Episode 4: Defeating Fascism & Building California! A Double-Feature with Attorney General Rob Bonta & Congressman Robert Garcia

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 guest is California Attorney General Rob Bonta. He's the first Filipino-American ever to serve as Attorney General of California, where he led the way in wielding the law to defend Californians from Trump and to ensure that California's cities can't weasel their way out of building houses. He'll be followed by a United States Congressman from California, Robert Garcia, the first ever openly LGBTQ immigrant to ever serve in Congress. Congressman Garcia is also the founder of the first ever bipartisan congressional YIMBY caucus. We had a little something to do with that, as it turns out. Tonight's special episode features two trailblazing Californians, abundance Democrats working to defeat fascism and build America. We like that here.

0:57 You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. Now let's get to the show. Please welcome your hosts for the evening, Steve Boyle, Armand Domiluski, Elizabeth Markowitz, and Burhan Azeem. And to kick things off, here's Steve. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I hate these guys. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Radio Abundance. I am your host, Steve Boyle, and I am here with three of . We have, as always, Armand Domiluski. Armand was the driving force behind YIMBYs for Harris and the origins of both YIMBYs for Harris and YIMBY Democrats for America. We have Burhan Azeem. Burhan is a two-time successful startup founder, now a Cambridge city councilor in Massachusetts, the youngest city council member in Cambridge's rich history, as well as a staunch YIMBY advocate. And we are joined today by another one of Elizabeth Markowitz, making her Radio Abundance debut.

1:55 She's a co-founder of YIMBY Democrats for America, as well as our media and communications chair. Hey, Elizabeth. Welcome to Radio Abundance. Hey, thanks so much. You know, we told on previous episodes a little bit of our origin stories, and we'd love to get to know you a little bit. So for everyone who's meeting you and hearing from you from the first time, we'd love to know a little bit about just who you are and how you got into the YIMBY movement and YIMBY Democrats for America and the push for Progressive Abundance. Absolutely. Yeah. My name is Elizabeth Markowitz. I hail from one of our favorite sprawling cities of Dallas, Texas. I love to say that Texas is a great place to be a YIMBY, and it's a terrible place to be a Democrat. So as a YIMBY and a Democrat, you know, it's an interesting life here in Dallas, Texas. My YIMBY origin story is that by nature, I actually have my bachelor's degree in social work, and my first job out of college was in child protective services, in investigations, investigating reports of abuse and neglect, and sadly, removing children from their homes and putting them with relatives where we could or into foster care.

2:52 And one of my biggest takeaways was that a whole bunch of those cases could have been removed if there had been more affordable housing. And so many of our cases, if mom could have afforded an apartment on her own, she could have left an abusive boyfriend. If family members could have afforded a larger home, they could have taken in some of these kiddos that were in the system, but because they couldn't take these kiddos in, so often these children ended up in foster care. And to me, that just seemed like such a pinnacle of government failure, where we had children that really didn't need to be in foster care ending up there because we hadn't built enough housing. So that's really what radicalized me, but I didn't discover YIMBYism until a couple years later in 2022. I was working for a consulting firm supporting Democratic candidates running for statewide and federal office, and one of them asked me to write a housing plan because housing pulled as one of the number one issues in 2022.

3:44 And I went down the rabbit hole of writing a housing plan, knowing very, very little about this and what housing policy should look like on the federal level. And I went in thinking maybe rent control, rent freezes, and then I discovered this idea of YIMBYism and that so often the cause of our lack of housing is actually too much government intervention. That makes it too hard, too difficult, too arduous to build housing. And so that's really how I stumbled upon YIMBYism. And that's when I became a volunteer with a local YIMBY organization here in Texas that's pushing for statewide reform. Then took on a paid position with that organization that I did for about a year. Now I continue to be a volunteer for that YIMBY organization here in Texas. We've got a couple bills in the Texas state legislature that we are pushing for to make statewide changes to our zoning laws.

4:31 And then I also got involved with YIMBYs for Harris. And yeah, it's just been such an incredible movement to be part of. I feel like YIMBYs are some of the best people to hang out with. So if for no other reason, even if I didn't believe in the policy, YIMBYs are just some of my favorite people. We're solution oriented. We don't have much of an ego and we're just a lot of fun. And so, you know, for any young people out there that want a way to get involved, if you're feeling discouraged in the second era of Trump and you don't even know where to start, YIMBYism is a great place to start because you will make friends. You will go far and you'll, you know, develop these deep connections. So speak for yourself, Elizabeth. My ego is massive.

5:10 Everybody YIMBYs for Harris is constant like, oh, Harmon. He spent three hours doing his hair.

5:17 Hey, all those Twitter followers go to your head, but I'm looking at the hair and I think it's worth it. So I'm actually really curious because the first time I've heard this story, what were the like when you're going to the rabbit hole of like learning about housing? What were some of the articles you read? Were there pieces that struck you and like what led you down there? Yeah, I think there was a line that I remember from an article that specifically said, you know, our problem with lack of affordable housing is kind of like a guy that keeps on hitting his thumb with a hammer. And then he goes to the doctor and asks, doctor, can you prescribe me something for my thumb? And the doctor says, well, maybe stop, you know, hitting yourself in the thumb with your hammer. And so that was like such a simple explanation of sometimes government is just doing a little bit too much. I think also, you know, living in Texas, again, as a Democrat, I've seen the failures of Texas governance.

6:05 But one thing Texas does tend to do pretty well is that they tend to get out of the way when it comes to housing, especially at the state level. Where Texas tends to fail is at the city level in some of our big cities that have too many regulations around housing. So, yeah, I think kind of my own lived experience in seeing, you know, in so many ways, Texas sucks. But this is one area where they've kind of got it right and that they've made it fairly easy to build housing. We're really honored to both be working with Elizabeth and to have her on the podcast. You know, we have Elizabeth to thank for a lot of the amazing press that we've received, both for Yimby's for Harris and Yimby Democrats for America. You know, we were a ragtag group of like minded folks following Armand who just wanted to help Kamala Harris. And we were able to get picked up and covered by, you know, Politico and Axios and The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle and got those lovely money quotes from The Wall Street Journal calling us Yimbicella and a breakthrough moment for the decade old Yimby movement.

7:00 So deeply grateful for Elizabeth's work there. Elizabeth, the story you told in your origin story and your work, it's both beautiful and totally heart wrenching. I've spent some time working with the foster care system, too, in California. As part of my career as an artist and creative producer, I was able to partner with some foster care organizations, both to create some virtual reality experiences and 360 videos, as well as even like a sort of a experiential game concept and a kind of a tabletop board game. Both designed to help them communicate the journey and the struggle of foster care kids to donors and to supporters. And it is horrific how underfunded and understaffed it is the things that these kids have a legal right to. You know, oftentimes, you know, oftentimes only half of them can get it.

7:47 There's just not enough people and resources to go around. And it's really painful to watch that system not live up to the need. And it's painful, of course, as Elizabeth mentioned, to see the ways in which our housing crisis hurt families, hurt young mothers, hurt people who want to have kids, hurt people who do have kids and hurt kids and drive people into needing that help and not being able to get that help. So we're deeply grateful by Elizabeth's work in that field and really honored by the story, you know, as I mentioned, she's a Texan, Armand and I are Californians, and so are our two guests today. We got a chance to sit down this past week with California's Attorney General Rob Bonta, as well as Congressman Robert Garcia. They are very exciting to talk to you.

8:32 Both are two, two more young, abundance Democrats. I just realized this is our double Rob header, our double Rob header. We had a, we had a Rob and a Robert, Bob and Bobby.

8:46 Which one's Bob and which one's Bobby? The two housing Robs, the two housing Bobs. Yeah. Can't be Bob Bonta, so it's got to be Bobby Garcia, which actually sounds pretty cool. Kind of sounds like a race. It is cool. They're both very cool. So they are two young, forward-thinking Democrats. They are people of color. They are Californians. You know, Robert Garcia is 47. Rob Bonta is 52. Neither of them look at, you know, Rob Bonta is the Attorney General of California, and he has been ultra aggressive at holding cities and municipalities feet to the fire on housing to meet state goals. You know, you think often if California comes up here as lagging on housing in abundance, as a failure in some ways, its failures are the centerpiece of Ezra Klein. And Derek Thompson's new book on abundance. And all of that is true.

9:31 But if we're thinking about who our allies are here and who's working on this, I mean, Rob Bonta is not only forward-thinking but forward-moving and has been an incredible ally of the movement for Yimby policies and for abundance. You know, I mentioned in the interview coming up that he's not just the tip of the spear on these issues. He is the spear, right? His lawsuits are the sticks that are forcing places to build to meet state goals. And he even mentioned, and I've heard this from other places before, that sometimes politicians will confess they need him to be providing those sticks because then they can say, hey, I'm not the bad guy. I'm not making this happen. The state is making me. And then privately, they say, thank you very much. We need to build housing. So very thankful for Rob Bonta's work. He's also been extremely aggressive at suing the Trump administration and standing up to their violations of the law and their constitutional rights.

10:19 You know, our twin missions are to defeat fascism and build America. So his work in standing up to Trump with lawsuits from California and his work in standing up to cities in California when they don't build housing with lawsuits from the state, he's firing on all cylinders in those two areas that are key to what we care about. Congressman Robert Garcia is the founder of the first ever bipartisan congressional YIMBY caucus. He was a huge supporter of YIMBYs for Harris. He spoke at our first event. He sat down for an interview with us to help mobilize people at our phone banking events where he actually broke the news about when the YIMBY caucus would launch. And, you know, Armand and I got a chance to sit down really recently with one of his co-chairs for the YIMBY caucus, Representative Scott Peters from San Diego, who told us that YIMBYs for Harris and our work was the direct inspiration for the YIMBY caucus, that it wouldn't have happened without us.

11:10 Essentially, that by that by lining up those speakers, by identifying them, by promoting them, and then even in the green room conversations and our kind of virtual backstage, these members of Congress suddenly went, hey, there are more of us than we thought. We believe in this issue. There's very clearly a deeply motivated and engaged and passionate and big and growing and mobilized constituency for this issue, one that can turn out 30,000 people for a political fundraiser live stream, one that can raise significant money for a Democratic presidential candidate to mobilize all these calls. Hey, there's enough of us now identified that we can come together and we can start to make a difference in Washington at the federal level in a bipartisan way. There's a real constituency for this issue.

11:56 And also they have our backs and they are staunch Democrats and passionate progressives who can take this message to the rest of the party, who can say abundance and specifically what we hear call Progressive Abundance is the road to uplift all of us and bring us closer to those progressive and Democratic goals. Whether you're a centrist Democrat who wants to see markets work better or you're a diehard leftist who yearns for a new FDR who wants to see government take a better and bigger role in building tons of abundant public housing and subsidized and affordable housing and knows that in order to make sure, in order to do that and accomplish that and actually build that public housing, we need our cities and states to have permission to do that and make sure they can't be stymied every time they try it by neighbors who don't want shadows.

12:42 So, uh, that's happening in Congress right now. We'll hear more from Robert Garcia about what they're doing now and what to expect over this year. And, and we had a big hand, uh, in doing that. So I'll just pause there and say, congratulations, Armand, for kicking off that movement. And, uh, it led very quickly from a, uh, a Twitter suggestion to, uh, to the halls of Congress. Well, I don't want to say, I mean, I appreciate it, but really it's like, I mean, just seeing Elizabeth here, for example, reminds me of how much it was a massive team effort. Right. Like we wouldn't have gotten any of the press coverage for her work. Um, and frankly, like none of it would have been worth it if not for the Yumi cello label. And that would not have happened with Elizabeth. So, um, still proud of it.

13:28 Yeah. Like, well, I think what people don't understand who don't work in politics is like, they often think that like news coverage kind of just like happens in the ether. Um, but it's a lot of work, um, because journalists are very busy people. They have to figure out what to cover. Um, and you have to be like, it's a combination of like, you have to be credible and honest. And when you provide them stuff that they might want to cover, you want to, you know, credibly deliver and say like, actually, this is, I'm not blowing up smoke. This would be good for you to write about, um, and have trust and stuff like that. And so, um, yeah, like I, the Yimby, all of these things build on themselves, right? Like 10 years ago, Sonia Traus, a crazy math school teacher, walked into a planning commission and then, uh, Butterfly flapped its wings and then Yimby's for Harris happened.

14:22 And now there's a Yimby caucus. Like Armand mentioned, you know, Yimby's for Harris took a village. Yimby Democrats for America has taken a village. So many people raised their hands and stood up and worked on that project, uh, and, and made it the success that it was. And, uh, we are going to be looking to, to feature and shout out, uh, just more of those voices that make this a community and an actively growing community, uh, as the weeks fly by. Armand mentioned a misconception about how political journalism works. And I, I think that the thing that I think about on the topic of, of, uh, you know, our little village, um, is I think the biggest sort of misconception that I've thought about in politics over the last, uh, kind of six months of, uh, or nine months of doing this with you guys is, uh, you know, I think it's very easy to think I think that politics is this, uh, far off thing and you have to be like elite and establishment to have any role in it and it's distant and you'll never be able to make a difference.

15:14 And I want to emphasize again, we just talked about Yimby's various leading to the first ever bipartisan congressional Yimby caucus and them working on, uh, the Yimby act and everything we're going to hear about from Congressman Robert Garcia. That it was, it was an idea. It was, then it was a WhatsApp group. Then it was volunteers raising their hand and saying, how can I help? And some of those people knew the issues back and forth and, and had spent some time in this movement. And some of them were jumping in for the first time, you know, I, I'd always wanted to, to jump into the space and, and had no idea that I could, or that there'd ever be an opportunity. And amazing things happen when you raise your hand and say, I care about this. I want to help. I want to throw down. Here's what I can do. Let's get going. And I realized that too, when, uh, spending a lot of time knocking on doors for the election, politics is very social.

16:02 If you think of, oh my God, how do I, as I get older, how the heck am I going to meet new people and make new friends? The thing about politics is everyone needs you. They need you so badly. Activists need you so badly. Elected officials need you so badly. They're just desperate for people who care and have passion and their own perspective and want to put in the work. I'll tell one story, which is that, uh, you know, very recently there was a, a big, uh, there was a, a YIMBY event that was a day of focusing on the housing elements in California. And I remember inviting a friend who I knew cared about this stuff, but wasn't in the movement. And he was like, well, it seems advanced for me. I don't think I'm ready. I'll work up to it. But meanwhile, some of the speakers presenting case studies, one of them, uh, was somebody who had shown up to public comment two months ago, gave a great comment. The leader of a, an organization said, Hey, that was great.

16:49 Can we talk? Can we work together? He started leaning in. He started to develop his voice more. He started to find stuff to do and ways that his passion and time can contribute. And, you know, two months later, he was presenting on a case study to this audience. It is easy to meet people. It is easy to find an impact. Uh, it is easy to get involved and, and start to build your ability to get involved. And I would encourage folks at home, whether that's our organization, please reach out to us team at YIMBY Democrats.org and let us know how you want to be involved. But whatever that is, people will respond. If you just raise your hand and, and jump in and throw down. And I, I think that's really important to know, to demystify politics, to bring it closer to people and to let folks know that you have a voice, not just in elections, but in this process all year round. On that note, actually, Berhan, real quick, you know, I'm, I'm interested in, you told us a little bit about your origin stories last week, but, uh, how did you decide to run for office and how did you, how were you able to get in politics in the first place?

17:41 My understanding is that you were, uh, a startup founder, obviously you must've cared about these issues, but how did you first get a toehold in the world of politics and start to raise your voice? And how did you come to the place where you said, I'm going to start running for office? And how did you do that? So I was very involved with housing policy. I had grown up like moving from place to place every year and cared a lot about housing stability and housing issues. I got into college and I'd grown up in a pretty conservative place. And so I was excited to be part of a more welcoming community, uh, where I think I'm more naturally fit in, uh, in Cambridge. And so I got involved, there's this quote in politics, um, you know, every generation is invaded by aliens. We call them children. And I think it was very much of that moment for me where I made the mistake of showing up to city hall once.

18:30 And to me, like the city was full of apartment buildings. Like it was beautiful. And the idea of allowing four stories for a hundred percent low income buildings, no concerns about, you know, these will be super expensive. And yet that was super, super controversial. And also, I think that, you know, all residents have a voice, but you would also see that there was this very narrow demographic of people who would show up to city council and walk outside of city council doors and say like, this is not the same city I see. And at that specific moment, you know, besides the mayor, the next youngest city councilor was 53 in a city where the median age was 28. Even the median voter age was about 32. And so I thought there was an opportunity. I knew a lot of people around town and the mayor thought that I was a particularly good advocate at that time, too.

19:17 So he encouraged me to run. And the first time, actually, I lost by about 100 votes. But then the second time, I won by 100 votes. So it worked out. And then I became our youngest city councilor. And last time, I passed this really big affordable housing bill that was like 15 stories in our corridors and very scary and actually doubled my vote count. Actually, every election, I've almost doubled my vote count. And so it's been particularly exciting and fun to be here. I'm honored that like now I'm at a point where I get to chair the housing committee. I get to write all of our zoning ordinances. And that's been a lot of fun. Amazing. Burhan, I'm curious who some of your kind of mentors and influences and like role models and forerunners were. You know, I think of on the number one, you are very young and the youngest city council member ever in Cambridge.

20:07 And I'm curious if there was anybody who kind of you feel like set a precedent for you. And likewise, as I think about our next two interviews with Attorney General Rob Bonta and Congressman Robert Garcia, both are both are fairly young. Robert Garcia is Latino. Rob Bonta is a Filipino American. And I'm curious for you, Burhan, in terms of your background and in terms of Cambridge, if there are folks that kind of come to mind who maybe blazed a trail for you or that you saw as role models or people to emulate. Or to what extent you kind of blazed your own path here. So there's actually a really funny story here in Cambridge, like young people in general and local elections don't vote like the voter turnout for people who are under the age of 35. In Cambridge, it's around 20 percent of registered voters, whereas for people who are retirees, it's like 70 percent.

20:53 So there's a huge voter turnout gap. I thought that I could dramatically increase it because in my age cohort at that time, which was like 18 to 25, it was even lower. It was like seven percent. And I had one candidate in our city's history who had tried to run for city council before and had actually tripled the voter turnout. And I tried a lot of strategies and we were successful. But that candidate who ran and lost was Matt DeBorge Ellis, who was also an MIT guy who was trying to run for city council. And then he like lost by 100 votes, the same way I did my first time. And then he founded ActBlue instead and then later MeterGS. And so this hilarious story of like this guy who I was copying. Later, I learned how big ActBlue was and everything like that. But it also gave me a lot of confidence that even if this didn't work out, I would be all right.

21:42 Rahan, it's been lovely to get to know you a little bit. And now that we've done that, let's get to know our first guest. He is the attorney general of California. And next up is our interview with Rob Bonta.

21:56 Rob Bonta, California attorney general. Thank you for joining me today. As the reality of a second Trump administration takes hold, I know there is a lot of fear and anxiety, frustration and sadness. And I understand those feelings are natural and understandable. I'm here today to reassure you that in California, progress will prevail. No matter who is in the White House, no matter who controls Congress in California, we will keep moving forward. As attorney general, I will continue to use the full force of the law, the full authority of my office to address injustice, to stand up for all people, to safeguard reproductive rights, to advocate for more housing, especially more affordable housing for lower and middle income families, just trying to get by.

23:06 I'll continue to take on greedy corporate giants and fight for more affordable gas and groceries and everything in between. I'm here to ensure every person, no matter how they look, how much money they make, where they're from, who they love, how they identify or how they pray, can pursue their version of the California dream. A fair wage and good benefits, a safe and affordable place to live. We know what he's capable of. We know what plans he has in store. No matter who is in charge of the federal government, no matter what the administration has in store, California will remain the steadfast beacon of hope and progress.

24:03 It has always been a constant, unwavering, immovable force to be reckoned with. We'll continue to be a check on overreach and push back on abuse of power, be the antidote to dangerous, extremist, hateful vitriol. Be the blueprint of progress for the nation to look to. As is so often said, as California goes, so goes the nation. In the days and months and years to come, all eyes will look west to us. And in California, they'll see we are still moving forward. That was tonight's first guest, Rob Bonta.

24:50 He's the first Filipino American ever to serve as attorney general of California, where he led the way in wielding the law to defend Californians from Trump and to ensure that California's cities can't weasel their way out of building housing. To kick off our interview, here's YIMBY Democrats for America executive director, Steve Boyle. Attorney General Rob Bonta, welcome to Radio Abundance. Thank you for having me. Honored to be with you. Let's start here. You know, everyone in this conversation is a Democrat. And I think it's fair to say everyone here is a YIMBY. So that makes us all YIMBY Democrats for America. And for us at YIMBY Democrats for America, you know, that means we have two missions, right? One is to build America and the other is to defeat fascism. And it seems to me that those are also two of your top priorities as the attorney general of California.

25:38 So on the one hand, you know, making sure that local municipalities can't evade state housing goals and holding their feet to the fire. So they actually build the housing. And then, of course, on the side of the law, standing up to Trump's lawlessness and his campaign of chaos and destruction, along with your fellow attorneys general across the country as that first line of defense and with California as a key battle. You know, Armand and I are both Californians. You're mobilizing to protect the people of California. So tell us a little bit about your work these days. So how are you making sure California builds housing and how are you defending California from Trump? Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate the frame there and definitely two top priorities right now. Absolutely. On the on the Trump side of the equation, we're standing up for the rule of law, making sure that we have a presidential administration who doesn't break the law or violate the Constitution.

26:29 Unfortunately, they are doing that regularly at a clip of once a week. We have nine lawsuits in nine weeks and we don't want to bring any lawsuits because that would mean that the Trump administration is following the Trump administration. Following the law, but each and every time they break the law, violate the Constitution, we'll we'll take them to court to hold them accountable. Not a lot to ask that the president of the United States follow the law. Important to our democracy that that that that he do so. And unfortunately, he's not. It's something that we saw in Trump 1.0, seeing it again here in Trump 2.0. Trump 2.0 is a little different in terms of the higher volume of actions. A lot of flood the zone strategy, chaos and confusion, shock and awe and trying to overwhelm the opposition.

27:16 But we have every time we've seen them break the law, we've taken them to court. We have been successful in 85 percent of our cases and defining success as winning a court order, at least preliminarily in the form of restraining order or preliminary injunction. And we'll continue to do that, whether it be a act by the Trump administration that unlawfully tries to strip away birthright citizenship or pause funding for critical essential services for our states or tries to give the richest man in the world and private citizen, by the way, access to American sensitive, confidential information like Social Security number, bank account. We'll be there every time. That's our role when when we when it comes to the federal government. We're also, of course, continuing to do all the important work in our states, in our state.

28:04 That's always mattered. And very important in that among those issues has been housing. And we want to build more housing in California. We want cities to build more housing in California. We have always said that we have a collective problem. It's shared by all of us. We need to bring we need to build two to three million more units of housing as soon as possible. And and certainly by 2030 is the goal. And we're not on pace to do it. And so every local jurisdiction must participate in the solution. No one needs to do everything. But every local jurisdiction needs to do something. They need to build some housing in their city. And they're not pro-housing if they say that they want more housing, but just not in their city. We have to build it in our in our cities and participate.

28:50 We have the regional housing allocation that regional housing needs allocation, RENA numbers, which sets forth the amount of housing for every jurisdiction. We have housing elements that are required to be certified so that they provide a plan to build that housing that is required from each jurisdiction. And then they need to build it. And some cities are are fighting the law and violating the law blatantly. And we don't wish to bring any lawsuits. We just want the housing built. We'll work with any city that wants to collaborate with us regarding how to get there and what the pathways are. But if they're going to brazenly and blatantly violate the law like some cities have done, Huntington Beach comes to mind. We will take them to court and we will win. And we have won consistently here.

29:37 The housing laws at the state level have been increasingly less patient with NIMBYism and have created more pathways for streamlined or by right housing. And if certain conditions are met and there's there's no discretionary denial of housing in some of those cases. And we've seen a whole gamut of of attempts to resist these actions. One of them quite notable at the city of Woodside right after we set up our housing justice unit, they self-proclaimed themselves a mountain lion sanctuary. So they didn't have to build the housing that was required under the law. So we told them they were not a mountain lion sanctuary and they needed to build the housing. And they said, OK, you're right. And we got that turned around in about 24 hours.

30:24 But I think our presence as a an attorney general's office that is focused on housing. I don't think the attorney general is has been known for this. I want to be known for this because it's important. It's one of the top issues, if not the top issue in California, affordability, access to the dream of homeownership. But just having affordable housing and we're known for being the chief law enforcement officer, the top cop. But I also want to be the top housing cop because we have laws that need to be followed. They will help us build the housing that we need here in California. Speaking of litigation, you've started. Yeah, I remember I think Huntington Beach was one of the earliest cases. You hit the ground running when you became AG and you're already suing cities to make sure they build housing. And it's been a few years now.

31:10 I'm wondering if have you seen the legal strategies evolve over time? Have you been taking on like have cities been trying to do something different or they start doing the same thing or like how has that legal battle evolved in the last few years? The most notable thing from the early lawsuits and the public action that we took and the firm and aggressive action in furtherance of existing housing laws in California led to a broader realization among local jurisdictions and cities that someone is watching. That these laws aren't just gathering dust on a shelf somewhere and you can follow them if you want or not follow them if you don't want.

31:55 They saw that there is enforcement behind them. Someone's looking. Someone's looking at the actions that the cities take, the projects that they deny, the projects they approve, the laws that they follow, the laws that they violate and are taking action accordingly. So that was something that we saw in conversations, in public session from the dais on city councils when council members were saying, I know that there's some desire on this council and perhaps, you know, even in this room in city hall to not support a certain project. But we will get sued by the attorney general if we don't follow the law. And so whether we want to or not is not the question. The law requires it. So we must. And that was a good sign. We saw that in some meeting minutes as well.

32:41 References to us. I had some city council people tell me that, you know, the politics are difficult in their city. And being able to blame me, the attorney general, is going to come sue them if they don't do the right thing and follow the law is helpful for them to get the thing done that they know needs to be done but may be politically difficult. So that was some of the upshot we saw originally. We were grateful for that. We don't want to bring a lawsuit against every city that violates. We don't want anyone to violate. And we want cities to follow the law broadly. And so getting the message out that we're watching, that there will be consequences in accountability if folks don't follow the law, was helpful. We saw a number of different efforts at the beginning to try to avoid the laws of the state of California to build more housing. I mean, the self-declaration of a mountain lion sanctuary was one.

33:31 We saw some historical landmark designation as another. We saw some urgency ordinances be brought to immediately stop some compliance with housing. And we struck those down right away. There needs to be articulated harm to public health in order to have an urgency action instead of a normal noticed action that provides opportunity for comment and input. We have Huntington Beach that just wants to say we can do what we want as a charter city and you can't tell us what to do. We'll take you to federal court on sort of the big theory, the big swing for the fence, that all of these laws are violation of local control rules. And, you know, that was what we want in court on that already.

34:19 That case was, you know, DOA, but they wanted to try it and, you know, exercise every level of appeal to delay and slow things down and drag their feet. So we've seen we've seen the gamut and, you know, and we've seen it from blue cities, red cities. There's nothing political particularly about this. There's a lot of jurisdictions that unfortunately are not participating in the solution. But we've we've we've brought a whole set of cases on a whole number of issues and generally have have been victorious in nearly all of them, creating good case law and a clear sense, I think, in the state of California that whatever, however it was in the past, it's a new day we need to build. It's good for all of us. We're all in this together. Let's all participate in the solution.

35:05 If you build some housing and the city next door builds some housing and the next city builds some housing, then together we can build enough housing. You mentioned earlier setting housing goals in reference to 2030.

35:18 That's an interesting date, and it's one I think about a lot because it contains within it, as I'm sure you know, a bit of a looming deadline that connects the dots between building housing in California and standing up to Trump and defeating fascism. And in my personal opinion, I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that building homes in California in the next five years has the potential to shape the fate of our nation for generations to come, if not for all time. Right now, as I'm sure you know, if our population trends continue in their current direction, once the 2030 census hits, which is a little under five years from today, California is set to lose four electoral votes. So if those trends continue, that means that Democrats could sweep the entire blue wall, could win every state Joe Biden won in 2020, in every presidential election in the 2030s.

36:11 That's 2032, 2036, 2040. And we could lose all of them. It seems to me if we're locked out of power for a decade, if there is no Democratic president in the 2030s, we might not get another shot. We might not see another liberal or progressive president again. And we might not see another free or fair election again. Now, there's a lot of reasons why folks in blue states, blue voters in blue states, oppose housing. And we know these have devastating effects, but they at least reflect rational preferences. Right. But it also seems to me that the stakes have changed. And so those fears we hear about, you know, fears of shadows and taller buildings, fears of new neighbors who are maybe too rich or too poor for your vision of your neighborhood, that those fears now pale in comparison to the fear of God. We all should feel about Democratic voters in Democratic states making choices that pave the way for a permanent MAGA Trumpist rule, which is perhaps what lies ahead if states like California, states like New York don't surge their population before that 2030 census.

37:08 And I'm curious from your end, and especially since November, how those electoral stakes and the looming census affect the calculation around housing. Adds a completely different dimension of urgency. Obviously, as you've mentioned, you know, the thought that California could lose four, maybe five congressional seats is a major problem. The fact that we are losing people from our state because of affordability, obviously, is not something that's acceptable. And there's been much talk about the wealthy leaving, you know, rich people leaving California. There are some who are looking for different tax scenarios for their own personal situation. But a lot of the data really shows that it's more of a middle class migration that people are losing because they can't afford to live here.

37:57 And that completely aligns with anecdotal evidence and common sense when it comes to the cost here in California, whether it be the cost of groceries or gas, you know, eggs, health care, housing, you know, housing, obviously one of the, you know, the most expensive costs in any person's life. And, you know, we want to spend no more than 30 percent of our of our income if we can. And, you know, Californians up and down the state are spending much more than that. And we need to tackle housing affordability if we if we're going to create access to the dream of homeownership, the dream of living in California and staying here and being successful and having our kids buy a home. I have three children. I don't know how they're going to buy a home or where they're going to buy a home in California.

38:45 And I'm not alone when it comes to that. People are being pushed out of their neighborhoods where they've been for generations because because of cost. And, of course, yes, we're losing population and that has political consequences. That are not good. So it you know, we're seeing some really important discussions from our top leaders, Governor Newsom, among them, you know, the Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of the world and the Senator Scott Wieners that are really pushing us. And the world has changed in a short time, I want to say. And I say this with great admiration and respect to the YIMBY movement. Not long ago, you know, just over a decade ago, you'd go into city councils and it was all NIMBY all the time. And folks who wanted to build housing were shouted down and and attacked and silenced.

39:30 And the NIMBYism ruled the day. And the rise of the YIMBYs changed everything. And, you know, the movement here in San Francisco and in the Bay Area and up and down California. And, you know, with great excitement, we all listened to candidate Vice President Harris talk about her YIMBY vision. Should she be president? That was exciting. And that provided another potential for a new chapter and even ongoing momentum and growth.

39:58 And we need to ride that that that appropriate wave right now. It's it's it's it's a movement that meets the moment and the needs that we have. And the political consequences could not be more dire, as you say. And the everyday lives and livelihood of Californians is at stake and can be significantly improved if we can get housing costs under control.

40:28 And how did you first come to the movement? Like, how did you when did you hear about us? When did you start to think like I'm a YIMBY? Yeah, you know, it evolved over time during my time with the assembly. And it was, you know, I'm from the East Bay right across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, which is the epicenter of a lot of the movement. And was adjacent to a lot of the leaders. Scott Wiener and I go way back. We knew each other before either of us were elected to anything. We're friends. We talk. I admire and respect him. His policy perspectives are very meaningful to me. I've served, you know, next door to assembly member Buffy Wicks, California YIMBY.

41:14 You know, Brian Hanlon is based here in the East Bay as well. We have a. You actually moved to San Francisco recently. But yeah, I know Brian. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's SF YIMBY, there's YIMBY action. There's, you know, it's all around us. And, you know, seeing more courageous council members step up and push back against the NIMBYs.

41:36 And, you know, just there was some policy diving for me to get into the policy to, you know, to get some depth and breadth and history and, and, you know, hearing different perspectives. But I don't know when it was, I don't know that it was the early days of the YIMBY movement. And I was going to talk about the, you know, the deficit of housing that we have built and I remember Scott once said, you know, the way to build more housing is not make it illegal to build housing. You know, that makes a lot of sense. And he's like, when we zoned for single family homes, we're making it illegal to build multifamily homes. And there was a, there was a common sense in that. And, uh, and, and also, um, a beautiful embrace of, you know, we, uh, us and we, instead of I and me, the collective, you know, our shared society, our common future, we need to build more housing for all of us.

42:31 It's not, you know, for this idea that, you know, your housing makes my life worse. It's our housing makes our lives better. And, uh, I think that's the right spirit and exactly what we need right now. Yeah, you talk about the, the, the YIMBY movement a little, and it's really exciting to see how infectious that energy can be. And I, I'm curious what you need from the movement and, and where folks who want to support the movement and further the movement, you know, from your seat in government and in law, how can ordinary citizens be mobilizing? What do you need from us? Everybody listening out there who's wondering what their role in this is. The engagement is so important and everyone can be engaged and focused, you know, in, in their own community. We all care about our communities, our neighborhoods, uh, you know, our, our neighbors and, uh, folks who are active in their communities, pushing for, for more housing, you know, involved in city council meetings or passing, passing measures, um, or, or, or local charter amendments to, to, to build more housing, you know, calling out, uh, violations from city council, uh, city councils who are not following state law or when there's a, a, a housing element that's out of compliance.

43:39 Like, that's like, that's all good stuff. I, you know, today, all you need is, uh, you know, your, your phone and yourself and, and, and your thoughts, and you can, um, you know, share your reflections and, and be on TikTok and be on Instagram and, um, and, and be a voice, uh, for Yimbyism. And, and some, you know, there's power in knowing that there's people that, that share the same view, the same, the same set of values, the same, the same set of goals and commitments. So folks can do that in their own, in their own communities. Um, I would also say that, uh, helping the enforcers know what's happening on the ground is really important. We're a big, uh, department where a billion dollar a year agency. We have nearly 6,000 employees over, you know, almost 1200 attorneys, and we don't know about what's happening on housing in every city in the great state of California.

44:29 And when folks are able to share their concerns or flag an issue, uh, it allows us to intervene early and hopefully avoid any problems with compliance with the law and any, um, hindrances to, to building more housing. So, uh, and a folks, you know, have anything to share with us, you can go to oag.ca.gov slash report and, uh, our housing justice team can take the issue from there. But engagement is key. Staying active, democracy, the Yimby movement, uh, building more housing is about participation, um, and, and engagement activism. The, the, the enemy of, uh, the Yimby movement and democracy is apathy and not being involved. So stay involved, stay vigilant, uh, be committed in any way that makes you comfortable, including in your own community.

45:18 Speaking of helping you, right. There's like the movement, what the movement can do. And I was wondering if there's any legislation that's either currently being proposed or you'd like to see proposed that would help you do your job as AG. Cause I know previous legislative cycles, um, there were laws, I believe it was written by Assemblymember Haney. I might not remember exactly who, but that were, like they work with your office because you asked for, uh, like, you know, another tool or clarification to the law to make your work more successful. Is there, could you talk a little bit about that and then about any future legislation like that? Yeah, we, I was a former legislator, uh, for over eight years, proudly. So I served in the California state assembly represent the great cities of Oakland and Alameda and, and San Leandro and deeply believe in, um, the ability of the legislature with the governor to solve problems.

46:13 Not, not, not every problem needs, uh, uh, a bill, but, but many can benefit from a good policy change or a good set of a new tool, um, or a new solution. Uh, some, uh, uh, of course require enforcement of existing laws. And, and, and, and so I'm in the executive branch now and I do a lot of the enforcement. Um, but, uh, we have always tried to provide more tools based on our own, you know, lived experience as an enforcer to help, uh, fuel the movement. You know, the, you know, the MB movement broadly, that building more housing in California, more specifically the, um, compliance of cities with housing laws, you know, very specifically. And so I, I work with our, our colleagues, Assemblymember Wicks and Senator Wiener are always top of mind. Uh, last year we, uh, modernized the builder's remedy with Assemblymember Wicks to make those projects more feasible to approve and to build, uh, to make it more clear that this is, this is a real remedy.

47:05 Uh, it does kick in, uh, there is, and, and there's a way when a housing element is, um, is not compliant where builders can build projects when they meet certain, um, measurable standards. We also, with Senator Wiener, we realized that some of these cities were dragging their feet and, and, um, there wasn't enough teeth in the, the accountability they, they, uh, we needed, um, more, uh, penalties, uh, earlier in the process. As soon as the violation, uh, occurred, uh, that start running to encourage, um, you know, to, to hold these violating cities accountable and to encourage them to comply instead of, um, uh, just continue with the litigation and, and drag things out. And, you know, we, so we created, um, higher penalties and those penalties go into a fund to build more affordable housing, you know, consistent with the goal and the mission.

47:54 So that was a good, uh, solution. This year we have a couple of new bills that we're sponsoring as well. Um, one, uh, with Senator Araguin, uh, in, in the East Bay who took over for Senator Skinner, uh, another Yimby here in the Bay Area, uh, which provides, uh, some clarity around, um, how, how going, getting voter approval interacts. With, um, some of the requirements that exist for, uh, cities to comply, uh, with, with housing law. Uh, some cities want to send their housing element, uh, for example, to, uh, uh, for voter, voter approval. And we were making it clear that if it's, if it's not approved, if it's disapproved, then, um, you're out of compliance and the builder's remedy kicks in, for example. So, uh, so, uh, and we saw some ambiguity in this space, so that's why we wanted to provide clarity.

48:44 We also wanted to provide more speed, you know, this, this idea that we need to make it easier to build the things that we want. We need to make it faster to build the things we want. If we want housing, we need to make it easier and faster to build. And that makes complete sense. That's, you know, Senator Wiener's, um, theory. That's Ezra Klein's theory. And, um, so we have a bill with Senator Caballero to expedite judicial review of housing development permit denials, uh, so that we can get to, uh, a final conclusion faster. And, you know, the idea that time is money, especially for small builders that can't carry, um, you know, that kind of, uh, burden, uh, speed's important. So those are some of the things that we've worked on. And, um, uh, Assemblymember Haney, as you mentioned, has been, uh, um, a partner as well.

49:29 It's really thrilling, of course, to hear about all your work and your quite aggressive work on, on housing and on, on Yimby issues. I think of you, not just as the tip of the spear, but, but as the spear, right? Well, of course, we're not only Yimby Democrats for America, the podcast is called Radio Abundance. And that is because we do believe in that movement more broadly. And the idea of abundance as a civilizational goal and animating principle. And, you know, we want to put housing at the center, an abundance of housing, because that is most dire and urgent. But, but also an abundance of energy, of, of transportation, of infrastructure, of healthcare. So I'm curious, both in terms of your personal philosophy, how you think about abundance and then, and then how that intersects with your work as attorney general. Yeah, I, I, I, I don't know that I, I, I called it abundance, but I, uh, in, in the past, but I've, I've always subscribed to this idea that instead of fighting over a small pie, let's grow the pie for all of us and, and create more opportunities for us all to succeed.

50:26 And I've always said, let's reject the zero sum fallacy that, that, that, that, that, that my success requires your failure. Um, and that we need to adopt this idea that you can succeed and I can succeed and we can both succeed together. And just because you succeed, um, doesn't, um, um, harm me. It's good for me. Our neighbor's success is good for all of us. And we need to create opportunities for us all to succeed. And that means having more opportunity and, you know, more resources, more housing, more transportation, more energy, all those things. So it's, uh, it, it, it's a frame I hadn't used, but it's an idea that I've subscribed to, uh, for some time. And I, and I, and I think it's, it's, it's the right way to, to live in community, to live in a United States of America, in a shared society. We share it and, uh, uh, we're all going to rise together or, or not at all.

51:14 And we need abundant access to the things, um, that are most important to our, to our success. And so, uh, I like the frame. I, I, I'm so grateful that it's being, um, uh, that, that it's having its moment and that it's getting into the ears and brains of policy makers. And, uh, you know, uh, of course, uh, Governor Newsom and Ezra Klein had a wonderful conversation about abundance and, and, and the governor, you know, double clicked on it and, and supported it and, and is, you know, gave the book to the legislature. And, and, and, and, and, and turn into something tangible and concrete into real policy, real change. And so, uh, you know, we're in this moment as Democrats where we're doing some self-reflection appropriately, looking at the last election, what went wrong?

52:01 What's still right? Um, what do we need to change? Um, are they, are they transformational changes? Are they strategic tweaks? Um, one of them is we need to deliver and, you know, that's not new. Um, I'm not saying that we, we haven't delivered, but, but the way to have people support you is to do things that make their lives better. Not talk about it, do it. And so that it's concrete and tangible in their lives, you know, really make housing more affordable, really make eggs more affordable for people to come off the street who are homeless and into care, uh, where they're getting the treatment and support that they need. Really do it, not just talk about theories that, uh, may or may not work. And, um, you know, delivering has always been something I've, I've cared about. I've always said every elected official needs to, um, uh, at, at, at the very least care and try at the very least, but that's not enough for me.

52:51 I think you need to deliver. You need to care, try and deliver, uh, on the things that your constituents want or else and need, or else, you know, someone else gives someone else a chance in that spot, because if you're not delivering, um, your constituents deserve better. So I think if Democrats can do that more broadly, and I, I know we can, um, I think we'll be, uh, much better off next cycle and, and the people we serve much better off, of course, too. Yeah, this is a major theme of the conversations, uh, that we've been having with folks is the idea that, uh, Democrats need to deliver and, uh, uh, in order to, uh, present a better alternative, uh, to Trump and, and, and to ultimately defeat him. We talked a little bit earlier about the electoral stakes, uh, of building housing in defeating Trump. Um, but I also think a lot about the role of housing in both addressing the root causes that have, uh, empowered the rise of fascists, um, as, as well as in articulating, uh, that better vision, not just of democratic governance, but of, of a better world, of better, better states and a better country.

53:50 And I'm curious, uh, uh, how you see, um, building housing fitting into it, but into that battle. Yes. But also in terms of tackling its, its underlying causes, uh, and, uh, and a model for, uh, a better choice we can make. You know, uh, interesting question about, you know, fascism, um, choosing democracy. Um, I, I think if democracy makes people's lives better and it works for them, people will continue to choose it. It, it, to me, it's what we chose and, and, and, um, it, it, it's immovable to move off the path of democracy for, for me. But, um, I, I realized that there are places where democracy has, has turned to fascism, uh, where, uh, an autocracy, uh, there's a movement around the world towards strong men, uh, quote unquote leadership.

54:38 And, uh, it's a problem. It is exactly not who we are and exactly not what our defining document, the U S constitution, uh, made us to be, you know, the U S constitution in a word, you know, the cliff notes version, the short form in one sentence is America shall have no kings, no tyrants, no monarch. Uh, no dictators. It is designed to never have that. So it, it, it, it's, it's built for this moment, uh, where it's being tested, stress tested. And, uh, it certainly appears that, you know, this view of quote unquote, expansive executive authority, uh, you know, where you're taking over the congressional roles and state roles and, and, and jurisdiction and authority is, is a move towards potential autocracy dictatorship, you know, a third term, et cetera, et cetera. And so if people feel like democracy is failing, that it's too slow and doesn't deliver what they need and that their lives are untenable and they can't afford housing and they can't afford groceries.

55:32 Um, and, and, and, and that's what we saw, uh, at least with the presidential election, uh, and, and some other races across the country, or maybe it's a different form of government, but they want, the bottom line is they will, they will vote based on their quality of life. And, uh, and I know we can deliver as Democrats, uh, we have delivered on a lot of things. We need to talk about that more, toot our own horn, show the receipts, take a victory lap. That's important. Um, but we also need to deliver more consistently on, and, and, and starting with the issues that are most important to our people and working our way down and our top priorities being cost of living, including housing. So, um, if democracy delivers, democracy will be successful and it will be durable and it will have longevity.

56:19 If democracy does not deliver for people, it's, it's vulnerable and it's at risk. Speaking of, uh, tooting our own, our own horns, you know, the abundance book obviously heavily targets California, but as we know, you've been addressing these issues arguably ahead of the book. So I want to give you a chance to toot your own horn for a second. I'd love to know two things in both directions, right? One is what would you like, uh, you know, Ezra and Derek to know about the work that, that you've been doing in California this whole time. And also what have maybe you picked up either, uh, from the book or the movement more broadly that has, uh, maybe you think about things differently or that you've been able to apply to the work or plan to. Yeah, thanks. You know, I, I think that, um, my decision, uh, you know, immediately upon becoming attorney general to, to prioritize housing and to value housing.

57:07 And to put a, uh, uh, plant a flag in the ground and say, I'm going to enforce housing law and I'm going to fight for housing. And that's going to be a top issue for me when no AG had ever really done that before, but is, um, something I'm proud of. And I'm proud of one using the bully pulpit for an issue that I think is really important, uh, to, to Californians. I, I, I've always said as a leader, my job, uh, is, is to not create priorities in a, in a charting session in, in some office, you know, in, in a frozen in a moment in time, um, that, that is static and never changes. But my job is to have priorities that match what the people want. So my fights, you know, the Cal are, are, are Californians fights. Their fights are my fights, whatever is most important in their life is most important in my life and, and, and, and in my service.

57:55 And so housing was one of them. And so I, I'm grateful that I was able to, um, uh, get a great team involved, uh, an incredible leader leading that team, Alex Fish, uh, who's a YIMBY and himself. So Alex Fish used to be in like a housing YIMBY group chat that I was on the Twitter. So he was one of the saddest days for us of Latin. It was great for him, obviously, and great for this state, but he's like, guys, I have to, and you know, I'm going to get appointed to this. I have to leave the group chat now. Yeah, I mean, I, I hope that scene is California's gain. I certainly see it as, as putting him in a, you know, even, um, a bigger role to affect more change and help more housing get built. Um, and so, you know, picking someone like him and, you know, getting cities to, to build more housing.

58:41 We think we've, along with our partnership with HCD helped build 40,000 more units of housing that weren't going to be built. And so that's, I think that's tangible. That's real. Um, it also shows, I hope and believe, and I'm always bragging about California in this regard, uh, a blueprint and maybe some inspiration for what other attorneys general could do or other enforcers can do. You know, even if, if housing doesn't seem to be something that has been historically part of a, uh, uh, an agenda or a set of priorities, it's what your people need. So make it a, make it a priority and, and, and do what you can to help build more housing in your state. And so I'm grateful for that. And, you know, we, I can talk about all the, you know, the, the number of pounds, uh, uh, of powder and pills of fentanyl we've taken off the street. The number of organized retail crime groups we've taken down, um, you know, hate crimes, human trafficking, um, the billions of dollars in, in, in funding for our opioid settlements.

59:35 As we've cracked down on, um, um, the opioid epidemic and, and, and, and sued the bad actors that, you know, the, the, the corporate bad actors that we've held accountable, uh, list goes on and I'm proud of all of it. Um, and we need to do more and I haven't done enough and I need to fight harder and be better. And that is a lesson that I, that I've seen in, uh, Ezra Klein's book and, and, and abundance, the self-reflection about yes, California can, can be great. Um, you know, California exceptionalism, the fifth largest economy in the world, the greatest state in the nation, in my view, the most diverse state, um, the state that's led to the politics, uh, the phrase as California goes, so goes the nation. And it can have failures that need to change. And part of being great is being reflective of your own, um, failure to meet the high standards that we have for ourself.

1:00:26 And we haven't met those high standards in, in, in, in a number of different ways. Um, certainly when it comes to building more housing, certainly when it comes to addressing homelessness, certainly when it comes to high speed rail, much talked about by, by Ezra and by governor Newsom. And, and rightfully so like, like that's a classic example, it takes too long, do it faster. Um, we need to deliver faster and we need to deliver more. So this idea of, um, don't get caught up in, uh, you know, process so much, um, you know, and don't get focused on the inputs at the end of the day, it's the outputs. It's what you deliver that matters no matter what the process is, no matter what the inputs, if you don't deliver on the outputs, then nothing else really matters.

1:01:11 So I, I, I, I like that sort of, uh, uh, aggressive, uh, set of metrics, um, and, uh, uh, firm set of standards, uh, that, that, uh, Ezra had and Derek have projected on, on Democrats. We, we do need to have high standards and we need to work harder to meet them. I think that Senator Wiener, I've heard him say a zillion times, I used to work for him. He'd say, well, people, you know, it's good to have a process, but a process needs a beginning, a middle and an end. And the way that things work right now is that there's never an end, right? People keep suing and keep suing. You saw this congestion pricing in New York that is like so many years. And even after it was implemented, there's still more lawsuits and with, you know, high-speed rail.

1:01:58 A lot of people don't understand the money was spent on just like fighting lawsuits, you know, in your position as AG, how do you think we can make it? Obviously your job is to like win cases and doing a great job at it. How do you think the law can be shaped to sort of like streamline process in that way? So there aren't always more hooks for litigation. Like you, you talked about example earlier of a city that like knew it was going to lose, but still kept suing because it's worth it for them to drag things out. Right. And like, can we change laws to not have that happen? We have changed laws to not have that happen. We can do it more. And we, first of all, everything you said sounds like the wise Scott Wiener that I know.

1:02:43 Congratulations on being able to work with him. He's full of wisdom and just fearless. And he, I have a statement about him that, you know, I call him the Terminator. He's, he keeps coming until he wins and he might not win this year, maybe even not next year, but he will get his thing across the finish line because he will not give up. And I have great respect for his, his, his push and his, um, fearlessness, um, process that, that, you know, part of the journey is the end and you need to get to the end. You can't be in an endless journey. You can't be in endless litigation, uh, for some things. And I, you know, and I've been an author of a bill that did this, uh, for stadiums. We have streamlined the CEQA process.

1:03:29 We made it shorter. We created an end date by which the whole thing needs to be done. We did not change at all. The thorough, uh, inspection of, uh, environmental impacts and, um, the need to create mitigation, but it wasn't going to be in a lawsuit that goes on for years and years and years. It was going to be done in nine months. And that gave certainty for the builders of, uh, envisioned, um, Oakland A's stadium in Oakland. And it was the same for other stadiums, uh, throughout the, the state of California. If we can do it for stadiums, why can't we do it for other things that we care about deeply like housing? Um, and we, the answer is we can. Um, and so I support the substance of CEQA. We, part of who we are in California is a state that loves and protects our environment.

1:04:17 We're a nation and global leader in that regard. Um, I'm also someone who thinks we can balance that with building housing and building things that we want if we do it fast. And if we, if we create guardrails and streamlining processes. So making litigation shorter, uh, is very important. Um, and we can, we can be very specific about it. You know, it'll all be done in, you know, nine months you can say, uh, and then you need to have a, you need to support the, the court system and infrastructure to get it done and provide that, that track to, to, to, to go through from beginning to end in that process. But we can do that. Um, you know, we, we, democracy is messy. We have different branches of government. We have power dispersed throughout those branches, horizontally throughout, um, uh, government vertically as well, federal, state, local, you know, both city and county.

1:05:05 We have private parties that can get involved with litigation, like SQL lawsuits. And that's all part of the process that we chose. And we're not Singapore with, uh, uh, uh, you know, a, a, a, a single person in charge. You can say we're building 30,000 units of housing and it gets done immediately with, you know, no further discussion. Um, we've chosen democracy, but democracy doesn't have to be slow and it doesn't always have to be, um, inefficient. We can, we can do better if we hold ourselves to that standard. We can't accept this idea that it's, you know, democracy's, uh, messy. So it's going to be slow. Yeah. We might, we might have a high-speed rail that takes, you know, 15 years to build or more, um, unacceptable. We can do better. And there's ways to, and we have some models, uh, uh, of things that have actually been done before that we might want to pull off the shelf and, um, replicate.

1:05:53 You know, that proposed stadium you mentioned in Oakland, uh, just anecdotally, that was going to be gorgeous. I hope you're enjoying the A's in Sacramento, but one day baseball in Oakland again, and we will get that waterfront ballpark with a rooftop park. Um, it has been, uh, it's been a real delight to talk to you today. You know, there are a few elect, uh, few officials across the country who are as focused, uh, on our, our twin goals as we are in terms of, of building housing and defeating fascism. And we appreciate your work. Um, and I want to end, uh, you know, on a personal note, um, uh, not my personal, your personal, uh, you are, uh, the first Filipino American, the second Asian American ever to serve as attorney general of California. Uh, your parents spent their lives fighting for social justice. You've talked about that as a key motivator for why you became a lawyer who could wield that expertise and in service of people who needed defending.

1:06:46 You've fought across your career for racial and economic and environmental justice. You've advocated for immigrants and renters and, and workers. You, you led the fight against racial profiling as a deputy city attorney in San Francisco. And I'm just curious with all of that background, right? How does your background, your life from race to culture, to your parents and childhood, to the experiences you've had and the fights you've taken on in government, how has who you are and what you've experienced, uh, shaped this push to build more housing? And just before we begin, I want to say my partner is Filipina and her, like entire family, WhatsApp is very excited that I'm doing this. I love you. Big fans. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you saying that.

1:07:31 And thank you for the, um, you know, talking about my background. I, I, I think who I am and my background defines how I am and how I see the world and, and, and how I fight and, and, you know, my, uh, theory of and vision of change. And, you know, with the father who was involved in the civil rights movement, marched in Selma, Alabama, organized for civil rights and voting rights. Both parents worked for the United Farm Workers of America. Uh, we lived in La Paz. I grew up there as a young boy. La Paz is the headquarters in the Central Valley. My dad worked in the front office with Cesar Chavez and helped set up, um, healthcare clinics for the farm workers. My mom worked in the preschool with Dolores Huerta way back then in the early seventies. And then my mom, an immigrant from the Philippines, um, uh, fought for the restoration of democracy in her home country for years and years until, uh, people rose up and chased out, uh, uh, a dictator and, and brought democracy.

1:08:27 Back to a country after the dictator was violating human rights and, uh, disappearing opponents and, you know, arresting, imprisoning, torturing, and killing them. And when I was just two months old and born in the Philippines, my, my parents saw that dictator rising to power and they knew martial law was around the corner, which it was. And so they brought me to California, uh, cause they thought I could live my California dream here and reach my full potential here. And they were right about that. Um, uh, they wanted freedom and democracy for me, human rights and due process and the rule of law for me. And I'll tell you, I know that California dream is alive and well, cause I'm living mine. I never thought I could be in this role. I never, uh, take it for granted. I'm always honored and grateful. Sometimes I don't even believe I am the attorney general of California.

1:09:14 So I will secretly confess to you that I will go on the website and see if my photo and my name are really there on the DOJ, California, AG website. And I'm pumped when it is, cause it means I can do what I love doing most, which is fight to make people's lives better, tackle these problems, um, serve other Californians and, and, and, and lift them up. And, um, I believe that the way, you know, because of my parents who, who fought against, uh, injustice and I believe that when something's not right, it's time to fight and believe that you can make tomorrow more fair than today. Uh, I believe that nothing's impossible for us and that, um, the role I have can help, um, shape the change that we need that just the fact that we, the fact that we haven't built housing for people and push this dream of home ownership and affordable housing out of reach from one more Californians doesn't mean it has to be that way.

1:10:07 It means it has to change and we need, and I need to be part of that change. And so my parents always taught me that, um, the most potent power that there is, is people power and that we can drive the change that we need. And so the YIMBY movement is people power at its finest, also matched with folks with positional authority. And that's the magic, what I call the inside outside game where you can do anything when you have a grassroots community driven, people driven movement combined with people in power who can make decisions and they're working together and they're singing from the same songbook and they're, um, uh, have the same mission and goals. Then, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's blue skies and anything's possible. And I think that's where the, the current YIMBY movement is.

1:10:54 And, and, you know, I saw my parents as everyday people ask elected officials to fight with them, uh, on the issues that they cared about. And I saw the disappointment when almost all the time the elected officials declined and were focused on other things. So I decided to run for office cause I wanted to say yes to the people and, uh, be that person with, uh, you know, the privilege of, of authority in an elected office who can help, um, make the mission of everyday people, the fight of everyday people, uh, into a reality. And so, um, that's how I see that, that, that, the, the connection of my, my story, my origin story, if you will, who I am, who my parents are, their impact on me connected to the work I do broadly. And the, the, the, the work I do with housing, um, um, um, you know, the, the, the, the idea that, uh, we must change and that we can change is deeply rooted in who I am.

1:11:50 One of the things that I, um, my, my parents, um, in participation and involvement with these, uh, different people power movements, um, one of the biggest lessons was that we have agency in what happens next. We don't have to accept the unacceptable. We don't have to normalize what's abnormal. We don't have to, uh, just take things that are unjust or wrong. We can change them and we must change them. And, and so, uh, we have, uh, many more chapters to write in the story of California, the story of America, um, the story of housing in California and the story of housing in America, the story of democracy in California and in America. And, um, um, it's not a, uh, you know, Trump and his billionaire buddies and his, his, his, you know, the greedy corporations that he supports who's going to write it.

1:12:36 It's going to be the people who always write it, uh, you and me and us, uh, the people, you know, we, we are a nation of foreign by the people. And we're going to write the next chapter, including building an abundance of housing for everyone who needs it in California and in America. Well, thank you. Power to the people. Let's go write that next chapter. Attorney General Rob Bonta. Thanks for joining us today on Radio Abundant. It is my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Steve. Thanks, Roman. Honored to be with you. That was California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Elizabeth, you're new for this podcast. Let's start with you. What'd you think? Yeah, absolutely love that conversation. I think one thing that really hit me is how important it is for us to have strong YIMBY attorneys general. It's something that we don't often think about. We think about needing YIMBYs in our, you know, state legislators and in our governors and our mayors, but we're not always thinking about that.

1:13:26 We really need some really strong YIMBY lawyers and specifically as attorneys general, specifically in states like California that have, you know, passed good laws, but still have cities that are, you know, kind of trying to defy those laws. To block housing. And so just how important it is for us as a YIMBY movement to be building up a pipeline of strong YIMBY attorneys who are willing to, you know, play hard and be aggressive to really get this housing built. Yeah, it's really how there is like a giant ecosystem of solving this problem. Like the thing I think about a lot is the success of ADU law in California, where initially we passed good laws and then a lot of localities found like loopholes or didn't want to enforce it. And the reason we found out about that is because we had good YIMBY activists and electeds locally who were like raising these issues.

1:14:19 And then the legislature was able to do more fixes, but also even after it was fixed, like places just tried to break the law. And like Attorney General Bonta was able to sue them and enforce the law. And so like what Elizabeth was talking about is like, it's not enough to just like have some folks pass good laws. Like you need an entire ecosystem of activists, attorney generals, leaders at every level who are fighting for housing to make sure nothing gets stuck at any part of the process. Or, you know, you're playing a bit of whack-a-mole, but like everybody's going to be whacking the mold. This is something that Attorney General Bonta brought up, right? He said, you know, look, I want to be all over this. I want to be tackling this everywhere it needs tackling. Obviously, I care deeply and I am constantly focused on this, but also I can't be everywhere.

1:15:08 I don't have eyes and ears everywhere and a magic crystal ball. When we asked him what he needs from us, what he said was, look, we need people who are pro-YIMBY and pro-abundance and in this movement to be my eyes and ears and to tell me when cities aren't upholding their obligations and when cities are pulling stunts so that I can act on them. I can't sue them if I don't know about it. And Elizabeth, I think it's such a phenomenal point that is relevant to us, even as we think about where to prioritize and focus our efforts. That it's not just the legislators. You can, and we're seeing this at the federal level, right? You can pass laws, but there's also the matter of enforcing those laws. And you do need allies on both sides of that equation because otherwise it doesn't become real. Armand, you mentioned local municipalities skirting a bit of the ADU laws.

1:15:57 I want to go out on a limb and bet that you might have some stories of some of the maybe more funnier or comical shenanigans that some cities and municipalities have pulled to try to get out of their housing obligations. Well, so recently, the city of Sausalito, the law says, according to Housing Accountability Act, that you have to abide by objective health and public safety standards to, like, disapprove housing if it meets all the rules. You can't just, like, arbitrarily say, like, oh, I don't like it. And so Dave now started requiring developers to submit data on a historic view impact because they want to create software that will calculate the percentage of view that is impacted by a potential new housing unit of, like, historic or important views.

1:16:52 This software doesn't currently exist. They're requiring, like, people to submit data for an algorithm that does not exist in hopes that it will one day exist so that they can establish, like, how much this view affects you or not seeing this percentage of a view affects you. And they can turn that into, like, law. That struck me a little silly. Or one in, you know, Rob Bonta talked about this. This is, like, there's a city, Woodside, in California, that tried to declare the entire city a mountain lion preserve so that, therefore, no housing could be built there. You know, it is not a city overrun with mountain lions. If it was actually a mountain lion preserve, people should move out of it. They're very creative.

1:17:38 They come up with a lot of strange justifications for not building housing. I have a Texas story that could maybe do that. They attempted to pass a state-level ADUs by right across the entire state of Texas. And one of the big NIMBY concerns was that these ADUs, you know, in people's backyards were going to be used for human trafficking, for keeping prostitutes in these ADUs, and that these would become little mini brothels in people's backyards. Wow. I've not heard that one before.

1:18:10 Oh, my God. Well, from brothels to under the sea, Armand didn't saw Salubo do something where, like, they were supposed to designate a certain amount of land for housing, and they were like, here, here's some eelgrass in the bay that you can use? They did that, too. One of the classic things for RHNA, so RHNA, Regional Housing Needs Assessment, Good Annunciation Exercise, said that you have to cite, like, certain properties for building housing. And so what cities would like to do is cite places and say, we will, like, a bunch of housing will be built here. And they'll pick places like the middle of, like, abandoned woodlands or something, or, like, nobody has been for many, many years, or, like, a toxic waste dump.

1:18:55 The best one is when they said that a bunch of housing will be built on the site of a police station, which the city itself owns. And so one of the YIMBYs emailed the head of, like, the police there and said, do you have plans to build housing on your police station? And they said, obviously not. And so then they forward this to the city. It's like, hey, your housing element says you're going to build housing there. But then your police chief says, no, we are not going to tear down our police station and turn it into housing. You know, all of these examples, they're extremely comical, and they're so nonsensical as to feel very light and funny and almost bring a smile to your face until you remember the embarrassing and infuriating consequences, which manifests itself in a few ways.

1:19:43 One is the devastating and immiserating effects it has on people when their rents get jacked up and people can't find a home or a roof with their head at all. It is, I think, a practice of laundering discrimination. We see it all a lot through zoning, but now it's laundering discrimination through bullshit and eelgrass, which is to say, hey, our city is closed to outsiders and we don't want your kind here. And then the national stakes are enormous and we're going to bang this drum constantly. And Rob Bonta helped us bring it up, which is that which is the 2030 census. Rob Bonta mentioned that California's housing goals are as a state are aligned to 2030. And of course, we know that the 2030 census means that if blue states like California and New York don't build enough housing and welcome enough new residents and grow their population by 2030, their huge amount of population loss in this last decade.

1:20:41 And and even in the last few years means that when the next census comes in 2030, the number of Congress people in each state and the number of therefore electoral votes in each state is going to get reassigned and recalculated. And so, for example, California in particular, the home of both our interviewees tonight is set to lose four or five votes in Congress and four or five electoral votes in presidential elections, meaning that in the presidential election in 2032, 2036 and 2040, we could sweep the blue wall when every state Joe Biden won to become president in 2020 and lose every single one of those elections without another shot till 2044 to whatever MAGA candidate is running, as well as losing the votes in Congress to be able to hold them back from breaking the law and doing away with our democracy altogether.

1:21:33 And, you know, for as much great work as Attorney General Bonta is doing to enforce state goals on building housing, I think those those state goals to begin with are still not ambitious enough to meet this moment and turn back the tide. And a lot of that, I think, is because the word hasn't always gotten out that people don't know those are the stakes. And making sure that everyone knows this, that every California state representative and every voter in California knows that we have to build housing or lose America to MAGA fascism for a generation, and that every voter in California knows whether their representative is standing up to MAGA or enabling them like a Trojan horse who speaks like a progressive and calls themselves a progressive and uses all the right words, but is ultimately doing the bidding of Donald Trump and the white supremacists and corrupt billionaires who fuel him.

1:22:20 That's a pretty big part of our organizational mission. And this past week in California at the sort of local and state level, there was some action here with with a couple of really key votes, which featured both some exciting successes and some really disappointing missteps that feel sometimes like a betrayal and sometimes like people paying lip service to Yimbyism and then finding excuses not to make good on it. And ways that ultimately don't rise to meet the stakes of the moment or even seem to take it into consideration. So, Armand, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about what happened in California this past week. Sure. So Senator Wiener, who's like the OG of California, like Yimbyism and the state legislature, introduced two bills, SB 79 and SB 677.

1:23:10 SB 79 is like a big upzoning bill to build more housing near transit. The argument being there are a lot of places in California that have like the state has invested billions and billions of dollars to build really nice transit stations and all the housing around it is either non-existent or single family. And so, you know, frankly, the people own those homes nearby got enormous amount of value, but not a lot of people can easily use those transit stations that the state has poured a lot of resources into because there's not a lot of housing there. And from an environmental perspective, from an economic justice perspective, from a pro-transit perspective, like building housing next to transit is like easy winner.

1:24:02 This would be probably the most like ambitious in terms of raw units create housing bill that I've seen since like really was called like SB 827. It was Senator Wiener's first attempt in the legislature to write like a really big upzoning. Since then, we've had to work done a lot of meaningful legislation, but like smaller bills. And this is sort of a return to form of going for really big bill. Then there's SB 79, which is sort of a different category past a few years ago, a build called SB 9, which is meant to enable basically turning single family homes and lots in single family home areas into small apartments like duplexes, quadplexes. The legislation was written in such a way that was very, you know, a lot of necessary political compromise that in practice, like we talked about the whack-a-mole, it hasn't actually resulted in that much housing built.

1:24:56 And so the attempt this cycle was to do basically cleanup. So, for example, there's a provision in there about owner occupancy with the vision being that we didn't want, like there are folks who are concerned that people would come into these single family neighborhoods and like buy up single family homes. And turn them and speculate and turn them into like apartments and you'll sound hearing me sound a little skeptical because I'm like, I don't think it's bad for people to build small apartments in those neighborhoods. That said, the idea was we wanted homeowners to build these themselves and require owner occupancy. In practice, very few homeowners have the resources or desire to like become full-time developers and continue living in the property as they're building it out.

1:25:50 And so the big change that was proposed was to say that we'll keep the owner occupancy requirement, but it can be the future occupant. So, for example, like if the developer, like somebody who owns the properties collectively has to like live in one of them, but it doesn't have to be the person who developed, which then opens the pipeline to actually having developers. There's a lot of other provisions, but that was sort of one of the big like controversies. And so what actually happened at the state legislature is there was a discussion in the Senate Housing Committee shared by Senator Aisha Wahab from Fremont Hayward area. And it was a very big political fight and there's a lot of testimony.

1:26:35 And the way these things work is like if it dies in that committee, it is very unlikely. It is possible, but it is very unlikely that it continues in this legislative session. And so it's like a really big test. Every bill that you see sort of voted on in the legislature has to go through committees and survive all these committees. And if it dies in any one of them, it's pretty much dead. And it's actually kind of funny to see how the sausage is made, because even on the day of when it's happening, people have not fully decided. And so for a long time was this strange thing where they're going through other bills, they are getting testimony. People line up to like give support and oppose it, public comment.

1:27:18 But like they didn't have a quorum and like Senator Wiener was literally not even there. And I'm like, if I didn't know, and I was just watching this as a naive person, I'd be like, I don't get it. Like, is he late or something? But what's actually happening, I don't have any inside word on this. I just generally know it's like people are trying to negotiate furiously behind the scenes and like there's back and forth and conversation and all that stuff. But ultimately, by a hair, SB 79 passed to live another day and SB 677 died by a single vault, which is really disappointing because I think there's an enormous amount of housing that we can lock with like creating modest apartments and single family neighborhoods to create more of like what we call streetcar suburbs.

1:28:06 But allowing 79 to pass still like a huge achievement and it's very interesting to see sort of the arguments there, like there's sort of like left wing arguments against housing, which are sort of the argument that it can cause displacement to build market rate housing that we need to build more affordable, not market rate housing. And then there's like more right wing arguments that were like, like there's a Senator Sayarto from, I believe, Temecula, who's, I want to be polite, but he was arguing that like the reason people are moving out of California is because we're building too many apartments and people are so upset about the apartments being built that they are then moving to Texas, which I think Elizabeth will find amusing because Texas is building a lot of housing.

1:28:54 Right. It's not a coincidence that it's not a coincidence that we are going to gain electoral votes and congressional seats. So I would say that the overall takeaway on this is just I was very happy to see these things advance, but it's also kind of strange. I've been doing this for over 10 years and these were the same arguments.

1:29:12 Other senators and other people who filled these roles were saying it's like a time capsule is very strange. Like even in like the MB world of the people argue with us online or in the discourse and journals or so on, like the arguments have evolved a lot. But here it was just like time had not passed in the legislature. And I think it's a good lesson to like touch grass. A lot of us, I think, especially people who don't like MBs are often like they'll tell me that they feel like we're so dominant. Like even today, I was talking to a friend who's like, you know, I'm not going to name them, but they were saying they kind of are in the more tenant advocacy space. And they casually mentioned they're like, MBs are so powerful in Sacramento. And I was like, I didn't feel very powerful watching this testimony. I'll be frank.

1:29:58 Like when someone's going on for a long time of how important it is to mandate parking in apartments. And we barely survived this boat. It feels like we're still a long way to go when shit hits the real thing. Yeah, I feel like we're ascendant. We have momentum, but there is a long road and a big uphill battle to go. I was going to say, compare this to what just happened in Montana, right? Red state that might also end up gaining an electoral vote. And, you know, just this week, it was announced that, like, on top of their big MB bill that passed in 2023, they just legalized six story buildings on every major commercial land, limited impact fees, which are huge in California, reduced liability, professionalized historical reviews. And then also legalized ADUs in rural places without all these limitations and a single-stay of residential buildings throughout the state.

1:30:51 It was like a huge sweep of another, like, UMB bills. And so when we talk about how difficult it is to pass these bills, whether in Massachusetts or California or all these other places, it's also sad because it's not hard everywhere in the country. In so many ways, red states are lapping us, and it just really reinforces how possible all of this is. And it's really, you know, in some ways, Democrats getting in our own way. It's kind of fascinating just the partisan dynamics where it's like, in California, if you look at polling, the most DMV people are Democrats. Like, consistently, all the big housing bills are opposed by, like, from actual voters, more conservative voters. But then, like, actual red states, like Texas and Montana, pass, like, way more YIMBY law.

1:31:38 It's like, like, Republicans in different states act differently, which I haven't quite gotten a beat on. Yeah. And, you know, the Trump administration, they're no YIMBYs. I mean, they're extreme NIMBYs. They, you know, oppose construction. Obviously, they're making it radically more expensive with tariffs on, you know, on everything that's needed for construction. They are, you know, all about protecting the suburbs from these intruders. Trump, to me, is a kind of ultimate NIMBY, somebody whose whole animating purpose, even outside of the issue of housing, is about saying, well, I come from a privileged class and, frankly, a privileged country. And what I want to do is I want to lock in and consolidate and preserve that privilege forever at the expense of continuing to build and continuing to create and continuing to develop. He's trying to freeze the country in time in ways that if you think about trade, you know, you try to build walls around other countries to maintain your status.

1:32:31 And what's going to happen very quickly is your status is going to evaporate and your competitive edge and your advantages will disappear because you're not pushing forward with new creations and new solutions that build on what you've created before. This vote in California, to me, is very emblematic of the great progress we've made and the huge struggle we are in the midst of. You know, you mentioned State Senator Ayesha Wahab. I'm in San Jose today. Her district extends into part of San Jose. I could walk there. So, you know, at the top of this meeting, she said she knows, quote, there's a supply issue. She says we must build housing at all income levels. But then she decided that the bill was a nonstarter for her because of massive giveaways to developers. And it just makes me think of a few things.

1:33:18 One is, you know, I saw somebody on they post on Twitter is just a silly little meme. But it was like Democrats will feed 100 people in fear that one of them might starve, whereas Republicans will starve 100 people in fear that one of them might deserve. And it is certainly clear that Republicans are starving a lot of people and will continue to make massive cuts both in the United States and around the world that immiserate people and send people to their deaths. And also very in a focused way are targeting people they don't like, although actually, they're not just picking on vulnerable people they don't like, like the trans community. They're picking on their own voters all the time and crushing manufacturing workers and crushing, you know, states that have natural disasters and need AIDS and say, hey, you guys are on your own. But I looked at this little quote and sort of meme and I thought, man, is that still true?

1:34:06 Like, I want this to be true. But just as it's bad when Republicans punish everyone so they can hurt the people they don't like, I think it's also bad when what I would call like a progressive miserates everyone just so that we can make sure developers don't profit. Right. It's like, could we, we could do this good thing, but what if a couple people make money, therefore we should not do this good thing and then everybody loses. And this culture where everybody loses is deeply hurting people and, and also deeply hurting the country, you know, State Senator Aisha Wahab also defending this dual approach that I try to be as holistic as possible. And I don't think there's a holistic way to cede and surrender the country to the MAGA movement for 20 years. So, you know, you starting to say the right words and, and that's a really good step.

1:34:55 That's important, but it's got to translate into law and it's also got to translate into a mindset, one that says it's not about picking people who need to lose. It's about making sure we all can win. And, you know, if somebody does make money, great, tax them and spread that around. But man, we, we need to have a culture where everybody's getting upgrades, not one where we are so intent to make sure some people don't get a boost that everybody gets kicked down a few rungs. I think it's, it's painful and sad for the state. I'll also say that in many ways, I think that people talk about dark abundance or that the lack of abundance is about smear city. Like I went to the National League of Cities where JD Vance spoke to the crowd of people from cities all over the country. And he gave a little bit of kudos to Austin for housing and was like, you know, there's a supply demand issue.

1:35:42 You should build a little bit more supply, but then quickly turned around. But the far more impactful thing is to cut demand by like pushing out millions of immigrants. And so I think that's a dark alternative, right? Is that if you don't expand supply, if you don't talk about building more housing, people will still notice the high housing prices and they'll see that you are not willing to do that. And it'll turn to the dark alternative of just making a more closed community and trying to kick people out. It reminded me of like very early on in like my SF housing activism. I ended up like somehow in this meeting of, and I was just some like nobody, but they were like much more important people. Like there's this man who used to run a lot of the like affordable housing groups in the city who primarily spent his time opposing market rate housing.

1:36:27 And he specifically said that like what was important to him was controlling the demographic mix of San Francisco and making sure that like the right people were in the city. And from his perspective, it was like a left wing version of it, of like not tech bros and like not yuppies, but just like, you know, and there were used to be also writing. There's a man named Tim Redmond in 48 Hills, and they've learned now not to publicly make these arguments, but they would explicitly argue for an American version of what's called Hukou in China, which is that like you can't just move to a city. You have to get like a permit to live in that city.

1:37:09 And I think when you don't have an approach for building more housing, you see sort of, you know, Malthusianism is this old idea of like, there are only so many resources we're going to run out. So we need to like keep the population down. And the right wing version of it is like DD advances of like get the immigrants out. The left wing version of it is like restrict who can go into a city or live in the city. Make sure like the, you know, the tech bros or whatever group we don't like can't. But those are both, like you said, I think like sort of the dark alternatives to a vision of abundance, which is like a cities are for everybody. You know, it's living in San Francisco. This is one of the things that has driven me bonkers and makes it hard to live up to our values and hard to share that our values are authentic.

1:37:54 When you have people who are the same people who are showing up to protest Trump wanting to build a wall are using explicitly the exact same language sometimes to say we need to build a wall around San Francisco to keep out these kind of the wrong kinds of people. I think the mayor of Cupertino literally said that about Cupertino a couple of years back. And, you know, we are seeing the stakes here at the national level, right? Berhan is a great segue to something Congressman Robert Garcia, our next interviewee, did recently. You know, you mentioned J.D. Vance's solution to the housing crisis is deportations, right? If we're trying so hard to get to move the Democratic Party from a zero sum mindset to a positive sum mindset, look, J.D. Vance and the Trump administration have a negative sum mindset, right? Everybody loses as long as these people I don't like lose more.

1:38:40 And so one of the things that Robert Garcia did after our interview with him was to hop down to El Salvador to work to negotiate both to investigate the conditions of and and work to negotiate the release of Kilmer Albrego Garcia, who was deported against objections by the court with no due process and chucked away in a Salvadoran concentration camp called Seacot. Congressman Garcia noted that, you know, he demanded to go to Seacot and they've so far the government of El Salvador lets Republicans visit, but they have staunchly refused to let Democrats visit and even see what's going on there. This prison camp shrouded in mystery that we are sending undesirables to without trial.

1:39:27 And again, it's it's it's just horrifying because for reasons that are completely regardless of these people that are being deported, because if if if you don't have a trial where you prove that someone's here illegal, if you don't have a trial where you prove that somebody has gang ties, then all of us do. Right. Then it only takes J.D. Vance saying, hey, those radio abundance hosts, I hear their MS-13 and and you're out. Right. There's if you don't get if if if no one if one person doesn't get a trial, maybe nobody gets a trial and that could come for anybody. So it's horrifying stuff. And and I think Robert Garcia is somebody who has. Yeah, he's been an aggressive YIMBY advocate and launching the YIMBY caucus. He has deep California ties not only as a representative, but as the former mayor of Long Beach.

1:40:15 And in Congress, he's working both to advance those goals and boost the Democratic Party, but also to take on Trump's lawlessness. We're really thankful for our work. And here is our interview with Congressman Robert Garcia.

1:40:29 We have a Supreme Court that's one of nine zero to ensure that Kilmer is sent back to the United States. The Trump administration has been clear that they have no intention of doing that. They've also not only admitted they sent him there on accident. And now that is being defied, which is incredibly serious for due process in this country. Well, we took a group of House Democrats. We asked for an official code of from House Republicans on the House side. You have to get permission from the majority. They refused to do so to the grant a congressional delegation. And so we just had to go ourselves. It's important for us to continue to go. What Senator Van Hollen did was absolutely the right thing. We won't also be the last group. There'll be more House Democrats that will go. We met with the U.S. Embassy there and the ambassador on the ground, had a classified briefing. I've got a lot of important information. We made continued demands for Kilmer's release.

1:41:16 We also asked about other folks that are there wrongly imprisoned, like Andrea Romero, who is an LGBTQ asylum seeker, and others. We also met and fought with Kilmer's family. The work isn't done until it's Kilmer back home and Donald Trump follow the Supreme Court. The number one issue that folks in my office back home are calling me about is this one. And in the last two weeks, we have heard more about this case, the attack on democracy that it finds to the Supreme Court, than any other issue that's coming to our office. This is incredibly important. Kilmer and others have been wrongly imprisoned illegally in El Salvador. This is a due process issue in the United States. In the United States of America, everyone has a right to due process, whether you're a citizen or you're a non-citizen, whether you are in a student visa. You still have that right, and that is being stripped away from people right now because of the Trump administration.

1:42:05 Everyone in our country deserves a right to a lawyer, to a fair trial in court. And our laws are clear, whether you're a citizen, whether you're an immigrant, whether you're here on a student visa, whether you're protesting something that you believe in. That was the star of tonight's next interview, Congressman Robert Garcia, the first ever openly LGBTQ immigrant to ever serve in Congress. Congressman Garcia is also the founder of the first ever bipartisan congressional YIMBY caucus. We had a little something to do with that, as it turns out. We got the chance to sit down with Congressman Garcia before his trip to El Salvador. To get us started, here's Steve Boyle.

1:42:52 Congressman Robert Garcia, thanks so much for joining us on Radio Abundance. And thanks so much for your collaboration this past fall. You were a big supporter of YIMBYs for Harris, and it was exciting just how that lined up with the launch of the YIMBY caucus, the first ever bipartisan congressional YIMBY caucus, which you led the founding of. We got a chance to chat and sit down for a little bit of an interview ahead of some phone banking. I believe you broke some news about when the caucus and its members were going to be announced, which held up. It was indeed mid-November, and it's been exciting to see who you've brought on board. We've already spoken with Congressman Jake Auchincloss and are a fan of him, and we're just super excited to be chatting with you today. Yeah, same here. And yeah, we're actually having kind of a first YIMBY caucus roundtable launch event happening here in just a couple of weeks out here in D.C.

1:43:44 with a bunch of folks from D.C., which is interesting. We've got a couple bills that we're working on, so I'm excited about the YIMBY caucus. I mean, obviously, there's a lot going on right now that has people's attention. So, you know, we want to continue to move forward and have those discussions in light of kind of the, you know, five alarm fire that's happening across the government right now. And so, you know, both are important. Yeah. You know, I want to ask, I think we all want to ask for a little bit of the blow by blow for the YIMBY caucus, the origin story, what you've done so far, and what we can expect, you know, both as you ramp up in the coming weeks, but also the ambitions legislatively. As we get to that, though, I also want to ask, because you brought up the five alarm fire.

1:44:30 There's a lot going on right now. There is absolute chaos and freefall from from the Trump administration. There is, you know, and then also in our circles, a lot of excitement around Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's new book on abundance. There's a lot of threads here to connect together. And I'm just curious, before we get to the details, what you see is the intersection points between those conversations. What does abundance and countering fascism, how do they collide?

1:45:02 Yeah, it is an interesting moment. I think, obviously, the kind of debate and discussion around abundance has actually been really interesting and I think very positive. I think it has to be viewed as kind of an incredible vehicle to have this conversation about progress that doesn't also live in its own silo. I think there's other things happening when when paired with what is being said and kind of what the what the meat of abundance is about is actually pretty exciting. Look, I think the YIMBY caucus is and has always been about focusing on ways that we can address the housing crisis in this country, that we can say yes to more housing, that we can say yes to good multimodal transit, that we can say yes to understanding the relationship between climate and housing.

1:45:47 And we wanted to get folks together, of course, that on both sides of the aisle and had a kind of a grounding in its work and maybe didn't know they were YIMBY folks, but knew that the movement was growing across the country. And that's kind of why we formed the caucus and it's bipartisan. We brought different folks to the table. Obviously, we had a big election. We've been discussing the kind of the ramifications and impacts of that of that election, particularly on on housing. And since Trump's been in office, we have been completely focused on the attacks on at HUD, the attacks on transit projects across the country, the attacks on the Inflation Reduction Act and its climate provisions and all those impacts to the things that we all care about.

1:46:36 And particularly around the progress that we want to ensure that every person in this country has access to a good neighborhood and a good home. What's been interesting in the last few weeks, particularly since Abundance has come out and the conversations we've seen kind of everywhere, is there's a lot of energy obviously around this idea that we can have a future that is pro-immigrant, pro-progress, pro-development, pro-housing that is more utopian than the one that we're in now, where everyone actually can live in a community or in a city or neighborhood where they have access to the things that they need. And a vision of a government and a country where we are inviting difference, but that all of us have access to the things that we need.

1:47:29 So you match that, I think, with what's happening with this kind of coalition of working people, working class people, people that are feeling fed up with the system, people that are seeing their Medicaid being attacked, Social Security being attacked, programs they care about being attacked, and the anger that you have on the ground, I think is a really interesting moment and opportunity for, I think, for all of us in the movement. So I think it's interesting, I think what's happening as it relates to this kind of anti-kind of conversation about anti-kind of billionaires that are hoarding all of this wealth for themselves, and not sharing it with the middle class or the working class, I think it's interesting.

1:48:15 So I think all of that is kind of where we're at. And I think that YIMBYs, I think that people that believe in progress, I think there's an interesting space for us. I've always believed that most YIMBY folks I know are not just for progress and for housing and for sustainability, but they're also pretty progressive people on social issues. We're people that are very supportive of gay rights. We feel like women should have access to their own health care. We think that we should be focused on the bigger issues that bring us together. We understand what migration has done for our country. And so there's a space there where we also understand you can be over-regulated, that government can sometimes get in the way of housing and of building and of progress.

1:49:04 And so I think all of that intersection is kind of where we're at right now. You know, you bring up something that is very top of mind for us, which is where does abundance meet the fight oligarch movement? And seeing those two movements that each have a lot of energy themselves, not as competitors for alternative visions of the Democratic Party, but as extremely complementary and kind of two twin pieces of the solution and of how we confront incumbent privilege. And you talked a lot about coalition building in a couple of different ways, both in how we reach out to working folks. And then in your own formation of the YIMBY caucus, you know, you mentioned a second ago bringing in folks that maybe weren't YIMBYs and and so indoctrinating them and awakening them that they that they are now full blown members of the caucus and and working with you on this great work.

1:49:57 So I wonder if you can reflect on that and tell us how you you know, what lessons we can learn as we take this message to recruit more folks to the movement and maybe just for the sake of time pivot from there to telling us what's on the roadmap for the YIMBY caucus. Yes. I mean, look, I think, firstly, the kind of fighting kind of the billionaire class, the oligarchy establishment that's in this country, I think is a lot of energy right now. I think people are feeling really angry. I think it's important for us to recognize, I mean, I think, you know, I think abundance is an optimistic kind of perspective. It's it's very much about a, you know, a future. It's very much about, you know, what liberals would love to see as kind of this, you know, incredible space.

1:50:45 We could all live kind of in harmony. And if we all had access to things that we need and want, particularly a roof and housing over our heads. And I think that there is a lot of that hope within, I think, what Bernie and AOC are doing. The truth is, is that we talk to someone like like Alexandria to like AOC. She very much is a pro-housing person. And I think that in the past, I think kind of pro-housing folks have unnecessarily gotten in the way of each other and kind of spot each other, you know, because there's different priorities within the housing space. And I think oftentimes the YMV movement has been slow to recognize the importance of diversity and diverse voices within the YMV space.

1:51:34 And I think oftentimes the kind of housing grassroots activism has been slow to acknowledge that over-regulation actually is a burden to building more housing. I think we're in a different moment right now. I think we're with these different kind of parts of the coalition can see each other more clearly.

1:51:55 And we have to recognize that housing is the single largest challenge in this country, separate to the destruction of our government. Housing will remain, it is today, it will remain after this nightmare with Elon Musk and Donald Trump. It will remain the single largest issue we have. And it's quite sad, right? Because I, you know, Elon Musk in like another alternate like universe would have been a really interesting, powerful force in this country. And it was on his way to possibly building a really strong following. You think about Tesla, you think about what he's done with SpaceX. And then he just let it crash and burn and he became, in my opinion, just someone that's a psychopath.

1:52:41 Someone that had no empathy. He turned away from the values that we believe a better world should be. She's embracing, embracing, embracing difference. So I think that's one of the big issues. We'd love to hear, sort of touching on what Steven said, what he could give us a little preview of sort of the legislation the UNB caucus is working on. And also how you see, you know, I know, do you see you guys vote on like this and bills and continuing resolutions? Like where, where do you see that legislatively happening? Like, do you think some of those things could be attached to a larger bill or is it something that we can pass a standalone?

1:53:24 We'd love to hear more about that. Yeah, I think there's a couple initial things we're going to do. First, we're, now that we're, we're having, we've been having a lot of organizing kind of staff meetings behind the scenes. We're having our first kind of public round table, like I mentioned to you, where we're bringing in some kind of UNB experts to talk to the staff and the members and to, to really start a broader conversation about kind of long-term planning.

1:53:47 We're going to start some piece, one piece of this is essentially like kind of getting a database together and collecting all kind of the kind of YMB bills that are in Congress. And so what's it, what, what does a YMB bill look like? What, what, what could get that kind of YMB stamp of approval? And we've built kind of a good national network now of a lot of the groups that we're working with and talking with directly. And so that's kind of phase one is we want to, we want to build the YMB caucus. So there's kind of a long-term investment and interest. It's not just like a one-year thing. And so we need to do a good job of first making sure that we set standards for bills that are important to the caucus. That's, that's what we're doing right now. The second piece of it is then uplifting bills that we believe are YMB bills. And so some of those are going to start getting to be introduced.

1:54:34 We're reintroducing the People Over Parking Act, for example, it'll cover in the next few weeks. There's other bills, you know, other transit-related bills. We have a big bill with Elizabeth Warren that we introduced last Congress, which is an electrification of kind of transit and resources. That's another bill that's going to be a YMB bill. Working with kind of the Green New Deal folks, of which I'm a member of as well, and seeing where there's overlap. Then doing some interesting new kind of projects. I mean, look, I, I, I've mentioned this is, I've mentioned this before, so it's not like a big secret, but, you know, even in our own back, backyard here in Washington, D.C. You're probably familiar that there's, there's a lot of restrictions on looking at what's happened to the local, the local, local zoning as it relates to the Hyde Act and what you actually can build in D.C.

1:55:19 I think there's a lot of interest in having conversations about, can, can, you know, about the restrictions we even put even here in Washington. And so I think the caucus is interested in all of those pieces and then at the same time protecting and trying to work in a bipartisan way, which is hard in this moment, in the departments and agencies that are actually moving our initiatives forward. I mean, it makes no sense to roll back grants and roll back vouchers for people that are looking for homes. Why, why are we doing this in a, in a housing crisis? It makes no sense to, um, limit grants and to essentially change the way grants are provided and take out sustainability provisions in grant.

1:56:10 We're concerned that D.O.T. is going to roll back and remove any progress that we've made in linking grants to housing. So these are, these are issues that I think are really real, but issues that the UMB caucus can be very much involved with. Then the last piece, and this is going to be, um, as we grow as kind of more like a future vision that I have is I want to create, be great to be able to create, um, relationships where we can actually really monitor state policy and how we get involved in state policy. Like, I feel like we, for example, made a big difference, for example, Arizona last year by bringing attention to the Department of Defense who was out there opposing housing projects, um, and encouraging the governor to oppose housing projects and, and, and zoning reform that cities were trying to adopt.

1:56:58 And nobody would have ever known that, but, you know, we, we dug in, we found the Department of Defense was doing this. We called it out. We brought attention to it. A lot of press in Arizona about this issue, and we brought important attention to that. And so right now there are agencies in the government are stopping housing, federal government. So the UMB caucus needs to be the vehicle to address federal government intervention into building more housing. And then like, I think kind of like zooming out, I think in terms of how UMB connects with like overall, like the democratic election strategy, can you share more about how UMB is important for 2028 and the census redrawing in 2030? Yeah. I mean, look, I think, I think it's safe to say that the UMB movement, as I, as I know it, at least, you know, it's, it's an interesting movement, right?

1:57:45 I mean, it's generally progressive, but there's also a lot of more, um, there's, there's also some conservative voices with, within the UMB space, uh, that are very much kind of focused on like the, the kind of libertarian, uh, perspective. As it relates to like zoning and regulation and, and, and, and, and all of those things that impact construction and so forth.

1:58:09 That I understand that piece, but I think that if you're not willing to connect housing to climate, the kind of social justice issues, to me, those, those are all, are, are all important pieces of the UMB movement. And the UMB movement at the end of the day, believe that all human beings, um, have the dignity and, and, uh, and the humanity to be able to have, have a place to live, to sleep at night, uh, to live in a good community and neighborhood. And to have support from your, your, your neighbors around you, that the UMB is all about, let's build more homes and let's build more homes everywhere that we can. And so, um, I find it to be a pretty progressive movement. I think that young Democrats, especially what's interesting is young Democrats that in some ways are leaving the party or that are confused about where they are.

1:59:02 I think, I think UMB can be a vehicle to bring particularly some of those young men that, um, are oftentimes concerned or worried about where they're going to go and where the UMB movement can be very powerful is in the price and the cost of housing. You know, you ask people and particularly, you know, young people with the concerns are with the, with the Democratic Party or politics. They're going to tell you, look, the costs are too high. People have been telling us the costs have been, you know, too high for a long time and no one's addressing that. And when you ask people where, where they're being hurt the most, yes, broadly, there's a lot of answers, but yes, young people, it's the cost of housing, the cost of rent, where they, or they're basically paycheck to paycheck trying to pay, pay their rent. Or it's the idea that they're never going to be able to buy their own home.

1:59:48 And, and, and that kind of desperation of not, of not being able to attain what your parents were able to do or, or other folks that, you know, that were able to buy a home is discouraging. And so as a political movement, I think YIMBY has an opportunity to address the single largest desire of young people now, which is to change your condition as, as it relates to their affordability of housing. So that's a thing that can, can, can, can do a lot. Another thing I'd love to just see the idea with you, it's thing I've heard from a lot of folks in sort of the ADU industry and building a small homes industry is that, um, currently the tax code treats selling. So if you build an apartment and sell it to investors for rental purposes, you're taxed that long term capital gains.

2:00:35 Um, but if you sell it for, to individual homeowners for, for sale, um, which is, I think for a lot of young people, the next step after renting, you know, they want to buy a home. And often the only option is like single family home, um, rather than all the for sale homeownership and condos being built. I'm curious if that's something that you guys have looked at, um, or just, if you haven't, I want you to know that that's a thing. So you get, yeah, I'm very aware of that as a thing. I mean, look, there's, there's so many barriers. I mean, that's why right now in any, uh, growing city in California, all for the most part, all the units that are, that are, that are being added to the, to the, to stock is off release. It's all this release, right? I mean, and that is because they can't make that bottom line.

2:01:23 I mean, we have to meet, we have to, we have to create a system where for those that are actually building the housing, that they're actually able to make their investment back if they're able to put those, those units on the market. And right now it's just not financially feasible for most of these folks to be, to, to, to do for sale product or, or, or, you know, it will be decades until they can do for sale product. And so that's really important as it relates to building density, um, and, and a variety of other reforms. And that one is the one, you know, maybe at the top of the list. Um, but also, you know, I'm just funny. I was just reading an article about, um, a project in Long Beach that when I was mayor, we changed, we changed zoning on to create micro units and, and the units are tiny. And I was reading some comments on social media and everyone was complaining who the hell would want to live in a 350 square foot unit.

2:02:09 This is insane. There's no parking. And I'm sort of going, this is awesome. I mean, you know, like, yes, it took a parking lot. Who cares? Look at all these people we're going to house. And at the end of the day, there's a lot of people that would be willing to take a 350 square foot, 400 square foot unit. When the, the old minimum in Long Beach used to be 600. And this, you know, this is changing that, um, the ability for people to have more access to put more homes there. And so changing some of those kind of national standards, encouraging some different standards in size of the unit, um, and kind of share and mix, um, shared spaces. I'm, I'm a big supporter of shared space in residential units. I love new concepts where people, you know, people are sharing kitchen spaces, people are sharing restaurant spaces.

2:02:57 And this is not about degrading your quality of life. This is about giving people options about how they want and choose to live, um, which I think is, is critical. I think the kind of single stare conversation happening right now, California, like, you know, super important. So those are all, I think, different, um, opportunities for us, uh, back home in my home state, but also like across the country. Congressman, we've talked a little bit about the politics of the moment. You know, your time is divided between, uh, pushing YIMBY bills and building that coalition and, and trying to put out the fires of the Trump administration. So I'm, I'm curious how you think of bipartisanship in this moment. The YIMBY caucus is proudly bipartisan. The YIMBY movement has been proudly bipartisan. There's a lot of areas of common ground. And also the folks you're working with are at the same time empowering detentions and, and crashing the economy.

2:03:49 So I'm curious how you think about when to work with and, and, and how to both work with and oppose those folks. And then on that note, send us out on this, which is, I think a lot of folks are listening to this and thinking, Hey, how can I help make the YIMBY caucus a success? But also how can I, as an ordinary person out there, stand up to Trump right now? So I am curious what you think ordinary folks listening to this can be doing right now to, uh, to avert disaster and build the world we want to see. Well, I mean, first, um, you know, I'm never going to work with anyone that, um, is trying to harm people's rights or harm the ability for women to have full access to their body autonomy or, or, or, or trash gay people or trans people or that, you know, want to degrade immigrants. Like those, those, those folks, um, and there are some horrific ones in, in the Republican party.

2:04:36 Um, I mean, from, as far as I'm concerned, should, should leave Congress because we don't want those people running our country. Um, and I think that on the big fights, we're going to fight them every time. If there are opportunities for us to work together in these different caucus spaces to move policies where we agree forward that aren't harming the rights of people, then, you know, I I'm all ears. But I, I'm never going to work with a Republican on a bipartisan way on anything to do with taking away someone's rights or harming someone's personal liberty. But if a Republican wants to come to the table and help me, uh, and help us, uh, change the way, um, kind of the regulatory framework is to get more money into housing. Let's talk about that. I mean, I think that is something that is always still possible. Is it harder to do in this moment?

2:05:21 Absolutely. I mean, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have made it immensely more difficult. I can't get anything done. We're right now just trying to, um, you know, plug as many holes as possible on this, on the, on, on the ship is really where we're at. As far as folks are trying to oppose Elon Musk and Donald Trump, I mean, I've been very vocal. I think, I think Donald Trump's the worst thing that happened to this country, uh, uh, uh, in the last hundred years. He is a horrific president. He's destroying our institutions and the foundations of our agencies that we need to actually build a better country and to, to strive for, um, you know, a country where everyone has access. And so I think as far as opposition, people should continue to be loud, to be vocal, to match the Republican energy. Republicans are, are great.

2:06:07 And my opinion, that lying, manipulating, cheating, doing whatever it takes to win. And I think Democrats are figuring out that we've got to be a lot tougher and we've got to be a lot louder. And that, um, folks like, uh, AOC has a message that resonates with the average person. And I, I mean, I get tired of people saying, oh, well, she represents one wing of the party. She's speaking for a lot of folks. She's out there, um, you know, bringing, bringing people together. And so I think that, um, that's a way for us to win is to push back, to continue to call folks, flip the house in a couple of years. Um, and hopefully we can get more of our policy agenda, uh, done. Congressman Garcia, thank you so much for joining us today on Radio Abundance. Thanks for all the support this past fall as we mobilized against the Trump administration. And thanks for your work with the Yomby caucus.

2:06:53 We are excited to see what you build. Yeah, for sure. It's going to be, it's going to be exciting when we, um, you know, to look back and think of all the good Republican years. So look forward to working with you guys. All right. That was Congressman Robert Garcia. Uh, let's start with Burhan. Burhan, what'd you think? I thought it was great. He really highlighted how progressive members in the Democratic Party, at least at the national level, have always been pro-housing. I remember years back when the Yomby movement was a lot newer, how AOC had in her policy platform ending exclusionary zoning. And I thought that was awesome because locally the fight ends up being so coded over, you know, how progressive are you? And maybe, you know, progressives shouldn't support pro-housing measures. But national Democrats from AOC to more locally, Elizabeth Warren, have always supported pro-housing measures. And it's really exciting to see all the progress that, you know, the Yomby caucus in Congress, but also how every national Democrat kind of sees the light on how important it is to build housing.

2:07:47 Yeah, you know, I'm thinking of a few quotes here from some progressive leaders and vanguards of the left. You know, AOC has a quote where she says, for decades, thanks to restrictive zoning laws, we simply haven't built enough housing.

2:07:59 Elizabeth Warren joined us at Yimby's for Harris and told us that, you know, housing is at the heart of American life. And our problem is basic econ 101. We don't have enough housing and that drives up costs and makes housing unaffordable. The answer, pretty straightforward, build more housing. Gen Z congressman and Yimby caucus member Maxwell Frost, who joined Bernie and AOC at their recent rally in Southern California to play the drums and also joined us on Yimby's for Harris has said, we need to get rid of things like exclusionary zoning laws and parking minimums, which keep us from being able to build affordable housing and high density housing. And Bernie Sanders said restrictive zoning ordinances are a racist legacy of Jim Crow era efforts to enforce segregation.

2:08:47 We should make federal housing and transportation funds contingent on remedying these zoning ordinances. Elizabeth Warren introduced a great bill to to spur the construction of housing across America and make federal grants contingent on local cities and states improving and relaxing their zoning. So the idea that this is some left center battle is nonsense. Housing is for everybody. The ability to build housing, making it cheaper to build housing and making it legal to build housing is important both for the market, but also for the government to build public housing, subsidized housing and affordable housing. And and the goals here are complementary and the strategies need to be complementary as well, because we simply cannot fight over an increasingly scarce pie.

2:09:39 You know, in abundance, Ezra Klein says, the economy is not a pie. And his point is that it's not just about growing the pie. It's that you don't just get more of the same, you know, berries. You get different things and different foods and different inventions and different ideas and that sort of cornucopia of items. So I think of it less now as growing the pie than throwing a feast. But these ideas, everything that the progressive movement, which we are a part of, cares about from social justice to economic justice to lifting up the least among us depends on housing. And a lot of the the vanguard of the progressive left knows this and believes this. Armand, I know you're you're a multiple time Bernie voter, I believe, and and a fan. And and I wonder how you see the synthesis of these ideas. Well, one, I just wanted to say, I think it's really funny that I caught myself doing this now.

2:10:28 It's like Ezra Klein and Derek's abundance are like religious texts. Like as Ezra said in passage three, like I find myself quoting it like every other day. I'm like, oh, my God, such a sim. I actually said this during the Abundance Network meeting, too. We were just talking as like elected officials from different places. And I was like, since we're quoting Ezra, like Jesus, he's a yinbi Jesus. He does the beard now. As does Pete Buttigieg looking pretty handsome and tanned and beardy. You know, J.D. Vance is not going to have much in the way of positive legacies. Maybe he'll kill Putin like he killed the pope. But I think is one positive contribution to American life, maybe bringing beards back for national politicians. So we'll see. We'll see if J.D. Vance and Pete Buttigieg are a new millennial trend of bearded politicians.

2:11:20 I've heard on the grapevine, the rumor world that Pete Buttigieg is very much like abundance pill, but he's not yet publicly like come out. Well, he talked about it a little bit on on the recent podcast with Andrew Schultz, who didn't I don't think said the word abundance. But as they were discussing trains, talked about how Democrats get in our own way, how government gets in our own way. Actually, he was specifically this is very interesting. He was responding to I think Andrew Schultz and his fellow co-hosts talked about corruption and and, you know, big money being poured into initiatives and then not seeing the results. And isn't that corruption? And Pete Buttigieg said, look, I like I think it's very reasonable to look at that and assume that in some ways the answer.

2:12:08 I'm not saying it's worse, but like it's actually not corruption and people pilfering the money. It's the process being ground to such inertia and such a halt that we don't make good on that spending or spend it efficiently. Like in some ways it would be easier if there was an evil overlord taking money away. It's actually just us grinding up the gears so we don't get any return on our national investment and that frustrates people and that drives them in this fascist direction. And I think he explained really well why alleviating that was was key to both progressive goals and and just like core American goals and American values for how we take care of each other. When I really appreciated like thinking about like the interview, Congressman Garcia is like very, very, very honed in on pushing the argument, which is true, which is that like abundance is about achieving aggressive goals, right?

2:13:05 Like building public transit is aggressive value and it drives me crazy that the people who are very obsessed with how to make it easier and faster to build public transit get coded as like neoliberal centrist. Like the people who are just like, we should fund it, get to be like left wing, but then the people are like, we should fund it and figure out how to actually get it built. They're like you sell out, you don't care about progressive values. It's a completely topsy-turvy and like that's why, you know, I volunteered for Bernie twice. I donated twice. I was heartbroken when he lost and it has been really heartbreaking for me to see that a lot of the folks. Folks who have been aligned with him or considering themselves as inheritors of his legacy have sometimes been very like critical of abundance because the reason I got into abundance and cared about abundance because the really big things I want our society to accomplish, like build lots and lots of affordable housing, build unlimited clean energy.

2:14:12 Like those are progressive goals, like those are progressive goals, right? Like we want to do that. And sometimes people will tell me like, like Republicans, like we'll be like, well, like, why don't you just join us? Like we want to make it easier to do build and so on. I was like, you guys don't want to make it, it's not priority for you to solve climate change. It's not priority for you to get a lot of cars and provide them public transit. Like it is for us. So we need to get out of our way of stopping us from accomplishing the goals that we have. And so it's an uphill battle, been uphill battle for a long time and I'll keep fighting it. And I'm really glad to see Congressman Garcia like in the center of the fight. Yeah, I want to bring Elizabeth and Berhan in a second, but it just makes me think about, you know, the great rallies that AOC and Bernie have been doing together and the great amazing message that AOC in particular has been putting out there.

2:15:06 And those rallies are especially focusing on the idea of fighting oligarchy. And I've said it before that I think the combination of abundance and fighting oligarchy, their synthesis point is the future of the Democratic Party and part of our revival and part of our message of both reform and optimism and creation and unleashing every citizen from the constraints that shackle them. But I don't even think it takes much in the way of creative synthesis. I think it's the same thing. And what I mean by that is, you know, I think of fight oligarchy as saying, hey, just because you're a billionaire and you have made it in the global economy doesn't mean that you get to pull the ladder up on everybody else. Doesn't mean that you get to rewrite the rules of government to eliminate any competition to you, to lock in and consolidate all of your privileges, to try and stop them from ever changing and to insulate yourself from, you know, anybody else who deserves their piece of this.

2:16:06 And to me, abundance is saying that. But instead of about a billionaire, it's about millionaires. It's about saying, hey, you you won in your city, you won in the game of home ownership, home ownership. Congratulations. And that's exciting. But just because you won doesn't mean that you get to pull up the ladder on from from out from under everybody else doesn't mean that you get to rewrite the rules of government to consolidate your privilege. It's less than a billionaire, but there's also more of you. It doesn't mean that you get to lock everybody else out of that dream as well and stop the world from changing. So I see abundance and fight oligarchy both as being about confronting not just privilege and a consolidation of a privilege, but the kind of freezing the world in in amber, you know, stop the world from turning.

2:16:55 I like it the way it is now and I refuse to participate in continuing to lift other people up and continuing to compete myself. I see it as as part of the same movement. And I think making those connections is extremely vital. And I'm curious, Elizabeth, what you think about that? Yeah, I think, you know, one thing that we need to be able to do, though, is to be able to really communicate abundance in a way that reaches people that aren't already plugged into politics. And so, you know, if you talk to the average person that's, you know, working hard to provide for their family, raising kids, I'm not sure the idea of abundance always immediately is evident. And so that's why we need to find ways of talking to people about what this could mean in their actual life. And what that can mean is that not only will you be able to afford a home, but that someday when you have children and they go on to have their own children, that they will be able to afford a home as well, that, you know, your grandchildren will be able to afford to live in the same city that you live in.

2:17:51 And that's, you know, something when I've met with legislators in the Texas legislature about this, I've talked to them about this exact concept that, you know, if we freeze things in time, you know, there could come a day when your grandchildren have to move to, you know, your children may have to take your grandchildren to another state that's more affordable, to a state that has figured out its housing crisis. And so even when you win, do you really win if your family and your descendants can't afford to live where you are? So I think just finding ways to really make this digestible, I think impyism can get a bad, you know, reputation for kind of being a bunch of guys that spend too much time on Twitter. And so I think, you know, we have to find ways to talk to this, to the people in our lives that, you know, aren't typically, you know, plugged into politics and find ways to talk about it in a way that that makes sense to them.

2:18:43 That, you know, we want affordable childcare and affordable housing, and we have a path to actually get that done. You know, politicians make lots of promises, but, you know, this is actually like a path forward to actually get some of those promises done. Well, as a guy who spends too much time on Twitter and isn't even the most egregious one on this podcast, I would just say, I think that's a, oh, Armand just made such a face when he also says that it's pretty clear he knows it's him. Elizabeth, I think that's such an important point. And it's something that we heard from the Secretary of Housing in Maryland on our first episode. That's Jake Day. And he said, look, what resonates both with voters and with elected officials is not talking about the policies. It's telling the stories, the personal anecdotes of how this touches your real lives.

2:19:30 And we have a politician on the podcast. Burhan, I'm curious in your work in Cambridge, both getting elected and after being elected, how you've done this, how you've translated YIMBY policies and abundance ideas into kitchen table issues and personal stories, both to communicate your intentions and values and what you believe, to persuade people who might be skeptical, to work with people and win the support of people who might have some opposition. How is this manifested in your career in Cambridge? Yeah, that's a lot of fun. Let me start by building on what Armand said. I think that there's and actually not what Armand said, what you said originally, Steve, which is, you know, you talked about like, you know, putting this down to the level of millionaires.

2:20:19 I would actually frame it a little bit differently, which is like if you live in a city, right, like whether it's San Francisco or Cambridge or New York or really any city in the dense core, like you will almost certainly benefit from upselling, right? Like you're going from a place where you can have maybe a single family home, maybe a duplex to having, you know, six, eight, 10, 12 apartments. That's going to bring up your land value, right? Even if rents go down, you'll just be able to build so many more units on there that it will be beneficial to you. I think that my take on it is that, you know, like, you know, I was born in Pakistan in general when I visited there, but also many other low income countries. People are desperate for growth, right? Because it means a better opportunity. And life is so difficult right now that you are willing to put up with the downsides of growth to have that better life at the end of that rail, at the end of that transformation, right?

2:21:08 And I think that what's hard is that, you know, Ross Dowsett, who I don't actually like very much, but has this quote about like a decadent society. And I think about that sometime, which is that like, you know, being a progressive, why it's so hard is that you're talking about progress. The progress comes at the cost of the intermediate transitionary period. And I think that so much is like not that people don't believe that building more housing will be good for housing prices down the line or that it could even lead to a more vibrant city. It's that the intermediate times kind of sucks, right? When you're like trying to figure out what new traffic patterns look like, and maybe you haven't built a new transit station yet. So you have a little bit more traffic. You're, you know, building more housing. So you have to deal with construction and all that noise. And that so much of it is also just like willing to put up with the downsides of growth for realizing that there's so much a better world and so much you're losing by refusing to get out of your comfort zone and that progress is worth it in the end.

2:22:06 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. This is AI, by the way. You think these jokers actually got Obama? Check in with me in a few months. It'll happen. Thank you for listening to Radio Abundance, a new podcast by Yimby Democrats for America. Now it's time for you to join the movement. We're building a big tent and it's going to take all of us. Join us and together we'll fight to build America, defeat fascism, and unleash the era of Progressive Abundance. Join the movement at YimbyDemocrats.org. If people feel like democracy is failing, that it's too slow and doesn't deliver what they need, and that their lives are untenable and they can't afford housing and they can't afford groceries, they'll look to an alternative.

2:23:03 Democrats are figuring out that we've got to be a lot tougher and we've got to be a lot louder. The world has changed in a short time. The thought that California could lose four, maybe five congressional seats is a major problem. The fact that we are losing people from our state because of affordability, obviously it's not something that's acceptable. We can have a future that is pro-progress, pro-development, pro-housing, that is more utopian than the one that we're in now, where everyone actually can live in a community or in a city or neighborhood where they have access to the things that they need. Standing up for the rule of law, making sure that we have a presidential administration who doesn't break the law or violate the Constitution. we want to ensure that every person in this country has access to a good neighborhood and a good home.

2:23:52 I also want to be the top housing cop because we have laws that need to be followed. It will help us build the housing that we need here in California. We can say yes to more housing. We can say yes to good transit. We can say yes to understanding the relationship between climate and housing. There was a common sense in that, a beautiful embrace of us and we instead of I and me, our shared society, our common future. We need to build more housing for all of us. We're all going to rise together or not at all. I think abundance is an optimistic perspective. It's very much about a future. It's very much about what liberals would love to see. An incredible space where we could all live kind of in harmony. If we all had access to what we need and want, particularly a roof and housing over our heads. It's a new day. We need to build. It's good for all of us.

2:24:37 We're all in this together. Let's all participate in the solution together to build enough housing for all of us. It's going to be exciting when we look back and think of all the good work we're going to do here. So look forward to work with you guys.