we have a chance to actually, uh, to actually respond in this moment and, and use our states as examples of what the alternative can actually be and look like. Um, but I think individual citizens can never forget their role as well.
48:50 The people who are running, uh, organizations and the people who are in the private sector, the people who are, who are community servants and the ones who are working with communities and in communities. That part of your job is to make sure that you are mobilizing right now, that everyone has a unique chance to mobilize. And that doesn't mean that everyone is going to do the same thing, but what it does mean is that everyone must have a job and everyone must understand their role in terms of making sure that we're both protecting democracy, but also really preserving our values and pushing our values. Yes. Uh, yes, sir. Uh, I would add to that, uh, only this, you know, I spent the last, uh, 24 hours, uh, and the governor and I didn't talk about answering this question. Uh, so there was no, this wasn't. You know, orchestrated. You know, orchestrated. I spent the last 24 hours talking to our members of the federal delegation.
49:38 So our, our representatives and senators and, uh, talking to them about housing. Um, and the thing that resonates and the thing that they wanted to know is the stories of, of how individuals and families and neighborhoods and cities and towns in Maryland were being affected. I think everybody needs to tell those stories that the reality of these, um, uh, illegal or, uh, or ineffective, uh, or, um, otherwise, uh, uh, poorly thought through actions is having is that they have real consequences on real families, real households, um, at, and on businesses. And we got to tell those stories over and over again. Um, and, and those that will most resonate will rise to the top and we'll be able to repeat them. But there are thousands, there are millions of stories right now of how people are being affected.
50:27 And there are going to be millions more in the months and years to come as, as the effects of a reduced federal workforce agencies that are stripped to the bone. Uh, um, you know, and, and that delays projects, kills projects, changes what's available for families. All that's going to be out there. We have to start telling their stories loud, not talking about necessarily the policy or the program, the story, the effect. Governor Moore, Secretary Day, thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for both your work and your time. We hugely appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And congratulations again. This is great. All right. That was, uh, Governor Wes Moore and, uh, his secretary of housing and community development, Jake Day, both from Maryland. Nia, what'd you think? I think it was awesome. Like, I think that Wes Moore has such a realistic grounded view and vision for Maryland and the party overall.
51:18 Yeah, I agree. I, I find Wes Moore very compelling and Jake Day as well. Right. And it's exciting to both of them are, uh, our army veterans. You know, it is way too early to even think about 2028. Uh, and, uh, and for, uh, for all we know, Governor Westmore would hate, uh, us mentioning this right now. But I have to say, as we just search for a future for the party in a future vision, doesn't mean anyone is necessarily going to be the candidate. So, when you think about the kinds of people we want to be putting forward, the kinds of people we want to associate with the party, I think, uh, army veteran, Rhodes Scholar, college football player turned abundance and affordability focused governor, uh, is a pretty good starting place. Um, and, uh, you know, we've got, there's other folks in the party that, that I think, uh, we like a lot who are embracing this Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Jay Pritzker in Illinois, consider them leaders in pushing abundance forward at the state level.
52:12 But, uh, yeah, I'll confess to being a fan of, of Wes Moore and was delighted that he took us up on, on becoming the first ever guest on, on radio abundance. Well, I mean, listen, yeah, like, regardless of the merit, like anyone who's on our podcast, I'd be biased in favor. Can you imagine being like, yes, the next goes to the United States is on our podcast. Like, that'd be pretty cool. So, friend of the pod, Wes Moore. Yeah. And I think another thing, maybe branching off a little bit about abundance is that we need abundance. If we're going to win, obviously win in 2028, but also just like 2032 and beyond. Because the census is coming up and the electoral map is going to get redrawn. And our bluest states, our bluest states with the most votes are bleeding out residents.
53:00 And they're going to the Austins. They're going to the Atlantas. They're going to blue cities and red states, which are going to add more electoral votes to red states. So if we, if we really don't get on this abundance train, we will, it's unlikely that we'll have another Democrat, let alone a progressive or a leftist as a presidential candidate. So just from a practical sense of view, we need all types of people in our blue cities. If we ever hope to elect somebody that's not a fascist. Well, they're bad. The thing about that, that's like, you know, to give a context, like this particular scares, I saw a map the other day of projections of just, if we continue the way we are now, the estimate of the population based on the census of 2030, the shift in electoral college votes and make it such that we want all the states that Joe Biden did in 2020, we would lose the election.
53:52 Because California and New York would lose electoral votes, Texas would gain them forward in them. So politics aside, just the sheer numerical stuff is such that don't build housing in blue states. People will move to red state for their building housing. And then the electoral college is going to shift in favor of former right wing. Yeah, and I think that's a message that should be able to resonate with even people who are not necessarily pro housing, but are still still identify as liberals that if you are as liberal as you say you are, and you are as dedicated to this like left liberal project, then it should concern you that we are bleeding out residents. And maybe you don't like Ezra Klein or Domzin or like any of the, like you call the abundance bros, even though I am not a bro, obviously, and many brothers and sisters in abundance, brothers and sisters in abundance, as much as you guys don't like us, and don't maybe don't like our vibes. At the end of the day, I think what we could agree on is that like, we don't want another, whatever is in there. We don't want it.
55:05 So that's something we agree on then like, we need to get our numbers up, we need to get our population up, we need to secure more electoral votes by 2030. Well, thank you for bringing this up. This is more than anything else, the drum I want to beat for the next year. You know, in 2026, we will mobilize hard for the midterms to elect Democrats. There's a lot of activism to be done on yimpyism and event abundance and democratic progressive politics in the meantime. But if we do one thing over the next year, for me, it's to put the fear of God into California and New York, especially, because like Armand says, we could sweep the blue wall. We could sweep the blue wall and lose. And that will be the case in 2032, in 2036, and 2040. And if a Democrat is not president in the 2030s, I do not think we will get another shot.
55:59 And to that point, and it is a numbers game. And the time to me for excuses then is over. Because there's plenty of rational reasons. I don't like them. And I think they are selfish is a little strong, but inefficient, you know, but people have a lot of perfectly rational personal preferences. They're not building housing, right? They don't want to change the neighborhood. They don't like height or change or different vibes or shadows. They're scared to bring the riffraff to town or they're scared it will bring gentrifiers to town. And look, I get it. And there's empathy to be found for all of those positions. But at the end of the day, California and New York, especially do not surge their population. There will not be another liberal or progressive president. And my crassest message to everybody in those states and the other blue states standing up to housing is if you don't like the idea of neighbors, new neighbors in San Francisco, I think you are going to hate your new Salvadorian concentration camp cellmates. And the stakes are, I understand.
57:03 That's fucking real. We have disappeared people. We are saying we cannot get them back. And frankly, until we see their faces, I think we should assume they're dead. The stakes are extremely high. And even if we crush it in the midterms, things will escalate further. The only way to win back power is with voting. And there's a lot of, you know, and me too, right? We all are like, what can we do now? But the truth is, we were more powerful in October. The time for action to stop this was in the fall. That was the best time. We have missed that chance. And there's a lot we can do now. And none of it's a substitute for winning the midterms in 2026 and the presidential election in 2028.
57:51 And if we fail at those tasks, or even if we succeed for another brief respite from this chaos, if we are locked out of power for the next decade, it's over. So throw out the excuses. I empathize with them. They are rational and they are over. The stakes are higher. It is apartments or Nazis. And that's what we have to make. Quite literally. I think another thing I wanted to add is that, like, I know that there are a lot of, I think right now, the alt-right pipeline is so insidious that even the left has an alt-right pipeline. And that, like, if people are still pushing this NIMBY stuff, this anti-electoral stuff, even in the face of all of this information that we're presenting, you should question that.
58:39 You know, I, I think that Nia is totally right. There are a lot of people who, they're like, they chase the algorithms. I noticed in the election, for example, was that there are a lot of, like, left-wing influencers who constantly talk about Biden's raising prices, inflation's out of control. And I saw that after the election, I thought they'd stop doing that. But then what I noticed was I checked some of these pages and they tried a little bit after, but they're no longer getting retweets. And the reason they were getting engagement was because those are posts that can make, like, left-wingers angry, but also right-wingers. And they were chasing a lot of, like, mob or retweets, even though they're, like, normally leftist. The forces of the algorithmic hamster wheel of the engagement are all things that people chase to bad ends, right?
59:30 And there's a lot of people for whom it is profitable and built clouds to just make you feel hopeless, make you feel despair, make you feel like nothing can be solved. We should say no to everything. You know, I think there are a lot of people for whom, like, if we built a bunch of housing and houses got cheaper, it would be bad for their bottom line because the grievance around this is profitable then. Your despair is profitable then, and I think it's really right to point that out. Yeah, horseshoe theory is real. And I think there's a lot of folks who reached for the socialist red hat and haven't realized they put on the MAGA red hat instead. But for everybody out there that is really in good faith and on the left and everything from left of center to the far left, I think there's a lot of folks out there who just want to make the world a better place.
1:00:25 And they want to see government do that and they want to see us treat each other better. And they do get furious, often in self-destructive ways, but it's a righteous fury at things that do go wrong. And to them, I think they are a big focus of what we're doing here today. So, you know, I gave the tough love around apartments or concentration camps, which is very real. But here's the optimistic vision. The optimistic vision is you want FDR. I want FDR. We don't get FDR without abundance. We don't get FDR if everything that FDR did do or would do would be illegal, could be shut down by community and neighborhood reviews, could take years of discussions and processes to happen. If we want that kind of energetic, big picture American liberalism, which I think a lot of us pine for, abundance is the road to that.
1:01:18 And that's part of why we talk here, I think, about Progressive Abundance and are introducing that idea both in terms of how we empower, you know, not big corporations and billionaires to do things, but individual citizens and small companies and small entrepreneurs, allowing any citizen to step up and add their piece to the puzzle and their new ideas and their ingenuity and their solutions. And also empowering the government, both with increased tax revenues to go ahead and redistribute and allocate to this stuff, but also with the empowerment to do things and to dream of doing big things to take on those big projects. And I think, you know, if there is any silver lining to this horrid fascist era, right, which we may not make it out of.
1:02:11 But if we do, I often think, you know, look, we are, I think, all fans of the social welfare state, all fans of sort of American liberalism. And also every system needs an update from time to time. We need that sort of click from the, you know, the refresh from the 20th century welfare state to what a 21st century welfare state looks like politically. That is a real challenge. But if Trump tears down the old fabric and it is gone when we come back. And by the way, I think personally, Democrats in 2028, what they're going to have to run on is making America great again, which I say with all irony. And I think we'll both have to strive for greatness. And I think that again comes into play because Trump is crashing the place and we will have to both restore what we consider past greatness, but also build a future greatness that I think is more savvy and equitable.
1:03:02 But if we come in and find a trash house, maybe just maybe there will be a shot to rebuild it with a muscular 21st century version of liberalism, a muscular 21st century edition of the welfare state, one that embraces markets and it's an entrepreneurship, but also embraces government entrepreneurship and solving big problems. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision. And when there is no vision, the people perish. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels. Taxes have risen. Our ability to pay has fallen. The means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade.
1:04:05 Here is the challenge to our democracy. In this nation, I see tens of millions of its citizens who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. Plenty is at our doorstep. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself will revive and will prosper. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
1:05:03 In our personal ambitions. In our personal ambitions, we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else we all go down as one people. From the stern performance of duty by old and young alike, we aim at the future of essential democracy. You heard it here, folks. It's apartments or Nazis. But we can beat back the fascists and we don't have to settle for a party that loves government but stops it from working and a party that wants government in the country to fail. Open door number three and you'll find Progressive Abundance. We've defeated the fascists before. That was the era when we beat back the Nazis, passed the New Deal, built the Empire State Building and rose from a depression.
1:06:02 FDR knew a thing or two about Progressive Abundance. Unleash a new era of Progressive Abundance. And a new FDR can't be far behind. Our next interview is with United States Congressman Jake Achencloss. Like Westmore and Jake Day, Achencloss is also a veteran. After graduating from Harvard University, Jake deployed to Afghanistan as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps, commanding patrols and infantry against the Taliban in Helmand province. Today, this fresh-faced 37-year-old millennial represents his constituents from Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress. Jake is the founding co-chair of the new bipartisan Congressional YIMBY Caucus and a co-sponsor of the YIMBY Act. Please welcome to Radio Abundance Congressman Jake Achencloss. And here's your host, Steve Boyle.
1:06:49 All right. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. I want to welcome you to Radio Abundance and thank you for really jumping in to help us launch YIMBY Democrats for America. We are big fans of yours on your interest in and work on abundance. Really enjoyed your guest appearance on Ezra Klein's podcast recently and excited to chat today about the future of the Democratic Party, the future of housing, of energy, of what it's like to build a more progressive future by building. So thank you for being with us. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Let's just start here. Right. Let's do some nuts and bolts. Why build more housing? Right. What's the impact of that? Why make it easier for people to build more housing? Why make it easier for people to build more energy?
1:07:39 I'm just curious kind of the philosophical underpinnings of your goals on these areas and and how you came to those opinions. Reducing the cost of housing is the best way that policymakers have to increase real earnings for the middle class and the working class. When you look at an American family's budget and where the money goes, the lion's share goes towards shelter. And so if a federal policymaker can make a one percent difference in health care or a one percent difference in child care or a one percent difference in housing costs, the overall real dollars effect will be greatest in housing. And so I'm a housing maximalist. I really view housing policy as upstream of most of the economic challenges that America faces today, whether that is cost of living, whether that is income inequality, whether that is economic mobility, whether geographic or socioeconomic.
1:08:36 We need to build housing. Yeah. You know, I think you're in good company here in terms of housing maximalists and also kind of the housing theory of everything. Now, Armand and I both have San Francisco roots. And for example, I work pretty heavily in the artist community in San Francisco. Right. And so you see a lot of folks who are really suffering under the crushing burden of high rents. People who are a gig away from homelessness, people who who are homeless and are struggling on the streets, people who, you know, more than anybody else desperately need housing. And yet oftentimes are really fearful of the idea of building housing, right, really fearful that new construction will cause gentrification and it will be just luxury housing. And I'm curious kind of how you speak to those concerns, you know, coming from people who need it most, coming from within the party and ultimately how we get to a point where we are building abundant housing and not just luxury housing.
1:09:33 I think it's a twofold path. The first is to recognize that you're not going to community meeting your way towards enough housing. I was a city councilor for five years and I served on the land use committee. I have been through hundreds of hours of community meetings about building housing. And I will say authoritatively that if we allow localities to conduct community engagement processes, we will not build the 10 million units of housing that this country needs to build. There is an element where you need the political courage to stamp on local nimbyism and build the housing. So in Massachusetts, that looks like state zoning, whether through 40 B, which is our basic way of insisting that localities build multifamily housing. The MBTA Communities Act, again, basically a state pressure point to force localities to build multifamily near transit or even more innovatively looking at decommissioned military bases, looking at brownfield sites, looking at former prison sites that are already state zoned and saying the state now is going to insist on building very dense housing here.
1:10:40 Because particularly in New England, but California also, there is a very strong vitocracy that threads its way through the process of building housing. So one is just the political courage. Two, though, I think is recognizing that when we add a tremendous amount of regulation, particularly in the form of amount of time it takes to permit housing. So what ends up happening is that you've got to be a really deep pocketed developer with a very ambitious proposal to make it worth it, right? When you're looking at six years and litigation to build a project, that project's probably going to be higher end units and it's going to be a big footprint. And if we instead made it so that you could be a small scale entrepreneurial developer where you could throw up two to three unit missing middle multifamily housing and have it done in 15 months, you would get more of the fine grained development, more of the mass market development that I think builds organic trust within a community because people see that it's developers of the community building for the community in a way that feels like it is enhancing the community.
1:11:49 One thing I thought was really interesting in your interview with Ezra is like you're talking now about sort of like the zoning issues and the approvals. And you brought up in that context that one thing that makes it particularly challenging is this issue of almost cost disease. So one, I just want to say thank you for talking about almost cost disease and econ nerd. I have personally, I had the honor of teaching a mayoral candidate who will remain anonymous in San Francisco what almost cost disease was. And he was like, oh, I've never heard of that. That's great. But it's basically the idea that like things are very labor intensive and low productivity. They're going to inflate faster than gross domestic product. And you touch on the topic of modular and manufactured housing. And one of the reasons that housing costs remain so stubbornly high is like not just the zoning, but like what we call the hard costs, like just the cost of building and construction remains like this bespoke thing.
1:12:42 Right. Like you have to like build it on site. There isn't a lot of manufacturing. Matt Iglesias and Brian Potter construction physics had this back and forth about it, and they found that HUD had actually a lot of research in 2011 saying here are the legal obstacles to building manufactured housing. Well, what's interesting since then is that jurisdictions have implemented them. The results have been like fairly inconsistent. It's hard to find a trend. So I'm wondering, you know, as a federal policymaker, one of the things that you can do is sort of leverage HUD's ability to research and also the ability to create like federal standards for things like manufactured housing. I'm curious if you have any thoughts about like how we can move housing more effectively from being what I think you refer to as like a service rather than being a manufactured good.
1:13:30 Such a good question. And a good intuition pump for housing and suffering from cost disease is to imagine that we built cars the way that we build houses. You stood in your driveway. You called up a general contractor. That general contractor hired some subcontractors. They all came to your driveway with pipes and aluminum and metal and semiconductors and electronics, and they built a car in your driveway. And what would happen is that car would cost a fortune, right? It would probably cost about a million dollars. Because cars actually have as many parts and are just about as labor intensive when built by hand as a house is. But, of course, that's not how cars are built. They're built mass produced in factories. And so they benefit from what's known as rights law, which basically states that when you double the production of something, the cost per unit goes down by about 25%.
1:14:20 And so cars over the last hundred years have benefited from rights law. They've plummeted down the production cost curve. And cars actually, relative to income, are affordable in the United States. Houses, of course, are not. And to your point, part of it is the soft cost of zoning and restricted supply. But part of it is the hard cost of the fact that housing has not experienced rights law. And in my view, part of the solution, not the entirety, but part of the solution is indeed mass produced modular housing. The knock on that is that it's the technology of the future and it always has been. Right. I mean, people have been talking about this since the 1960s. There are a lot of companies now who are experiencing real improvements in productivity on this front. Any of them in California, actually.
1:15:06 But what all of them need, I think, is a demand signal. They need to be able to produce at scale. Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I really think that bold governors should be chartering new cities in their states and saying we're going to do two things here. One, we are going to issue a credible demand signal for not hundreds, but thousands of mass produced modular housing units. And by the way, set up the factory right here on site. So we don't have the transportation costs eating into some of the gains and efficiency. And number two, we're going to offer low cost financing to do that. And that's where the federal government can step in. Danny May, Freddie Mac. Instead of just subsidizing demand for housing, they should be subsidizing the supply of housing by offering zero interest loans to mass produced housing.
1:15:53 You know, charter cities and a new cities are a bit of a fantasy of mine. And it's something that I've been excited about as an idea, but I never expected a congressman to talk about it. So I was thrilled to listen to you bring it up on on your interview with Ezra Klein. I'm very curious in your imagination how these would actually work. Right. Is it a matter of designating the land and selling it to private developers and zoning it for high density? Or do you imagine the government's actually building and developing some of these properties themselves? Right. How do you imagine these new cities and charter cities manifesting and coming into existence? I think there's three ingredients to them. One is state zoning of a property.
1:16:41 I don't think it's the federal government imposing a zoning declaration. Right. It's got to be state driven. Governors buy in. Legislatures buy in. But whether it's brownfield, whether it's a decommissioned military base, those are the two most likely in Massachusetts. But in Western states, it might just be, you know, greenfield development. They have more land than we do in the Northeast. Either way, it's state zoning. Number two, as I mentioned with Armand, I do think you need some element of federal financing, low cost financing for the development. Not grants, but zero interest loans, because right now with treasuries at five percent, it's getting pretty tough for developers to put shovels in the ground. And then the third element is innovative construction. It is we have to mass produce quickly on site. It can't be shipping in modulars.
1:17:28 We've got to have the offsite construction here. Now, I'll add in a wrinkle, which is to say housing is not the only social good subject to cost disease. Energy is as well. And a small modular nuclear reactor on site would guarantee low cost energy, reliable, affordable for the residents of this new development. And you can do the same thing, issue a credible demand signal. And you start to induce the private industry to build that site there. The final thing I'll add is people may come to this site for cheaper housing, cheaper energy. But they're going to stay there because of the walkability. This is an opportunity for us as a country to get past our obsession with cars and to have a no single occupancy vehicle rule for these new developments, create fine grain, walkable places where, you know, people are around people.
1:18:25 Well, it's awesome. Speaking of, you know, you touched on like nuclear energy, and I think that provides us an opportunity to sort of talk about broader abundance. I think one of the cool things about your interview and other things I read from you is that I think you're sort of on the forefront intellectually of politicians of talking about abundance broadly as a philosophy. Something I found really interesting in the Democratic Party, and I think you can speak to this as a member of Congress, is that even though Democratic voters have become more consistently pro-free trade, I think in particular as a reaction to Trump being insane. Like there's a recent survey that actually found that like the more left wing you are, I don't self identify in the party, the more likely you are to be pro-free trade.
1:19:11 Um, but like, you don't see that online, right? Like, if anything, the more like, locally left wing people are more protectionist. Um, Congressman De Luzio, Senator Brown, both recently wrote pieces arguing for protectionism. And even folks who criticize Trump specific tariffs, they'll talk about smart tariffs, but not from a perspective of, okay, it's a cost we have to pay to achieve this strategic goal, like semiconductors at home. They seem to think that it's like economic boom in of itself. So I'm wondering why you think that disconnect is there between sort of like politicians and like the voters themselves to seem to be more pro-free trade now. I think tariffs is a worthwhile debate for the party to be having. I, I'm actually really happy that Chris De Luzio wrote that op-ed and I commented on it and said, I probably agree with half of us, right?
1:19:59 But the point is, thank you for putting out big ideas and forcing the democratic party to actually engage substantively because the party I think needs more energy, more raw ideas and needs to be less straightjacketed in how we propose them. There's too much in self-enforced, uh, I think discipline on it. You can't put this out there unless it's been vetted 17 different ways. Why put out ideas, smart people will listen to them. They'll come back to you with better versions of that idea. And that's how a party develops. So I don't have an issue with the democratic party debating tariffs. I think it's a good thing. I do think though, to your, to your core question, there's something really interesting happening, which is roundabout 2016, we entered what I think of as the seventh party system in the United States.
1:20:45 There's been six previous iterations of partisan alignments going back to the federalists and the democratic Republicans. when it was Hamilton and Jefferson, all the way through Andrew Jackson and the Whigs, all the way through Lincoln and FDR. And around about 2016, the Republican party stopped being the Reagan Republicans and they started being something closer to anti-elitist Christian nationalist party. And Democrats have not yet realigned ourselves for this seventh party system. And as we do, the opportunity that we have is to embrace markets because Republicans are retreating from markets. They are the ones who are becoming more statist, more dirigistic, more skeptical of trade and commerce and exchange. And I think Democrats have an opportunity to say, actually markets work really well.
1:21:33 They don't work perfectly, you know, exhibit a health insurance, but a lot of times they work really well. And housing is a great example of where we have not allowed markets to work well enough because of self-implosed restrictions on supply through zoning. Well, speaking of health care, that's another thing. I feel like right now the abundance movement has sort of been talking a lot about like housing. Obviously, it's where I came up and Steve came up like I've been going to I laugh when you mentioned seeing through like hundreds of hours of hearings of planning commissions because like I've done that, too, on the other side. And the so housing and then I think like energy and transportation are sort of like the big sectors, but kind of one that you touched on a lot in your interview, which is sort of, I think, a nascent field for abundance health care.
1:22:21 And there's been a lot of news recently about China, for example, producing a lot of new, innovative drugs. And a big reason for that seems to be that they really deregulated and streamlined their like drug approval process. I'm Willie Chirpman and Roxanda Testiolano at the Institute for Progress. They provided a lot of like recommendations for what they call clinical trial buttons and just like policies to make it easier to do, you know, get drugs approved and tested faster so they can reduce the cost of bringing new medications to the market. So I'm curious, like, what are your thoughts about how to bring abundance to the health care field? First of all, huge props for raising the nine white paper clinical trial abundance agenda from Institute for Progress. That's awesome. I've been I've been pouring over it.
1:23:07 I'm so happy to hear that. I mean, awesome that I will say not to be too fan blamed, but the politician knows what that is is great. So health care is hard. Right. And I think we have to be incredibly humble as we walk into this field and applying maxims from other fields, because health is a very, very inefficient market is tremendous problems with it as a market economy. And so one of the ways that I think about health care is to think about it as what are the sub domains within health care that are going to be most afflicted by cost disease, which is to say broad demand, low productivity growth and high labor intensivity. And then how do we deflect demand for those very cost disease sectors? And the three areas that have the most cost disease in health care are nursing facilities, emergency rooms and intensive care units.
1:23:59 And again, that's not to say that they are, you know, not important things. They're hugely valuable to society, but they're expensive and they're going to remain expensive. And some of the best ways that we have to deflect demand for those three sub domains is one, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals that keep people away from the need for service intensive health care. And two is community health centers, primary and preventative care. We should be investing more in biotechnology and medical device technology. Things like statins, diagnostics or cures for Alzheimer's, these things pay for themselves many times over. And then community health centers. I mean, they cost 1% of U.S. health care spending and treat 10% of patients.
1:24:46 They are some of the jewels in the U.S. health care system. And we should radically expand their funding because they're a darn good deal. Why are they that's actually never heard of that? Why are they so cost efficient? Community health centers are cost efficient for a number of different reasons. One is they are not profit seeking. Two is they take this team approach to care. So when you walk into a community health center, you've got a primary care physician, a mental health counselor, a substance use specialist, a pharmacist, a diagnostician. And they take a team approach to care, which is highly effective. They emphasize primary and preventative care, which we know has high returns. And it is it's a model that both the patient and the provider feel good about.
1:25:33 When I was recently touring one of my district, the doctor said to me, you know, this is what I imagined doing when I went to medical school. Every 15 minutes, I'm not filling out some prior off for a health insurance corporation. I'm meeting patients and I'm talking to them that that is where we got to get back to. You know, a country does a really good job with this is Portugal. Actually, they have a network of community health centers that have been very effective in population health management. Well, you know, I'm I was very fascinated earlier when you talked about the shifts in the party system and that sort of context around the need for the Democratic Party, both to reinvent itself and to articulate what its vision is for for what it's going to bring to America. I both want to, you know, give you sort of an opportunity to like explain your full vision for what that would be if you were in charge of it, both in terms of what we'd accomplish and in terms of how we'd sell those ideas.
1:26:22 I do think you've said a lot so far that kind of implicitly frames that picture. But then within that, look, it's pretty clear in this conversation, you're you're speaking a language that's very exciting to us. Right. In terms of the attitudes towards abundance, in terms of both what the government can accomplish and how it can empower the markets and individual creativity to accomplish things in terms of what we can learn from other places in terms of how we can adapt to the times. That's very exciting. And also it seems very rare. So I am curious how we take these ideas and win them throughout the party in the nation. Who are your allies and how can we build more allies and not just how can you build more allies, but how can the people out here listening to you and getting excited about some of what you're saying? How can they support you and and promote these ideas within the party? I'd love the fullest vision you got and and what you need to make it the party's vision as we move forward in the next two to four years.
1:27:17 I don't. And this is a an odd thing for a politician to say. I do not claim a vision at this point. And I actually think Democrats should be cautious. We just took a drubbing and what we need right now is not more message testing. I can go sit there in Washington with 17 pollsters and strategists and we'll get a gajillion messages that test really well. We don't need message testing. I'm not even interested in candidates. The forest of of ambition is large and there is a lot of presidential timber. Somebody who's going to emerge, I have no doubt. I am interested in ideas. What the Democratic Party needs is ideas and we should be pumping out ideas through forums like this and taking taking in feedback about them. And the ideas that are are vibrating the electorate, those I think will then create an organic vision and a message we have.
1:28:11 I have a sense of some things that I think are going to be compelling. I think Democrats need to treat cost disease in housing, in health care, in higher education. We got to protect Social Security. That is the backbone of the Democratic Party's commitment to the American people. Democrats need to regain trust on public safety. Democrats need to regain trust on how we deliver excellence in education. The school closures during COVID were a catastrophe. The Democratic Party was complicit in them. And we need to earn back voters trust by delivering tutoring to kids at scale in this country who are behind grade level on reading and writing and arithmetic. I think Democrats need to pick thoughtful fights with tech, demonstrating where it serves social good, like with offsite modular housing construction or biotechnology, but also saying where it is contrary to public interest, like with the social media corporations that are attention fracking our kids and corroding our civil discourse.
1:29:11 We're going to fight back hard because we haven't candidly over the last two decades. So I have a sense of some of the things that might thread together. But we got a couple more years to be talking about it before a bunch of ambitious presidential candidates take a stage and try to become the standard bearer for the party. The best arenas from many of these ideas will actually not be Congress. It'll be the states. Yeah. I'm excited to see Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Andy Beshear in Kentucky and Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Jared Polis in Colorado. I want to see governors make their states exemplars of how we can lower the cost of core social goods, improve education, improve public safety, because ultimately, if we're going to try to win back voters trust with national governance, we darn well better show good state governance.
1:30:02 Speaking of the like state governance and like, I'd say maybe that's so state governors, but the idea of vision, we talk about like politicians and sort of the higher level. Well, then I've run into just like 10 years of doing this stuff is that there are oftentimes there are a lot of like really embedded ideas about like, for example, like housing needs to have this like really rigorous process and all these checks and so on. And it's something that needs to be like strictly like almost like a harm that needs to be avoided or best case is something that we can use to pay for, for affordable housing. But like market rehousing is bad. So these ideas that are sort of like anti abundance, I think are in many ways very deeply embedded throughout the entire like democratic governing class.
1:30:52 Right. It's not just like what vision wins at the top. But like there's this moment actually during the Biden administration run around permitting reform where Biden and the CHIPS Act where Biden was really frustrated. Like, why is it taking so long? And it's like, I knew someone who fought. It's like, well, all your people have been implementing and have written into law all these rules that like you hire more bureaucrats and you force these people to work 24 hours a day to jump through 20 hoops. Right. Um, I'm wondering like what your thoughts are on how we can sort of change the way that like the Democratic Party as a whole thinks from like top to bottom. Totally agree. We are overly enthralled by procedure and not focused enough on performance. Our constituents care about what gets delivered at the end of the day.
1:31:38 Right. Uh, if I've got a rest stop in my district and it's become an outdoor urinal. I mean, it's, it's, it's a welcome mat for Massachusetts and people are driving by and you're seeing people, you know, urinating outdoors because the facility has gone to such disrepair. It has been years. I have been working with state officials, federal officials, trying to get that darn thing renovated. And it is exactly what you're describing. It is the proceduralism and the accretion of regulations, each one of which in isolation made sense, was well intentioned, but accretes into this, basically this web that you find yourself stuck in and becomes an obsession with procedure and not with performance.
1:32:24 And that makes it harder for us than when Elon Musk takes a chainsaw to a bunch of procedures that actually really are important. Right. Like the way that the FDA investigates pharmaceutical quality in its lab in St. Louis. And we're like, actually, wait a minute, hold on. Super is important. Like, don't get rid of that. It, it, it becomes, we have a little bit of a credibility gap with people. Cause they're like, oh yeah, you Democrats, you just like your rules. Um, so one way that I have found to, to push back on that mentality is to point to other countries that have a different mentality. So for housing, I'll, I'll point to Tokyo. Nobody has ever accused the Japanese of not delivering high quality, right? Like look at their housing stock in Tokyo. They build a ridiculous amount of housing. It's of all different formats, right?
1:33:10 Some of it wouldn't meet code in the United States. And they have managed to keep housing costs at a very reasonable percentage of wages. Yeah. When it comes to infrastructure, I'll look to Madrid. Madrid, Madrid builds and, and Armand Brian Potter wrote about this. Madrid builds its subway for like one sixteenth the cost of New York. And anybody who's rode Madrid subway will tell you it's better than anything America has. Right. So like, yeah, it's going to be done differently. And you just got to point to other countries. I think it makes a lot of sense. How do we, um, communicate that? I guess the, you know, I think Umbia is, um, has sort of the proto kernel of this movement and it took about 10 years to get those ideas out. I'm wondering how you're thinking about like, how can we build a broader, like abundance movement?
1:33:56 Like those are good individual arguments, right? But I'm curious about what your thoughts are on, I think we're all trying to figure out, like, how do we turn this into something that is a larger ethos and not just like an elite conversation amongst people who like read blogs, like construction physics and Iglesias, right? Like how do we, so that democratic staffers, like individual voters, like this is something that is like a DNA change throughout. So I think that's happening. I, it's, it's interesting. You say that about Yimby as the, as the kernel of this, of maybe the realignment. I actually really agree with that. I really agree with that. I think it has been successful actually in cascading into the public imagination. When I first ran for city council in 2015, you could be a progressive, a self-styled progressive and be very nimby.
1:34:42 The two of them, there was no cognitive dissonance there. Am I going to say that the 180 degrees change? No, definitely not. But it's changed a lot, especially with people under 50. I would say it has changed a lot in the last decade where people proactively recognize that if you care about progressive values, you've got to care about building housing. And there's every reason to believe that that can happen in Energy Next. I'm already seeing it happening in Energy Next. The conversation on the left around nuclear power is changing pretty drastically. I, I think we have the votes. If we can get it to the floor to get bipartisan permitting reform done in Congress, which would be a major step. We've got nuclear permitting reform done last Congress. So I think Energy is next up on this. And then the third one that I see progress on in the short term is childcare, actually.
1:35:28 Here in Massachusetts, Governor Healy, working with a number of really savvy operators and experts, has taken a supply side approach to childcare where she's offering grants directly to childcare providers. It's reducing their operating leverage. It's covering their overhead, allowing them to offer better contracts for their childcare faculty. And it's working. It is working. And I, I would love to see, you know, a Mikey Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger campaign on doing that in Virginia, New Jersey. Next. Just a quick note, because he was one of our speakers. Mikey Sherrill's great. But when we had the MB for Harris, Steve Fulop, who's also great. The MB mayor was one of our big speakers. So I want to give him a shout out to, but. Oh, no, Steve. I do know Mikey.
1:36:14 So no endorsement there, but I just know her. Yeah. Congressman, I know we can let you go in a second. So I'm going to throw it over to you for final thoughts in a moment. There's two things in my head, two kind of questions that I think are kind of complimentary and that I'd love for you to sort of touch on a little bit. One is this idea of like in the moment we're in, you know, for everybody, we've talked about some exciting things that kind of can be done in government and in politics for every kind of ordinary citizen that might be listening to this that might want to push these ideas, but also stand up to Trump. You know, what can they be doing right now to accomplish those two things? And I think the kind of mirror image of that question in terms of your life right now, right? You're now you're working at the national level. You're in the party out of power. You talked about areas of bipartisan cooperation. And I'm curious, you know, what allies we have across the aisle, but also like how do you balance delivering for America with, you know, collaborating and at times empowering some folks who are doing some rough stuff out there.
1:37:11 So I'm curious about both the like the ethics of bipartisanism right now and kind of the tension there. And then, yeah, with that kind of backdrop of the Trump administration, what can ordinary ordinary citizens be doing to build a better world right now? The most important thing ordinary Americans can do is to refuse to pull back from the public sphere. What authoritarians seek is for people to retreat from the public sphere into the private sphere. And what I want Americans to do is pick one issue. It doesn't have to be everything. We know they're flooding the zone. One issue that you're passionate about, you get expertise about, you have energy about, and find the nonprofit that aligns with your values and volunteer for them, help. You know, if it's electoral reform, maybe you look at veterans for all voters. If it's democracy and rule of law, look at protectdemocracy.org. There's a lot of good orgs out there.
1:37:58 And staying with them, I think, really strengthens the sinews of our civil society. My job? I have two. I got to represent the values of my constituents and I have to advance their priorities. Representing their values means that, you know, I'm not going to vote for that continued resolution a few days ago because it was a blank check for Donald Trump to continue to try to try to claim the power of the purse from Congress. And I think that undermines the separation of powers in the Constitution. It also means, though, that if I can get the Maha caucus to work with me on funding community health centers because they love community health centers, I'm going to do that. If, you know, we can get HUD to change some of the regulations or rather, I should say, standardize more of the regulations around modular housing, which the Biden administration refused to do, that's a win.
1:38:48 And I've been meeting with some of the groups on this. And actually, there's a real opportunity to create some efficiencies with how we think about modular housing construction with some federal guidelines. Much as it was done for the one to four unit modular, now you can do it for more stackable modular units. So I'm going to look, I'm going to try to hit those singles and doubles where I can. Speaking of the bipartisan stuff, I was wondering if you heard anything about stuff around housing that might be bipartisan. Yeah. And to add to that, we know that you're a founding member of the all new bipartisan Congressional YIMBY caucus, which we're really excited about. I'm a co-chair. I'm a co-sponsor of the YIMBY Act. And also, another favorite of mine is the People Before Parking Act, which Robert Garcia put forward. Oh, yeah. We didn't get a chance to talk about this, guys.
1:39:35 I have a sense that we're going to be aligned on this. But I firmly believe that every politician should have at least one unpopular opinion. And mine is that parking is the bane of American urban design and housing affordability. And we should be much, much tougher on free parking policies than we currently are. Oh, hey, man. Well, that was Congressman Auchincloss. Armand, what'd you think? I think he was awesome. Like, I'm, I've worked for a lot of politicians with a lot of politicians. Generally speaking, like the skill set that makes you effective at running for office is not the same skill set that makes you look in the week policy walk. Like, you know, which makes sense. Like the average voter is not going to want to discuss like, oh, you know, 100 big white people or whatever.
1:40:26 Um, people are like good people. And so it's just rare to meet someone who's in the week. Like when I referenced like specific blog, um, and policy papers and proposals. And like, he knew what I was talking about. I was like, really impressive to me. I think he and I come from different places ideologically in the sense that I would disagree on a lot of things just or with the emphasis, like charter cities have long been like a libertarian idea where like, why don't we just start a new city and like try to design it from scratch versus like, I'm more of a, you know, I want to build an existing cities already. I think it's just like a very big lift to try to, not just like, cause China, for example, could to do this, right? Go cities.
1:41:12 And they like built new cities and eventually most of them filled up over the day to demolish a lot. And like, even that country, which is a much stronger state, you know, operation of the economy had a hard time just like making people move there because aren't jobs there. Um, and like jobs and societies and economies, like they have their own natural rhythm. And better in my sense to like allow that to evolve organically as opposed to trying to like make it happen in a fresh place. Not to get silly in the weeds about like charter cities specifically. But yeah, I, I, I found him very impressive because he could speak in a lot of detail and very thoughtful but holy quality in like a broad way. I think it's so impressive to somebody to take a broad knowledge and hope there's more people who are elected like him.
1:42:03 I think that part is, is up to us a little bit. You know, I, it was pretty exciting to see, um, well, to hear from somebody who speaks our language, uh, with our references, with our words, you know, who knows this stuff inside and out because they are, they are one of us, right? In another world, Auchin Kloss would be in the, in the WhatsApp group or on the podcast. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, and, uh, and so that was really exciting. Charter cities we could talk about forever is a fantasy of mine, which, uh, not a politician or a city planner or a developer, more of a kind of experienced designer and dreamer. You know, I, uh, Disney wants to build a theme park, then they can build, you know, 14 acres of a fully functioning Star Wars city.
1:42:50 And yet we can't build, uh, uh, you know, and yet they don't have residences and, and, uh, and, uh, somebody can just, uh, start up and build a 14 acres of a, of a, a dreamy American city. And so I often wonder, Hey, could you take some of that mentality, um, and bring it into the world of, uh, of a, of a vibrant actual city that has apartments, has homes, has hotels, has restaurants, has bars, has grocery stores and gyms, but still has a level of kind of styling and theming and design. And, um, you know, and that could be, uh, uh, you know, if I was a, uh, a multi gajillionaire, that's certainly what I thought about. Uh, that could also be, uh, something more, uh, uh, you know, uh, embracing the kind of anarchy of the market. And it could also be, um, in my fantasies, you know, government. Right.
1:43:36 Uh, and, uh, and, uh, and taking on a, uh, a massive building project of that scale. I often think if, uh, if developers are so greedy, uh, why can't the government get in on some of the fun, uh, and raise some revenues that way. But to move a little bit from our, our fantasies into the, the realm of the practical, um, one of the major points of connection, the, the office last interview, you guys really bonded over, uh, a few of those white papers. And I, I'm wondering if you could, uh, uh, share a little bit more now about those and, and what folks who haven't read them yet, uh, should know about them. And, uh, sure. Yeah. Um, so the first thing I referenced is, it's not so much a white paper, but it's a construction physics. It's a blog hosted by the Institute for progress. And, uh, it's written by a guy named Brian Potter. And what he talked about was, um, the conversation of like the history of manufacturing house.
1:44:27 And Matthew Glacius wrote this piece, came out like federal rules that in his view obstructed construction of manufactured housing. For example, to be a manufactured home, it's still the law. They have to have a steel, I don't know if pronounce it, chassis, this, but like basically the undergird. And so you'll see manufactured homes that look totally like an organ house. But if you go inside, there's just like massive metal thing. And it only exists because the law requires that to be a definition of a, uh, manufactured home. But the papers that you guys were citing thought that this was a mechanism that local jurisdictions use to block manufactured housing. And what they found was that it's a thing that we should remove just because at the cost, it's unnecessary.
1:45:16 But it didn't seem to be like a major factor in terms of blocking. And what Potter pointed out too, is that like a lot of papers that like HUD did this big study in 2011, it's like, here are the things and rules we think that are obstructing manufactured housing. And one, some of those rules changed that early. And two, a lot of localities or states change those rules. And what we found was that those things did not really spur an increase in manufactured housing. The one thing that seemed to do that, um, was a change in, in California for ADUs. And so I think something that like that conversation highlights is that we need, honestly, like somebody to like dig in and research and sort of do analysis.
1:46:03 Like, why is it that ADU laws succeeded if offering a new market for manufactured housing? Because look, ADUs are like made in a factory, right? Like, and then they're assembled on site, um, versus like why the HUD stuff didn't work. And like, what could be done to really promote more of that? Because like, ultimately, you know, he had this great example of the car, right? Like, if you had to get your car, like order all the, you know, contract for all the pieces and then like hire someone to build it on your driveway, it costs a million dollars to get housing to become a product where it can be built at scale. Manufactured housing is like a major part of that. Um, but you need to figure out how to make the economics work.
1:46:49 And I think honestly, the truth is, there is no consensus answer. Not like EMB is where there's a strong consensus on like up zoning, right? Or like changing inclusionary zoning. But in terms of like, what could be done to make manufactured housing more successful? I don't think any of us are like, oh, yeah, here's, this is the EMB one, two bird talking point. Yeah, I thought one of Ockenklaas' great points, I thought was when he spoke a couple of times about the idea of a demand signal, right? You know, there's, there's stuff that we can do to, to make manufactured and prefabricated and modular housing more, more affordable and more legal. But ultimately, if those companies are going to succeed and that's going to be viable, they're going to need to leverage economies of scale. And they're going to need to know that that that that leaning into that and and investing in growing that business and growing that technology and building to that scale that that's going to pay off.
1:47:43 And so I thought that was a really important note about not just the policy part of this, but also how you signal. Yeah, this is the future, lean in, which has been important for for green energy, too, when you think about the the cost curve around things like solar and batteries, making sure that people know not just that this is desirable, not that this is attainable from an affordability standpoint, but that this is what you should be investing both your resources and your time and attention into, because it takes that to make things work. 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.
1:48:30 This is A.I., 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 the premiere episode of Radio Abundance, a new podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. We hope you enjoyed our discussions with Governor Wes Moore, Secretary Jake Day, and Congressman Jake Hawkenclaw. 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. If you care about progressive values, you've got to care about building housing. When you have people who are spending 40, 50, 60% of their monthly take home simply on housing, it's easy to see why people feel that things are completely unattainable right now.
1:49:21 You need the political courage to stamp on local numbyism. We have a chance to show what does an alternative actually look like to make hard decisions, to build more, to build a level of abundance and affordability in people's lives. The party that figures that out is the party that's fighting for the people. for the people. - Build the housing.