It's a New York-New Jersey special! First, the team sits down with Zellnor Myrie as he runs for Mayor of New York City on a bold plan to build 1 million new homes in the next 10 years. Then, we chat with Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who is running for Governor of New Jersey after surging construction in Jersey City and putting New York City across the Hudson to shame.
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 Zelnor Myrie. A New York State Senator, Zelnor is running for mayor of New York City with a groundbreaking plan to build 1 million new homes in the next 10 years. He'll be followed by Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop. Mayor Fulop is a long-time YIMBY leader. Under his mayorship home building in Jersey City, put all five boroughs of New York City to shame. It's a New York, New Jersey rivalry tonight on Radio Abundance.
0:45 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 Radio Abundance, Steve Boyle, Nia Johnson, and Armand Domolusky. I'm Donald J. Trump and I hate these guys. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Radio Abundance. This is our second episode. I'm Steve Boyle and I'm with Armand Domolusky and Nia Johnson. You know, we had a pretty amazing debut with our first episode with Governor Wes Moore, Secretary of Housing for Maryland, Jake Day, and Congressman Jake Auchincloss. We are rising up the charts and hearing just amazing things about getting to hear from three great leaders, veterans, abundance-minded, young YIMBY Democrats in their late 30s and mid 40s, paving a new path forward for the Democratic Party.
1:42 So we're off to a great start and excited to welcome you to this episode. You know, beyond the podcast, we're getting moving and mobilizing too. So Armand and I went to San Francisco this week. There is a new approach to zoning and up-zoning specifically that is on the table right now. So Armand and I went to City Hall to chat about it in a little bit, share some comments, and tell the city and the Planning Commission and everyone in the audience why San Francisco needs to build. Armand, I'm wondering if you can tell folks a little bit about our San Francisco adventure this week. Yeah. Well, so I live in San Francisco. I've lived here for 10 years. And as long as I've lived here, I've been going to the San Francisco Planning Commission. There was a certain moment when I was there where I said to somebody next to me, I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe I've been doing the same thing here in the same stuff in the same room for 10 years of my life.
2:37 Because I started F&B like when it first really started. The context for this is that every city in California has to do what's called its regional housing needs assessment. San Francisco is doing the up-zoning so you can build more housing and more density in a city that's required by the state housing plan. And this was like one of the steps required to pass it. I needed to pass through the Planning Commission, which it did. And now we'll go on to the Board of Supervisors who has to approve it. And then the mayor has to sign it. Getting to the heart of what we were there to talk about, San Francisco does have a new plan on the table that is a sea change from decades past, right? So San Francisco is required by the state now to build 82,000 new units. Mayor Lurie has introduced a plan that would upzone areas like the Marina, Cow Hollow on Geary Street, but also have something called density decontrol all across San Francisco's west side.
3:33 So the entire western half of San Francisco, which was built to be a new New York, right? It has the same grid as New York. It has Golden Gate Park, which is built by the same folks about the same size as Central Park by the beach. The west, you've got Golden Gate views to the north. That whole area is suburbs. And what the new plan says is that even if you don't necessarily change heights in certain areas on the same building in the same plot at the same heights that are already in law, you can have higher density of the amount of people who live there. So it is a massive change potentially in the trajectory of San Francisco building housing. So that's the thing I think a lot of people don't realize is that like, even if the areas zone a certain way where it's like, yeah, it's totally legal to build up to this many stories.
4:23 If you have density control, they'll say, well, but only so many people can live here. So really only stuff that works is like maybe a very tall mansion, right? Because legally speaking, you can't really build an apartment, no matter how zoning capacity you have, if there are controls on the amount of density of units. And this is one of the things going on in New York politics right now and something that's holding that city back. And the reason why, if you want to build in Manhattan, yeah, OK, you can build taller than most other places. Manhattan's filled with tall buildings. But the majority of the buildings, especially the most iconic buildings in Manhattan today, would be illegal to build if we built them today. A lot of times for that reason, right? Even if you're allowed to build that height, there's limits on the amount of people that come to the floor. And that's where you get a housing crisis.
5:10 And I think that's like when people like complain about billionaires row and like, oh, like there's all these like high rises for rich people. And it's like, well, the laws are making it so that there's only high rises for rich people, because like you build a high rise. You're limiting the amount of people who can live in that high rise legally. Then somebody has to offset that difference in cost. Yeah, something that I would love NIMBYs, left NIMBYs and growthers and folks to know is just how much the current system benefits massive corporations, billionaire apartments and oligarchy. So if if if the barriers to building a home are so high that you have to be a big corporation to have the funding and the patience to do it, if building anything means negotiating with the city and having government connections and greasing the wheel, well, then only big and corrupt companies can accomplish that.
6:07 And it's small developers, community oriented developers, new entrants into the field who are locked out on that. And then scarcity wise, if you're only building enough for 10 percent of the population, well, guess what? The richest 10 percent are going to get those apartments. Yeah, 30 percent and the richest 30 percent will build for 100 percent of the population and everyone can compete for an apartment. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like that's what I think gets me. I think about a lot of like the left NIMBY argument about like anti housing, because like at the end of the day, like if you're concerned about gentrification, like you're never going to beat money. Like at the end of the day, like if you're going to restrict the amount of people who live in a certain place, like it's going to be the most marginalized people who are going to get pushed out because they don't have money because society systemically harder for them to make money.
6:55 So it's like, yeah, like if you build less apartments, then like then, yeah, you're not going to get less people gender by you're just throwing oil on the buyer. And then, yeah, the wealth finds a way. The rich will continue to have options. It'll be the rest of us who don't. We have to broaden the opportunity by broadening the options for everybody. You know, it's funny, as I was leaving the meeting, somebody chased after me that was kind of anti YIMBY and and wanted to have like a kind of a little mean mini, but but also in reasonably good faith argument about it. And I, you know, I asked them some questions, I asked them why they thought the rent was so high. And, you know, they started talking about the need to build more public housing.
7:44 Right. And criticizing the state government going back to Jerry Brown for for not doing that. And and and so I said, well, you know, this is an area where we agree. Right. I want the market to build housing because it can. And that will reduce everybody's rates. But it also takes a hot second. Right. And as was pointed out in the meeting, existing housing always usually got to be cheaper than new housing. It's just that you only get existing housing by building it a new and then building even newer housing. And then that formerly new housing becomes existing house. And guess what? It's cheaper. But so I'm bringing this up and I'm saying, well, let's yes, let's find this common ground. Let's agree on this. And start talking about public housing. And she says, well, yes. But did you know about these two, you know, section native departments and there was gang violence and suddenly becomes clear, hey, you don't want anything.
8:36 You're actually not saying don't build market rate housing, only build government housing. You don't want anything to change. And I think both those things have to change. And this reminds me, Armando, of what you talked about, which I wonder if you share a little bit, because you were making the point that, hey, there's people there saying don't let the market build. The government needs to build this. Well, if we need to build eighty two thousand units and it costs a million dollars right now to build a public housing in San Francisco, which is its own problem to fix. That's going to be going to fast math here. I think that's about six times the budget of San Francisco city government, which I which is which is already, you know, very big. It's a higher budget than larger cities like Denver. There's actually a RAND study recently. And what you see with that study is that it costs multiple times to build housing in California, the same housing that it does in Texas, whether it's public or private.
9:31 But then the gap between public and private is also much higher in California than it is Texas. So not only do we in California just make it hard to build housing, period, we make it harder to build publicly funded and supported and subsidized housing. Yeah, I think like there's a way to look at this in a way that's like, I think, reframing like, oh, private developers taking over more. So like let them let like the corporations do the dirty work for you. Like if they build, they're going to build until like their costs equals their revenues. But like that's going to take a long time. But even just getting to a point where like a developers like cost equals their revenues, that means rents have to be much. The average rent is going to be much lower than it is now.
10:18 So it may not work for everybody, but it's going to work for a decent amount of people. And then it's easier for like public for the government to pick up the slack. You know, Armand, you also made the point that I really loved that building more housing, letting the market build housing and the government to build more housing is the progressive position. So we had Senator Elizabeth Warren join us on Yimby's for Harris and tell us that Yimbyism is Econ 101. AOC is a Yimby. AOC, I'm staring at a quote right now, she says, for decades, thanks to restrictive zoning laws, we simply haven't built enough housing. I'm staring at another message from AOC where she talks about why we need to build multifamily mixed income buildings, the kind that Zellner Meyrie is about to talk about in our interview with him.
11:06 So this is the progressive opinion. And, you know, in San Francisco, we talk a lot about the mods versus the progs. But I don't concede for a second that folks who are calling themselves progressive in San Francisco are progressive for two big reasons. Right. One is if you want your neighborhood to stay the same, to freeze in amber, if you are anti change of all kinds, that is not progressive. That is core of conservatism. If you favor a system where only the big corporations and the well connected can build things, that is an oligarchical system. And by the way, the origins of progressivism. So going back over a century now, but the origin of the progressive movement, progressives are a little bit the original yimpies and the a little bit the original data nerds.
11:57 Right. Progressivism was folks saying much as we are now. Now, hey, there's elements of populism we love. We love the call to fix things. But we also believe that by understanding data, by taking a rational and scientific approach to the world that we live in, by learning more about it and learning and leaning into problem solving, that you can unleash and actually realize the kind of goals that a more populist mind sets. But but but isn't successful at accomplishing progressives are the original data nerds. That is where the movement begins. I think I care a lot about recapturing that, but I also care a lot about saying, hey, you can't outflank us on progressivism while begging for a system that doesn't change, where everything stays the same.
12:49 Amon, can you tell us just a little bit more about about what you wanted to tell people when you called YIMBYs on the progressive position and also just the message that you wanted to share with the San Francisco Planning Commission? Well, I really wanted the Planning Commission to understand that building more housing was the progressive position because it's the policy that helps working class people. Right. Like there's an enormous amount of studies that have been done on this and like the overwhelming consensus, like even the studies that are somewhat critical of YIMBY. Do all they nitpick, but none of them, as far as I know, dispute the basic idea that like overall building more housing reduces rent.
13:35 Like I've seen studies that are wielded by people who are like, I hate YIMBYs. This study proves YIMBYs are wrong. And the study usually says things like, oh, well, if you upzone, that doesn't mean prices don't come down. Prices come down. And then what you find is the study says, well, this upzoning was small and so it didn't build a lot of housing, which like is a YIMBY argument. Or you see studies that say like, well, what we found is like, while it reduces rents in a larger area, it might not reduce rents like right next door. But even those studies, which again, lots of people come out and say, oh, that proved YIMBYs are wrong, still agrees that building more housing reduces rents overall. I think it just shows like I think the lack of data literacy, I think it's like concerning because I think it just I think coincides with an overall decline of intellectualism in American society.
14:32 We spend so much time, waste so much time explaining basic data, basic economics to people who are educated. And yeah, I think it's just concerning. Well, speaking of data and numbers, that was one of the subjects of my message to the planning commission, which was a couple numbers in particular, namely numbers like 2030 and 270. For the listening audience, you will quickly learn this is Steve's favorite obsession. It's a very good, important obsession, but I just think it's very funny. He drops us like every conversation. I could be like, let's what should we get for lunch? Should they come on in 2030? We might not be able to have one because we don't have the electoral college votes. We might not be able to have coffee and bananas.
15:18 And and and we find over any tropical fruits that we can throw in the United States. Actually, I think I think I brought up 2030 first. Oh, you did. Steve just like ran with it because I saw the look on his face. He just like right it and off. And I think that was like an event for him. You accepted him. Yeah. Through there. Put it on it right on a tee. Alley from Nia to Steve, because this is because I do. You have to have this message because the stakes are as enormous as it gets. Again, when the 2030 census hits, the electoral vote count for each state will change. So once you hit 2030, when you get to the 2032 election, the 2036 election and the 2040 election before any chance of a retreat from the 2040 census, Democrats, as our mom pointed out, will be able to win every state Biden won sweep the blue wall and lose every election.
16:15 Every election that decade. And so the reason I bring it up again and again is to say, hey, of all these things we talk about, we talk about NIMBYism versus YIMBYism, everything you want to say about shadows and height and density and developers. And isn't it better to build public housing? All of that starts to pale in comparison when the future of the Democratic Party and the future of democracy and America itself are on the line. And we're seeing some pretty major threats to our economy right now, both like the stock market, but the value of the dollar, the bond market. Peril is here and peril is going to escalate in coming years if we don't surge population and even a transformative bill, a transformative new approach to zoning like San Francisco's got right now that will reverse decades of decline isn't big enough or fast enough to meet that moment.
17:11 But you can't meet the moment if you don't know that that's the moment you're in and that's the deadline that's looming and we got to get going now. And like we have an advantage in the sense that like blue cities are fun, attractive places to live. Like we don't have to necessarily sell people on living in New York or San Francisco or L.A. or D.C. Like the name speaks for itself. It drives me like nuts when people are like, who's going to want to live in these cities? I'm like, why do you think they're expensive? It's like the Yogi Berra quote, like nobody goes there too popular. Right. Yes. Like, I don't want to like like I don't want to like poo poo on other people's preferences. Like we want people to do what they want, make do whatever makes them feel, feel happy. I think personally for me, what makes me happy is a bunch of like cosmopolitan hipster bullshit.
18:00 Look, I am also I, I in my personal life for the choices I want to make, I'm totally at least cosmopolitan. But I think the thing I think is that everyone should be able to make that choice for themselves and have the option to realize the neighborhood and the environment that is most conducive to the life they want to live. And also try other ones and see if maybe that different direction is actually really cool. They should be able to express themselves in that way. So I don't think everybody has to live in a big city. But if people who want to can, then guess what? Then your suburb can be more suburban. Your rural area can be more rural because all those city dwellers that now have been, you know, kicked out of the city because they can't afford it, aren't trying to turn your suburb or your rural area into a city because the city can be a city. And on this note of, you know, blue states and blue cities are really attractive to people that does give us an important leg up as we think about the electoral stakes.
18:56 And I want to add a little bit of historical context here and go way back, because I do think. Not only this idea that there are stakes to population and that huge electoral ramifications to who moves where this has come up before in American history. The bad news is it was the lead up to the Civil War. But this was the case when America started to expand west and add more states. The competition over whether those would be free states or slave states drove a bit of a population war. So you get first something like the Missouri Compromise, which says, you know, every state below this line is a slave state, every state above this line is a free state. And then people start moving in order to found new states and essentially compete over whether the Electoral College will be ruled by pro-slavery or pro-abolition.
19:48 And then, you know, you add Texas and California as this giant slave state and this giant free state. And then you get to the Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854 and what's called Bleeding Kansas, where Congress now at that point after the Kansas-Nebraska Act left it up to the settlers of states whether they would choose to be free or slave. And so what you got was people who wanted more slave states to be added moving there so that Kansas and Nebraska would vote to be slave states. And you got folks, especially from New England, folks on the pro-abolition side moving there to compete to make them free states and essentially moving places and surging populations to decide whether America would be a would be a country of slavery or a country of freedom.
20:40 And that led to a lot of violence, which is called Bleeding Kansas. And that is not something that I want to repeat, but I do want to sort of go down the gauntlet of like a kind of a competition for population to determine the electoral future of the United States is something that I overtly think we need. And that parties should compete in not to kill each other, but as a race to the top, which is to say both states and red states should both be competing for population, not to stop people from moving, but to offer more attractive destinations to say, how can we build states that have cheaper homes, cheaper energy, better jobs, better amenities and better quality of life? Right. Letting the market build those housing and solve those problems.
21:28 Also, the government building those building solutions, those problems and offering more attractions. And this notion hits, I think, two things that are really relevant to this podcast. The first is Congressman Auchincloss last week talked about how to make construction cheaper to make cab and modular homes actually a thing. Those industries need a demand signal, right? There's not enough demand right now for them to say, let's invest in this. Let's double down on this. Let's make this a thing. If governments in blue states and red states alike, but the blue states start to build and build more at scale and build more in order to attract more residents. If you start building at government scale, prefab and modular, you start to send that demand signal. Now that industry is built, now the private market can take advantage of that. And suddenly prefab and modular becomes a thing.
22:16 But also something that Samuel Myrie talked about that I think a lot about is the idea of amenity. And how can government build more public amenities by building more housing? So my favorite part of the conversation with Selner Myrie is that he has a plan. And by the way, I mentioned this to Stephen Fulop and he said, hey, we did this too in Jersey City, which is to say you can build in the same lot as a school or library in the same building as a school or a library, build mixed use, mixed income, public housing, where you're building affordable housing and public housing to immediately solve the crisis. You're building market rate housing because that solves a long term problem. It subsidizes those affordable units. And by the way, if developers are so greedy, shouldn't the taxpayer be greedy as well and start to make a little revenue from building things?
23:04 But also, you start to subsidize amenities and stack things on each other and be able to build more features for citizens for the whole city in the same building. So a school and a library is the key example with Selner Myrie and Stephen Fulop. But I also think grocery stores, gyms, pools, rooftop parks, places to shower and use the bathroom, food courts, food halls, coffee shops, right? Retail that you sell to the market, retail that government doesn't sell. Selner's rival in New York wants to build government run grocery stores. Well, if you're going to do that, these are the buildings for them, right? The idea to me is government can not just build affordable housing immediately, cannot just build mixed income housing for all those benefits, can actually build public amenities for the whole city that make everyone's life better in those same spaces, defraying some of those costs with the market rate housing, but also using that sort of vertical structure to expand your opportunities and the cool stuff and social life you can have in a city.
24:06 Yeah. So like on TikTok, like there's always like somebody like on TikTok that's talked about, like, we need public spaces where people don't have to spend money. Yeah. It's like there is stuff to do in New York, like a lot of the places where you can just go and hang out just like randomly require money, especially after an hour. And I think it would be nice to have more public spaces where you can go to where you don't have to spend money. Yeah. Everybody wants this. Everybody talks about this, this idea of the third place. Right. But yeah, that's that's hard for the market to build. Government should be building those and public parks and public plazas. But those can be indoor spaces, too, and rooftop spaces, too. And that's something that you can and must make happen if we want to lean into better places to live, better quality of life and also doing something about the loneliness crisis in this country, which is which is devastating our culture and our politics.
25:02 We need government owned clubs. Yes, that's right. Have Charlie X open it. The U.S. Department of getting down. The U.S. Department of jams and bops. You know, that's you're saying clubs and you mean clubs. But I also think about the sense of the structures of I don't know if you've ever been to a private club. They're actually very disappointing because I thought they'd be a lot cooler and they are basically a restaurant and a library. But that idea actually of a place. Oh, you mean private club, not as in clubbing. Yeah, like you mean like the club. Actually, there's nothing in that model. It's basically like a place where you can work, a place where you can hang out. There's a restaurant and sometimes they do events.
25:50 That is something that should be public. That is something that cities should purposefully build for people because people need places to work. People need places to hang out. People need, like you're saying, places that they can meet each other and not buy something. Places where you can buy something if you want, but you don't have to. I think that's actually really important for what it means to live in a city and go places and will enrich how people feel about that city, whether they like it, whether they think the government works. You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by Yimby Democrats for America. As a San Francisco based artist and theater maker, I had a front row seat as our housing crisis and the scarcity we demanded and the bidding war that unleashed devastated our most vulnerable citizens.
26:42 Right, sent my trans friends and artists and actors to the streets, sent the builders of our culture fleeing to other states and meant that a kid growing up persecuted in Alabama couldn't find their safe haven in San Francisco. That is a fundamental betrayal of our promise as a city and housing is the only way to make life affordable for San Franciscans and keep our culture alive. But, if that doesn't move you, please consider the national stakes. Our electoral power to defy Trump comes from population and in this city and state we have bled out residents. So as you watch him tank our economy, tear up the Constitution and disappear people from American streets to Salvadorian concentration camps, know that when the 2030 census hits California will lose four electoral votes, meaning every year, every presidential election, we could sweep the blue wall, win every state we won in 2020 and lose every election until 2044.
27:42 If we go that long, will we get another shot? Will we see another democratic president? Will the republic endure? We say often here, as goes San Francisco, so goes the nation. Consider today that as goes San Francisco, so goes the world and billions of people not yet born are counting on us to do something as simple as to say yes to new homes and welcome to new neighbors. Thank you. Now that we know the stakes, let's get on with the show. Our first guest tonight is Zelnor Myrie. He's a Brooklyn native and affordable housing advocate now running for mayor of New York City. He's got a big plan to build 1 million homes in the next 10 years. Please welcome to Radio Abundance, Zelnor Myrie. And to kick things off, here's Steve Boyle.
28:30 Zelnor, we're obviously talking today because you're running for the mayor of New York City. You have a plan to pretty mass upzoning, which is exciting for obviously all of us in the YIMBY movement and the abundance movement. It's worth calling out a big part of the plan is also building a lot of public housing, which is obviously appealing to any of us as Democrats and on the left for tackling that urgent issue in the immediate term as well as the long term. But there's a particular part of the policy that I want to ask about and hear about that I think is really innovative and exciting, which is you're proposing, if I understand right, for the city to build public developments that are mixed income and mixed use, which is to say, you know, in the same building, you've got subsidized units to help people out and deliver rent relief to vulnerable folks right away. You've got market rate units, which will alleviate the rental prices for everybody and help raise revenue and subsidize those units.
29:25 And you want to build it on schools and libraries. So not just taking advantage of public land, but also public amenities in the same building. So instead of a 15 minute city, you've got a one building where your elevator connects you to your school and your community. And this idea to me seems genuinely new and incredibly exciting, both for tackling the crisis, but also for unlocking some of the opportunities within it. So I just wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the details of how that would work. You know, this is one of the components of the plan that is common sense. When we think about our cities and where people want to live and why the policy choices of I'm going to stay here or I'm going to go there. It's because not just an affordable unit, but because I have easy access to schools and libraries and cultural institutions and grocery stores and other amenities.
30:20 And to the extent feasible, the public should be investing in that type of development. And that is what we are proposing is one of our rebuild NYC plan. The city has taken some steps in some neighborhoods to get this done. We just saw in Manhattan affordable housing built on top of a library, which is incredible. This is, I think, the highest use of our public land for us to have really strong institutions grounding it out and then having mixed income where individuals of all income brackets can afford to be in that space. Think about our New York City Housing Authority, our public housing stock, where we have hundreds of thousands of residents that live, but their capital needs for this housing stock is close to $70 billion.
31:11 This investment from the federal government over decades, money that we're not going to get from this special administration, certainly, but that we also haven't gotten from previous administrations. And so if we're talking about generating revenue, we have to talk about mixed income. That is a necessary prerequisite for us to do that in this space. And we have a lot of land where we can do so, and we can do it without displacing the residents. We can have them have deep agency in this process to be partnered in how this is being built, but then to be the beneficiary of those amenities. And we have opportunities to do that all throughout the city. I'm really excited for this part of our plan. Why, why do you think this is such a unique and novel idea in the sense that, you know, when I talk to, well, obviously all of us in the Airbnb movement understand what building more rocket rate rent units does for everybody.
32:03 Um, but you know, when I talk to folks on the left, uh, we agree on the need to build, uh, public housing. Um, but then they, you know, I hear a lot about greedy developers and I always think, man, if you can make that money from this, shouldn't the government get into that game? Uh, it could use some money for, for helping people and for building subsidized units. So I'm just, uh, you know, I'm, I'm curious, do you really, do you kind of stand alone on this? And, uh, what's, what's the possibilities and potential for if the government is able to generate revenue by building housing? Look, I think that there are legitimate fears for people who have seen the government fail in this regard in the past. I used to represent Brownsville in my state Senate district. I represented 23 public housing developments where I took constituent case after constituent case of NYCHA failing to meet their needs.
32:51 Uh, dilapidated apartments, uh, unhealthy conditions, uh, by the hallways and the elevators. I've walked those hallways. I've seen those broken doors. I've seen the broken rooms. Uh, so if you have been living in these conditions or, you know, communities that live in these conditions, what faith do you have in government to get the job done on and to actually solve the problem? So I don't, uh, disparage or, um, or am I upset people who don't have faith, uh, that this isn't just going to be a scheme for others to make money. It is incumbent on us leadership to prove to them that we can do this and do it in a different way, in a way that actually generates income and revenue for authority that needs that. Uh, but also in a way that does not displace tenants, but gives them the opportunity to do it.
33:39 I'm very proud of my record on tenant protections and standing up for people. I've been with my mom in housing court on my own two feet, trying to prevent her from being evicted. Uh, and I was a leader, uh, in the state legislature on the housing stability and tenant protection act, some of the strongest tenant protections we've seen in New York in half a century. So I come at this from a place of credibility about one that really wants to get at solving the problem. All of the above. That's the answer. Uh, and if I'm willing to do all of the above, I think it is a wholly unserious approach. I a hundred percent. I agree. Cause I think there are like different types of like housing consumers and like everyone needs to be served at the same time. And if that doesn't happen, that that's where we get the problems that we have, um, today. But I think to follow up, like, I think housing often goes hand in hand with, um, transit and like, I want to know, like, how does transit fit into your overall plan for a million homes in New York?
34:37 You know, we have the benefit of having one of the most robust public transit systems, not just in the country, but in the world. And, uh, I have been a consumer, a customer of our MTA, uh, for my entire life here in the city. Uh, I don't drive. It's how I get around. I take the buses. I take the trains, uh, just like most New Yorkers. And we have opportunities near our transit system to do it more development. Uh, you know, this is a phrase that in gimpy spaces, I think is pretty common, you know, transit oriented development, uh, is something that I've been supportive of, uh, in the state legislature as well. Because we need a regional approach, uh, to, uh, abating the affordability crisis. We have places in the city and around the city and our neighboring counties, uh, that could be doing more on a minute doing so in close to transit that will help relieve the pressure.
35:29 But even in the city where we have neighborhoods that have really good access to public transit, there's been resistance to development building. Uh, that, that has been the case even in my own district, uh, where I've had to stand up and say, no, this is good for everybody. This is good for the community. Everyone should be able to benefit from being close to transit and having good schools and having access to parks. And so part of my plan, uh, is to ensure that everyone is sharing, uh, the, the solution to our affordability crisis. And that includes doing a lot more, uh, that is closer to our public transit system. Yeah. And how do you like address, like, I know that like, we have like an amazing public transit system best in the country, but like, even then they'll have like gaps in our coverage.
36:15 Have you thought about like how to address like, um, those coverage gaps, making like two fair zones into one fair zones. So we have the unfortunate distinction of having the slowest buses in the country. That to me is an embarrassment as a New Yorker. I hate to even see that fact, uh, that we have the slow buses in the country. So one of the things that we have to do is the, uh, to the extent that the city jurisdiction over the streetscape, uh, because the MTA is controlled by the state, but the city has some jurisdiction here. Uh, we need to be making our buses faster. And there's some things that we can do, uh, whether that is adjusting how our traffic lights turn, uh, to ensure that they are prioritizing our buses to get them through.
37:01 Whether it's dedicated bus lanes that are actually in sports, uh, so that people can make their way through, uh, whether it's a rapid transit, uh, where we have seen, um, uh, further extensions of train lines that have stopped. Uh, but where the bus rapid transit continues to go, uh, and serves as a good substitute for what a subway would be. Uh, I'd like to see that expanded. In fact, New York city right now is currently not following the law. Uh, we passed a law a couple of years ago that would have an expansive bus system where we would be, um, adding many, many miles, uh, to our bus, uh, transit network every year. Uh, the current mayor said that this was something that he believed in. Uh, he has not filed the law in that respect.
37:48 I want to change that, uh, to ensure that in these two fear zones, in these places where public transit isn't as easily accessible, a cost effective way to do this is to increase our bus service. As you may know, it is incredibly expensive to build a new subways, uh, and to extend our lines. And so, you know, before we get the capital investment to make that happen, I think we have a cost effective way to do that with our bus system. Uh, it sounds like you're very focused on earning the trust to be able both to allow, uh, citizens to build housing and the government to build housing. And I'm curious both like how you plan to earn that trust, uh, and then what's built into the plan in order to live up to it. You know, uh, often people see our plan and they say, well, this is too big.
38:34 You can never get it done in a city like this. You have too many opposing forces. Are you prepared to be aided by entire neighborhoods and communities? And to me, this is a mentality that is born out of a failure of leadership. We used to do big things in New York City. We built the Empire State Building in 13 months. This is New York City. Come on now. Uh, we can do big things here. And if you don't think that we can do big things, then you can stay in that corner, uh, and be a naysayer. I refuse to accept that. Uh, and I believe that if we are going to be a city where people can raise their family, where you can start your first job, where you can get your first apartment, or where if you were born and raised here, you can stay and see your future here. It's going to require for us to do some tough work. That is why I have censored housing in my campaign so that when we win, we will have a political mandate to utilize every tool at our disposal to get this done.
39:29 So that means I'm going to have to continue to sell what our vision is, even after getting into City Hall. A part of why we saw such a struggle was trying to get the city of yes proposal over the finish line, uh, was that the Adams administration was otherwise occupied. I made it really hard to sell that vision. That is not what we're going to be doing. Now we're going to be focused on this from day one. We're going to have a war room like approach. Interagency meetings at the top of every week. A constant like transparency where people see how many units we preserved and created. Uh, and I'm going to be using that bully pulpit to say that we got to continue to build. We got to continue to preserve, um, and we also have to protect our tenants. I have, uh, proposed an expansion of our right to counsel program, uh, that it was a really good initiative.
40:19 Gets people counsel if they're facing a victim, but it has never been fully funded. I want to fully fund that to ensure that everyone is getting that legal counsel in those proceedings. And I want to extend it to our homeowners who are facing deep debt and who are facing foreclosure. Uh, there is still work to be done on the preservation side, but we got to do a lot more on the creations. Uh, and that is what we build NYC is about. Yeah. So Zellner, you have, this is a very exciting plan, right? Speaks to both my entrepreneurial brain and my bleeding heart, liberal brain. Uh, brass tags here, you know, I think latest polls have you at about 1%. So how do you win? You know, I'm going to leave it to the professionals to do the prognostication or what the polls mean. Uh, if you look at a previous polling at this cycle in the past couple of mayoral elections, the individual that is at the top, um, usually is not the one that prevails.
41:13 And so I'm really focused on putting our vision out to as many New Yorkers as possible. It's very early in this race for those of us who consume politics. We have been in this and, um, in the mix and the firm of it for many months. But for most New York voters, they're just now starting to turn their attention to this race. And we, I think have built a foundation to be ready to talk to folks about our vision. You know, we've raised close to $3.7 million. We've gotten contributions from every single city council district, every community district in the city. I've been making my way out to every borough, talking to voters, getting live interactions. And I'm really excited because now people are turning their attention. They're going to see what our vision is, that we want to build more housing, that we want after school for all, that we wanted all of the above approach to public safety.
42:02 That's when New Yorkers wanted to smoke. And let me just say as an added commentary that people are expecting the Democratic Party to deliver for them in this moment. And not just to pay them lip service, but to actually provide solutions to their everyday problems, to help bring down the cost of living, practical ways to get this done. And that is what my vision for this city is. Yeah, like and on that note, like there is like this whole issue of like cost of living and like cost of creation. And there's like another facet of it on the outside of the housing side around like permitting and government red tape. What do you think about what's your plan for like streamlining the process for applicant applications and licensure? This is an excellent question. And it does get to the execution of the vision.
42:50 And I start with we got to do a lot more recruiting and retention for our agencies that are responsible for this execution. We think about our Department of City Planning. You think about our housing preservation agency. They need more personnel. There are applications right now that are sitting on desk simply because they cannot be processed. And that to me is a shame and a failure of government. So we got to do better on that front. I want to be our city's biggest cheerleader. We have an amazing workforce. People that come to work for this city every day want to deliver for everyday New Yorkers, but they need help. And I want to get them the help that they need. Now, there are also red tape that prevents smaller developers from building.
43:36 And if you want to build from six stories below, the city makes it incredibly difficult for you to do that. I mean, you have to hop through many more groups than some of the larger developments in my rebuild NYC plan on my plan to cut some of that red tape. But I also want to give folks more access to capital. We have a housing development corporation that I think can be playing a much bigger role in assisting our smaller developers to get this done. And that is something that we also delineate in our plan that we can cut down on the red tape. We can give more access to capital and that we can hopefully have people that are in our city agencies help process those applications. You know, I want to bring us to a finale with a final question in a second, but you said something very important that conjures a penultimate question, if you'll allow it.
44:27 You mentioned small developers, right? And so a lot of the conversation around abundance, you know, and some of the opposition to it talks about, you know, both big developers, but also sort of monopolistic sort of approaches. And really, and just this idea of resisting big corporations. And I think the focus on smaller entities who haven't been able to get in the game, who don't have the resources that those big, bigger, whether it's developers or, you know, more broadly, bigger corporations have is it seems really key here, both for unlocking this construction, but also for a more a more competitive market and a more just market. You spoke a little bit about those policies to support smaller developers. But I am very curious if you can just speak more to this idea of small, small developers and smaller entrepreneurs and how to get them in the game tackling this.
45:20 You know, this is a really important point for a couple of reasons. One, we know that we have to scale development and that every development cannot look the same and that every property, every neighborhood cannot have really high towers, as I think sometimes this gets caricatured as what what we also need to be cognizant of is that smaller developers are often people of color. They're often women who are looking for opportunities to enter this space, but do not have the networks, do not have the connections, do not have the access to capital that some of their counterparts do. And this to me is just as important to give these individuals that this opportunity, particularly in an environment where we are undergoing attacks from the federal government on diversity and equity and inclusion.
46:13 But this is an opportunity for us to put our money where our mouth is and to say we can put the affordability crisis. I mean, we can also give people opportunities in this space as well. And that's why I'm, again, really excited about the opportunity for an above all of the above approach to solving this crisis. So I want to close on this. It's been a pleasure for anybody who's listening to this and thinking, hey, this this really aligns with me. I'd love to put this guy in a position to be able to deliver on these ideas. What can they be doing? What do you need from them? Please visit sunlord.nyc, C-E-L-L-N-O-R.nyc. You'll see our vision. You'll see our plans. You see what we've already done. And you'll see what we're trying to do.
46:59 You know, we are in a really important moment, not just in the city, but in this entire country. We are truly undergoing unprecedented attacks on national rights, things that we have taken for granted in the past. And we have an opportunity to do something about it. We can step up in this moment and show that local governance matters, that you can still do big things at the municipal level. And that is exactly what I'm trying to do as the next mayor of this city. I would not be who I am today if I did not have people looking out for me, if I did not go to after school, if I did not have a really good public school, if my mom didn't have an affordable place to live so that she can put food on the table. That same opportunity is being lost for so many people in this city in this moment.
47:47 And we don't have to accept it. We can do something different. We can go in a different direction. If you want to help me get there, zelnor.nyc. Zelnor, it's been a delight to chat with you and learn a little bit more about both your plans and your heart. It's been a fast conversation, but we hope to continue it and come join us again. And thank you for your time today. Yeah, your platform is awesome. Thank you for the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. This was so great. You know, there's a lot of things in politics. I got into this because I care about the policy and I want to get the thing done. I want to be in a position to get it done. And we have to go through a lot of other things in order to get there. And so I just want to say thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak to your audience because it's going to help us every bit out.
48:35 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. that was awesome yeah that was awesome like he's super cool like i really liked how terrible he is like i think i really appreciate it because like he doesn't seem like a bullshitter and he seems like very interested in the actual policy he's like such a dork like i love it i feel like that's what you need okay i'm tired of charismatic like people who don't know things okay we have politics has enough of that okay more nerds more nerds in politics i think zelnor is awesome and he is my i mean the plan but the level of uh i think courage and vision to come out and say hey we we have to build as new york city we have to set a goal of building a million units in the next decade and the market is part of that solution and the government part of that solution and some of the creative ideas to accomplish that he throws out and using and doing that at the same time as he is building on a whole career around renter and tenant protections i mean it's it's absolutely the path forward for new york yeah like we need more housing we need more affordable housing and because at the end of the day it's like we are okay new york we're the greatest city in america of course people want to live here so we should make it easy for people to live here and then we are still becoming even greater city and then no one can beat us because we're amazing i mean the whole idea that like well one san francisco is the best city but i understand um lies fairy tales we're just way too small like we need to be a lot i always tell people like i love san francisco i want more of it but you know new york city is like over eight million people like the idea that one million units is this crazy idea that's like way too ambitious like that's so silly like he's the only one talking about the scale that like your city actually needs yeah like we need like i think that's what frustrates me when people are like oh like we've built enough because i see like a crane in my neighborhood or i see a couple cranes in my neighborhood like a couple cranes that you're seeing on your walk to work is that that that ain't shit i'm sorry that ain't shit like you need way more than that like we are like the most that we have ever built in a decade has been the 20s like like i don't think anyone has been alive to see that scale of building so like anyone who's like oh we have enough or i see this i see that like your experience doesn't mean shit right now like i'm so sorry like we believe in lived experience and stuff but like if you haven't been alive to see the scale that we need your experience does not mean shit zelner referenced the building of the empire state building right uh which was built in new york in the 30s in less than 14 months uh which is the kind of ambition and kind of growth that we need um but it's also a reminder that uh if you've seen pictures of the empire state going up compared to the neighborhood that surrounds it it's ridiculous in the best way you look at it now and it fits in and i was just talking to somebody the other day who was saying hey uh oh you can't you can build like that in new york but you could never build like that on the west side of san francisco and i had to remind them hey when the empire state building was built it reached a hundred stories guess what every building around it was maybe max like 15 i mean it it you know more than 6x the the height of manhattan and of course inspired everything that followed and i think it's a lesson that neighborhood character a changes but b it can extend skyward uh it's not limited to what it is today that character can grow can develop uh can enhance itself um and uh and we love the neighborhood character of manhattan today it is the greatest city in america it is our greatest tourist destination um and that happened because somebody was bold enough to say i want to build a building that's seven times the height of the other buildings around me and everyone said oh that's cool let's add more after it was built while it was being built there were plenty of nimbies it's just that they couldn't stop it at the time and what a great thing that they couldn't and i think that's a lesson for the whole of new york now as well as manhattan where construction is constrained maybe a little less than other places but majorly constrained like it's kind of like manhattan nights against the manhattanization of manhattan 100 what it is that's 100 i'm just like you know i'm like if you guys don't like tall buildings you know like you can try long islands and and zelner brought up the point too that uh that our you know our current regime of how we build like we were saying earlier is only available to to the rich and big corporations and that doesn't just lock out small developers a lot of the small developers and the small entrepreneurs it locks out and community oriented builders it locks out are women are people of color are folks who are locked out of not just benefiting their city and people like them but taking the next step forward in their lives and leaving their mark on the world uh because we have a system that favors incumbents one thing about that that i think about a lot is prior to passing like a a lot of adu laws in california um a lot of developers at the time said like sure it's fine but i don't think there will be a lot of people doing um they were wrong they were wrong specifically because most of the the companies who spouted up do adus or new entrants and a lot of them were younger more diverse more women um and so like a system that protects like existing incumbents is a system that keeps people who are currently marginalized yeah because like all the laws were racist when the incumbents were entering the market and this reminds me you know this past weekend we had a number of of folks from yimby democrats for america attend uh bernie's uh rally in los angeles they took public transit there caught you know bernie and aoc and roe kanna and uh yimby young gen z congressman maxwell frost on the drums um there were folks who saw bernie at coachella and i really think and this is relevant both to our national politics it's also relevant to the new york conversation um because i'm like look so eric adams thank you for city of yes and also you are a corrupt and insane person uh andrew did squat for housing as uh as governor and his plans for new york are also hugely disappointing on housing um i'm pleased at least that one of uh one of the sort of upstart rivals of zelnor uh uh zoran mandami um you know is at the very least does to a much smaller degree have some building in his plans and does have ambitious plans for building some public housing to meet the union of those two guys who by the way are friends like they may be frenemies in the race but they are buds and call them off um and like each other a lot and are very have some different policies but are also very complementary and that's more of the spirit we need but that union behind uh zelner's ambition for market building and uh rental protections and government building mixed with zoran's ambition for public building uh and and some of his really clever and charismatic approaches to campaigning that i think are really strong like that union of them that friendship that's the future of the party abundance fight oligarchy and defeating fascism are one single movement to me one single movement that says we need to reject decline tear down incumbent privilege where people who've made it whether that's a super gajillionaire billionaire taking over the federal government or a million millionaires taking over their city and freezing other people out we have to reject incumbent privilege reject this idea of pulling the ladder up behind you and build build a fully realized progressive vision of american abundance where everyone has what they need everyone has the freedom to create and build and articulate what they need and introduce their solutions and the government is empowered to get in on the action and build and do big things to me it's one movement to me it's the future of the party to me it's the only way to take the country back sometimes i'm asked which is our which of our we have two twin goals here right build america and defeat fascism which of those is more important well i think defeating fascism certainly has its world historical stakes but they're also prerequisites for each other we can't defeat fascism we don't build up blue states right now increase our population and show why a progressive model for government works and is better and we certainly can't build america without defeating fascism it was maybe possible in the final weeks of january to think oh trump might do this trump wants to usher in a golden age he wants to build these freedom cities well not going to get very far if he tanks the economy hanks the dollar uh and builds a world where you have to you know give him a five million donate dollar donation to be able to meet with him and get your little goodies that's not going to build nothing for us so building america and defeating fascism are but not only complementary they are prerequisites for each other and abundance fight oligarchy and defeating fascism are one single movement to tear down incumbent privilege build the ladder back up and unleash the power and potential of our our people you're listening to radio abundance a podcast by yinby democrats for america my name is armand amaluski i recently co-founded a group called dmbs for harris to support kamala harris's efforts build a lot more affordable housing which has now become yinby democrats for america building more housing is the only way to make housing more affordable austin auckland tokyo cities around the world when they build more housing we see rents go down we see property prices in real terms stay flat and become more affordable that is a fact there's no country on earth not even vienna which has built an amazing beautiful amount of social housing but not even vienna was able to solve the crisis by purely 100 percent government-funded housing you need to vote additionally you cannot build affordable housing if it is not zoned for it if you want to build dense beautiful affordable housing there needs to be zoning capacity to do so it currently costs one million dollars a unit in san francisco to build affordable housing we are obligated to build 82 000 units the entire budget of san francisco is 15 billion dollars a year it would be 82 billion dollars to have only that housing built by government subsidy we need government-funded affordable housing we also need market rate housing so that people can afford to stay and live in san francisco democrats nationally are understanding this elizabeth warren spoke at her event and talked about a emb hello embs senator elizabeth warren here housing is at the heart of american life 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 barbara lee spoke at her event and talked about it being a emb we need more housing build more housing bring the cost down it is the progressive position to support building housing and up zoning to allow for the building of more housing thank you we need big solutions our next interview is with steven fullup as mayor he's made jersey city one of this country's leaders in building new homes now he's running for governor of new jersey please welcome to radio abundance mayor steven fullup and to kick things off here's his fellow steve steve steve boyle well steve uh we know you as the the mayor of jersey city now a candidate for governor governor of uh new jersey and uh and a leader of the yimby movement uh who's seen some real uh amazing uh gains in uh in jersey city so excited to uh to chat today and and learn a little bit more about you and welcome to radio abundance thank you it's really exciting to be here i'm thankful that you guys are doing this i think that the dialogue has changed over the last three years with regards to housing and it's a lot to do with people like yourself so i'm thankful that you guys are further promoting that how do you feel like you've seen change i feel like the conversation for the first time in the last three to four years has been of about where market rate housing fits into the conversation around a house and affordability and you go back five ten years people would talk only about low income or affordable housing what are you doing to build affordable housing affordable housing and if you talk about market rate housing it was kind of uh negative and i think in the last couple years it's actually the dialogue has changed where people are appreciating the fact that you got to be doing both in a thoughtful way to really solve some of the housing problems so i think it's changed meaningfully this wasn't possible three or four years ago in a democratic conversation yeah and you know as uh we'll talk about both uh market rate housing and uh and public housing and and affordable housing today obviously is as uh as yimbies uh we believe deeply in the idea that more market rate housing uh helps everybody uh and uh and changes the equation around supply and demand as democrats obviously we want to solve problems as quickly as we can and uh and intervene to support folks who are marginalized and low income and and very vulnerable and uh and keep a roof over their heads and you know as abundance folks we believe it's all part of the solution right markets and uh and governments and governments being empowered to build as well so we'll chat a little bit about uh public housing as well as uh market rate housing conversation you you you're talking about the last three years you've been uh you know you you uh what became mayor around uh 2013 so you uh became mayor in 2013 and uh i ran on a very housing-centric platform at the time um on how we were gonna use some of the tools to encourage big housing away from the waterfront and uh we've done that i mean if you go to the heart of the city journal square those of you that aren't with jersey city if you're in new york city you see the skyline across the river that's jersey city and then on top of the hill i mean there's probably more high rises in a two-block radius under construction there than anywhere else in the country six or seven uh 50 60 story buildings under construction simultaneously from print developers and all of that was kind of a byproduct of a vision that we had a long time ago to bring uh construction away from the waterfront yeah you know i i think of the the yimby movement as uh as really beginning uh a lot with like sonia traus in san francisco and and that timeline is is also about 10 years ago so how did you uh you know and perhaps independently how did you come to this viewpoint that uh market rate housing was was part of the solution and part of uh achieving uh you know even progressive and quite democratic goals i don't think at the time it was viewed as a kind of a progressive problem solving component for housing by and large i viewed it though as kind of common sense that new york city wasn't building enough housing and it was putting pressure on housing in jersey and if you wanted to solve that particularly jersey city you needed to build more supply what i've learned along the way is that jersey city can't do it by ourselves i mean we've built more than three of the boroughs uh across the river of the new york city boroughs but it's still not enough when new york city isn't pulling its weight so you kind of the larger regional plan when i came in it was just kind of common sense on basic economics that if you have a supply problem then prices will go up and it's not rocket science and so how do you deal with that with people that want to live in jersey city because of arts culture or transportation uh you know i mean it's a fascinating thing i mean you get new york city uh kind of uh you know perhaps the best city in the world perhaps the best city in the country and uh really i think it's most thriving borough right now uh is jersey city i don't know if you think of it that way and i don't know if you play a little bit but uh yeah i know tell me tell me a little about that i'm curious a little bit about i think look i think identity uh how we feel like yeah yeah i think we feel like from an arts and culture standpoint we have our own identity we have the santa pompadue which is the largest collection of modern art in all of europe moving to jersey city you have the symphony new jersey state symphony moving their headquarters to jersey city you have a lot of arts and culture a big arts community uh vibrant uh the nightlife and particularly restaurant scene that has propped up in the last uh 10 years a lot of that is related to having a walkable city that is related to housing so it's all twine at the end of the day but we have built more than most of the boroughs of new york city um and we continue to build more and i think there's a lot of reasons for that i think one of the main reasons steve is that we have less layers of government that could veto projects so i think you in new york city for people that aren't familiar with it you have uh you have community boards that can kill a project you have borough presidents that could kill a project you have planning boards that could kill a project and all along the way before you get into incentives that you might need to develop and all those layers of government don't exist in places like jersey city and places that are doing it right you don't have all of those opportunities for the nimby component to get in its way yeah and so now you're thinking about uh you know running for governor of new years so uh so different a different set of statewide challenges different set of statewide voters i'm curious uh you know what what advantages you have from jersey city that can carry over to the state and and what new disadvantages might be new and and how you're thinking of confronting those you know so there's two things in in new jersey that are really front and center so housing is a big conversation right now and the advantage that i have on that front is that i have a track record and credibility we've built more than anybody else in new jersey so i can speak to it um with more specifics than any other candidates and it's not kind of platitude that here's what i did concrete and then you know it's a front and center conversation because housing pressure in new jersey it's a densely populated state and housing pressure is really significant and uh at the same time you have affordable housing mandates from the state that has been put on each municipality so if you think in new jersey you have 560 plus municipalities so a lot of layers of government that's 25 30 years ago via litigation the state realized that housing segregation is a real thing so we're going to require uh affordable housing in every municipality and a lot of the municipalities have pushed back over time on that but there's been pretty litigation so we're at a crossroads here where this governor's race is going to basically decide in some ways what the future of housing looks like in new new jersey because of these mandates the republicans are saying that they will go back to an old system where white affluent towns can pay urban areas to take their affordable housing obligation and not have any sort of housing and what we speak to is more transit oriented development and equity and equality throughout the state where everybody has some responsibility to build some housing and then the state can interact in ways with incentivizing it but that is the conversation on housing in this gubernatorial race and and and it is a major major talking point yeah i'm curious about uh transit actually you know uh a quote on government you write uh on your website rather you write uh despite local governments having limited legal authority over uh new jersey transportation uh jersey city found creative ways to build modes of transportation so i'm curious uh what are some of those creative ways so we launched in 2020 a microtransit system so you know it is kind of like a hybrid ride share it's paid for by uh the municipal government and the thought process was that new jersey transit which is our bus system was abandoning a lot of the low-income communities and we had to find a solution to kind of get these people access to mass transit but if you think about buses overall in some ways it's kind of like an archaic way of thinking about transportation because you know these huge vehicles that are not energy efficient or environmentally conscious they move on a fixed route so not dynamic at all they move whether they have 50 people or two people at set schedules technology today you can think of uber you know is dynamic where you can have the car pick you up technology and algorithms can recognize when you and i are headed in the same direction so the ride share system is based on very large vans that recognize dynamically when multiple people are headed in a same direction will tell them that the pickup place is within two blocks of their home so the route is flexible and only going when there's demand and uh it has been hugely successful it is now um the most successful micro transit system in the country who've done 2.5 million rides in the last four years and uh those are things that you could replicate i think statewide and you see more development where there's more access to transportation obviously so figuring out that is related to the housing conversation is that it's a really fascinating uh uh sort of equation there when you think about like how you combine uh you know sort of uh market forces and kind of real-time adjustments to demand to then deliver what in this case is a public service right where you're using that kind of real-time what people need to route the uh to route the right pairs you know and i was just uh i i'm from san jose uh there the light rail workers are on strike and the mayor of san jose uh matt mahant uh wrote an op-ed where he was talking about uh you know in the interim period um giving giving uh vouchers to commuters to take rideshare and he pointed out that for san jose right now it's cheaper to pay their light rail commuters to take an uber than it is per ride to operate their service so i'm interested to learn more about um yeah well both the economics and the sort of uh um the philosophy behind uh you know a technology-based and demand-based and real-time adjusting uh transport system yeah so we we post quarterly stats in detail um you know obviously every three months and they break down everything from who's using it how frequent how many new riders what the wait time is where the pickup locations are so you get a feel for that it's working by the sense that so many people are using it number one we see that increasing every quarter and uh you if you take a step back you recognize that the technology is there to facilitate these sort of things that weren't there 40 years ago so you should be thinking about transportation in a different sort of way and i don't think enough municipalities do that yeah now in the on the car front here we are some uh some urbanists uh talking about uh talking about cars right and there's been as you point out huge developments in cars whether that's uh you know whether that's rideshare technology whether that's self-driving cars that's electric cars in 2022 your administration had a pretty massive accomplishment which is uh across jersey city on city on streets zero people died um which is amazing i you know in terms of uh in terms of uh both the the the death toll of driving as well as just the the geometric challenges of if you have a lot of people and and they're each out core that's clog up traffic i'm curious about how you think about the future of cars both in cities like jersey city and uh you know and across states in the country um so the car conversation has in jersey city changed pretty significantly let me just start there we used to require one parking space for every unit uh we changed that it's less than you know it's 0.25 now or less in most developments we don't require parking now and is what we're doing um because we're investing in mass transit and then at the same time you touched on we we really leaned into division zero we were the first city of the top 100 in the uh or the most densely populated 100 in the country to achieve vision zero which is driving traffic related fatalities down to zero how do we do it um a lot of street redesigns a lot of uh bike lanes protected bike lanes a lot of rethinking of how cars move around the city complete streets uh where possible that contemplate pedestrians as well as buses as well as bikes and cars and all of those things have led themselves to dropping the number of fatalities per year by like 90 percent so in 2022 we reached zero but it's been consistently 90 to 95 percent lower than what it was we when we started so it's it's a thing that we're very proud of and i think again it's something that you could replicate statewide because a lot of the statewide roads beyond the highways do have major problems that you contemplate making them safer yeah i mean to me it is it's it's one of the most amazing things you can accomplish right when we think about liberty and the pursuit of happiness or we talk about more nuts and bolts things like the cost of living it begins with life and you know in the u.s every day uh enough people die in car crashes to fill a 747 and i i feel like if uh if every day a passenger airplane uh went down and uh and along fit everyone in it uh that would probably and you know it seemed like for a second that might happen uh i feel like that would prompt some some changes and some thinking about how we approach transportation so i yeah i i'm curious uh you know listed how you were able to accomplish that in jersey city uh how are you thinking about uh about that goal as as you think of uh the state so look i i think first of all that the investment in mass transit is key so people take personal vehicles because they feel that the mass transit system in new jersey doesn't work the way it should be so the first thing is you need to kind of correct new jersey transit which is the backbone of both trains and buses for the state of new jersey both automatic so i think you know you can't really make people or encourage people not to use their cars until you've kind of thought through an alternative solution so that's number one number two is phil murphy this year did vision zero similar to what we did in 2019 he's starting at 10 major intersections just contemplating how to make those a little bit safer and redesign them you know i i think there are a hundred that need to be addressed so he needs a larger commitment to it but look it's data driven very it's not rocket science i mean you look at the the way we've done in jersey city is you start with the the places that have had the highest number of fatalities and crashes and then you just chip away at it every year we're doing a significant number of them and that's why we got to in four years to make uh to turn the corner so to speak around vision zero but the same thing at the state it's not rocket science the same exact thing approach it the same way yeah and when it comes to public transportation i'm curious about your your ambitions uh for the state of new jersey both in terms of what you want to take on and how you how you think about the you know the cost of building that infrastructure the biggest opportunity on um on mass transit is that there's already a huge amount of capital money allocated to a widening of the turnpike and so the turnpike is kind of the major artery for cars in new jersey and it goes through hudson county at one point and enters into the holland tunnel which is the access point between new york and new jersey or one of them and uh the state of new jersey under phil murphy allocated 12 billion dollars would be to uh widen that turnpike and they said at the time that the main reason that they were going to do that was to alleviate traffic and what i've said repeatedly is that um it doesn't it's not a project that makes a lot of sense in a congested state where you're trying to eliminate use of cars and encourage mass transit um you should be investing those dollars in mass transit and let alone a turnpike widening won't help you could widen turnpike 25 lanes if the holland tunnel remains two lanes you have that bottleneck that still exists nothing changes and so what i've been saying repeatedly is that similar to what wes uh or governor moore did in maryland is reallocating money away from uh the streets and turnpike and uh highway widening more to mass transit and i think that we could solve some of the light rail issues that exist today in new jersey the beauty of the challenges on transportation for new jersey is that yeah they're significant but a lot of the money that i want to allocate is already used already allocated so the biggest project in new jersey right now infrastructure project is a 12 billion 12 billion dollar project to widen the turnpike which is a major highway that goes through hudson county and eventually into the holland tunnel into new york city and the state allocated 12 billion dollars to widen this and from the beginning i said it was for use of money because we should be investing money in mass transit because we're so densely populated and secondly i mean common sense indicates that you're never going to alleviate some of that traffic pressure because it doesn't matter if you widen this turnpike to 20 lanes the holland tunnel is still two lanes the bottleneck so you're going to waste a lot of money and not achieve the goal similar to what the governor of maryland did when he was elected i would reallocate dollars towards mass transit particularly light rail expansion for bergen county which is north of hudson and then south jersey much discussed camden and gloucester more light rail infrastructure so the thought is that the state who has already allocated those dollars towards infrastructure projects and the governor has the flexibility to reappropriate those dollars and i would be i would i would actually maximize that and take advantage of the opportunity yeah now since we're talking about uh transportation i think that brings me to abundance more generally you know we formed as uh gimme democrats for america we're certainly uh focused on on housing but fans of of the wider concept of abundance whether that's housing transportation but also energy maybe health care and education i'm you know i'm curious from that standpoint uh have you read the book uh do you have any thoughts on the wider movement you've obviously been living it for a long time and i'm curious how this sort of approach to housing uh connects to uh to other segments of of both the market and the public services that government provides look i think that we're in a crazy time i mean when i started to run for governor i thought a lot about these challenges around abundance and opportunity and exposure and access in new jersey not uh anticipating that you'd have a federal government that didn't cooperate with a lot of these things that ideologically that would be in such a different place so what i can tell you is i feel like from the governor's standpoint this election is crucial there's two governors races in the country this year one of you won in new jersey they're going to be a bellwether for how we feel about you know president trump and the administration in washington and policies that he's promoting or not promoting and so major crossroads so our campaign is about more than core democratic values i mean there's a lot of things that we can do and governors are going to be the front or the first line of defense around health care and housing and transportation and uh we're very detailed on it yeah i mean it really will be up to you and uh if you're a governor and and of course your fellow governors to to both uh demonstrate an alternative and uh and prove out what that looks like um i'm curious and and now we move from uh you know we have two missions right we have build america and defeat fascism and now we move from the happy optimistic urbanist part of our conversation uh to dealing with the times we're in um uh i your your mother was the daughter of holocaust yeah you know today we're seeing legal residents who with views of the the administration doesn't like uh rounded up and disappeared by men in masks we're seeing uh random latinos with tattoos that honor their kids uh plucked off the streets and sent to salvadorian concentration camps so you know around the country you got folks asking uh you know what what can democratic leaders do what can governors do what can the party do and and and what can just ordinary folks out there be doing themselves to stand up to this yeah people are frustrated and they want to see fighters obviously i think that you know on the on the immigration conversation because i get it that you know you have a lot of independents and republicans that say yeah you know we should get rid of these people shouldn't be here in in that i tell them that when the raid started in newark new jersey one of them was my father the store that was rated he has a building there with four units it used to be a deli and my mom's immigration services business and then you know when they retired they sold it and it's currently four units one is a uh one is a uh perfect school teacher one is an army veteran one if they the person a lawyer took over for my mom's immigration services business and one is an electrical contractor for the state of new jersey so all documented citizens that are professionals here and have served in some way from actually a public service standpoint and uh ice came and you know i posted the videos there were 15 of them and they went door to door they were looking for somebody i don't know if somebody might have used that address or whatever they didn't they didn't arrest anybody but always put out to people that if you look at the video and how they came in and my parents and my family owns that building are citizens and they've been there for 50 years and i'm running for governor so fairly high profile in the state and they come in with no warrants or no due process and they go door to door searching for people and and we're in dangerous times if you tolerate that sort of thing because if it could happen to somebody like me it could happen to you steve of course it could happen to anybody and and and where does that end because it doesn't end once you accept it so i think that there's a lot of things that you can do on uh the state front you know people call their federal reps which is great and great and it feels good but it's such a gerrymandered world in washington and you have republicans in every branch that it's hard to get change but i do think that on the state level particularly in new jersey there are things that we should be pushing our democratic state senate credit state assembly democratic legislative uh governor to do like uh we have a thing called the immigrant trust act which protects immigrants we have some stuff on gender identity that we should be pushing forward uh women's reproductive rights uh we should be talking about you know some of these governors drawing down on surpluses to offset you know medicaid cuts or vulnerable communities so there are things you should be pushing your state legislature and your governors to do i don't think we do that enough yeah um and for folks outside of of government and maybe who've never been involved uh you know with with with any kind of activism or organizing before but they're looking for what they can be doing what can ordinary folks do right now um what could they be doing i think holding accountable the first level of government which are your state representatives which are the first line of defense i think it's a good thing to continue to criticize and put pressure on your federal representatives um they probably won't feel that pressure until they see some more election results i mean look you saw some this week that were smaller state senate races that swung uh democrat and republican districts but you know we won't know what that really feels like until you see more of those and then republicans and swing districts get scared then you get more accountability by making phone calls i don't think we're there yet but i think the priority should be pushing your first line of defense which are your governors and your state representatives yeah uh you talked uh early about why the the democratic party needs fighters you know there's uh more in your background than just building housing uh i know that on on september 11th you in lower manhattan you saw the plane uh you took the u.s marine corps as you were deployed to iraq uh from 2003 to 2006 um you know i can tell you i i am also someone who has witnessed the carnage of terrorism with my own eyes right i i was aboard one of the trains in uh on the london underground that alqaeda attacked in 2005 so you know what was that like you were you were down there in the tube over there when that happened uh i was and uh you know that's uh i i don't want to take too much of our conversation to tell you about myself but the answer is yeah i was uh i was taking a a train to an apprenticeship one day and uh and that train uh you know first there was a big noise and then everything stopped and i i thought we'd just hit a wall and uh uh you know the lights went out the emergency lights flicked on the train started to fill with smoke you know everybody kind of tucked their mouths into their shirts and for a little while we were in kind of a waiting period and then we opened uh one of the doors and i was the the closest to one of the doors um and right right outside the door there was a woman and i'm thrilled to say that she lived but i didn't know that for many years who's had been thrown from the bombed car uh whose legs were uh had been severed by the tracks and who was on the tracks next to the train and so you know i've had the experience of of looking someone in the eyes as as as the blood poured out of them and and trying to console them and i've walked past in order to exit that that tunnel the you know the bodies of people who who never left it um so you know i i am obviously deeply admire that you answered the call to service and i'm i'm curious to learn just a little bit more about you know your your experience in iraq and and also what you learned about both keeping america safe and living up to to our values as we do it yeah i i so similar saw some of this firsthand i was on the trading floor for goldman's axe uh you could feel the building shake when the planes hit evacuated um and then it kind of struck a chord in me where the i mean there's a lot of patriotism and i viewed it at the time as kind of a partial payment for citizenship i went to my uh managers at goldman's axe and said i was going to leave enlisted in the marine corps they thought i was crazy that people with goldman don't normally do that and uh for me it was kind of like a dead ode i mean my family came here as immigrants holocaust survivors and i thought it was important so went down to paris island on the enlistment side spent a bunch of months there who kept and then walked with that first wave of troops out to kuwait and then into iraq up to baghdad and my primary responsibility there was uh part of combat engineers building fuel farms all the way up to baghdad to get fuel and water um we were amongst the front line there but everybody has an mos or a responsibility is the way it works and uh you know look i look back at those six months it was a good growing experience for me i learned a lot about myself a lot learned a lot about other people and uh i'm thankful i made that decision um and that ultimately led me to kind of indirectly to the life that i'm in now i mean i wasn't registered to vote or involved in this but when i came back the mayor of jersey city at the time wanted to just give me a proclamation and one thing led to another and he uh asked me to run kind of a suicide mission against bob menendez who now is convicted for bribery and uh help people i told you in 2005 he was a bad guy but uh he uh i went on the suicide mission because i thought it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and i registered a vote when i uh declared for congress on this mission and um you know look it opened my eyes to the needs and opportunity and i figured that public service at that point was more of a calling for me than than financial service and that kind of led me to where i am and then i've always kind of ran these races outside of the political system out you know against the grain and especially when i ran for mayor the entire party apparatus in the state was against me we were successful and then we've changed the city and i'm running a similar campaign for governor yeah you know it does seem i mean this may be just coincidence but so far uh for this podcast you we talked to uh governor westmore of maryland we talked to his uh secretary of housing community development jake day we talked to congressman jake auchencloss uh and all three of them along with you are are veterans uh and we're in in a moment where we're seeing the the trump administration cast a lot of veterans to the side and maybe they don't care about those suckers and losers and uh and i also see a lot of veterans mobilizing right now for uh um you know against against trump and against fascism and for not just the democratic party but for america and i'm i'm curious if you see any any kind of connection i mean i'm sure you do between both that work and and some of these the specific approach to what the next era of america uh needs and and yeah look i i i think the fact that you know democrats don't raise enough their uh relationship and uh with the military their appreciation the uh the fact that democrats have consistently increased funding and support for veterans and veteran services and vas and you know it always feels like that the military base gravitates more towards the republican and especially when you have a leader that says things over time that undermines appreciation it's a crazy thing to think about i think we have a lot of good ambassadors today just on westmore i've known him a long time he's a terrific terrific ambassador as it relates to the next generation of democratic leaders um and he's gonna go he's gonna go much further i think than where he is today and um and he's a military veteran appreciate that he wears that proudly he talks about it all the time as i do but uh look i think like this country's at a major crossroads in so many ways and uh the the appreciation and how we talk about military and veterans is one component of it and i think as democrats we need to elevate continue to elevate veterans and veteran elected officials because i think it goes at a core argument of the republicans you know thinking of that connection between the the military and and kind of the progressive worldview it's not something we we think about a lot or talk about a lot but it's a little bit of a pet issue of mine and that that 2003 to 2006 range in in iraq is really interesting because i i think of that war starting uh from my outsider perspective with quite a lot of uh arrogance and mistakes from the bush administration um and then uh you know leading up to to you know 2006 and and that kind of we think of the surge and and and we think of general petraeus you often think of uh of a bunch of new troops and uh some of the scandals that followed next i am always fascinated by the a lot of philosophic shift uh that happened in in in the military uh around the idea of of counterinsurgency and the questions of you know starting to ask what did you do for the people of iraq today and how do you protect the civilian population and how do you build up state capacity and public life okay when people think of the base they don't think building theaters but we did we built uh eventually in iraq you know art centers and uh and different ways for people to uh to to to to sway people from uh from from believing that they had to uh follow the progenitors of violence and uh and authoritarians uh and people insinuating chaos and that there was an option for them in public civilian thriving life i'm curious uh if that if you saw any of that if you were too early for that if that i was there when i so it went through a couple phases if you remember when i was there so those first six months we were seen largely as liberators you know um and and then over time it turned into more of kind of an occupier sentiment and and you had a lot of roadside bombs and it was a very dangerous time and then we did a lot of rebuilding which if you think about today on some of the talking points that even like donald talks about about funding foreign countries and aid goes back to again what types of things are we building and resources versus here kind of this polarization conversation and so i wasn't there for a lot of those things i think that those decisions from 2003 to 2008 are still manifesting itself today in today's political climate if we don't talk about iraq as much we don't talk about what we spend elsewhere and other governments and how we're spending them and why not here that's changed over time so i think democrats we need to just make a better argument over time on the things that are happening yeah i mean speaking of uh of of why not spend here and and uh keeping on this topic a little bit it's it's obviously weird to connect counterinsurgency strategy in iraq with how we think about cities today or how we stand up to trump but i do see a connection in the sense of yeah if you do want people to think there's more of an option than authoritarians and more of an option than violence then they need they need public safety they need arts and culture and things to do uh you mentioned earlier the uh the art sector you know it's very personal to me i came up as a theater maker and and and still am a creator of like a big immersive theater experiences uh you know you talked to on your website you hail uh new jersey's uh sorry jersey's uh you know non-profit arts and culture sector generating uh like 46 million in economic activity every year with 500 jobs and uh you know 28 million go into city residents um so i'm curious about how you think about just building up whether that's state capacity or or public amenity or just the sort of culture and vibrancy of people being around other in public life uh you're rolling steve i was touching on something just finishing that thought around fascism and kind of the conversation today and going back to 2003 to 2008 you know when you think about you know the donald trump campaigns from 2016 in uh last year in in many ways it's him capitalizing on nafta and angry middle america from 20 years ago from from the bill clinton era right and people are still very very mad about uh and rightfully so in many cases about displacement of jobs and opportunity and all those things but that anger that he's capitalized can be can be directly tied to nafta decisions on outsourcing and you think about kind of where we are today and you know urbanization and technology and ai and all the things that are just about to change job losses and job creation and how people live exponentially nafta is going to seem like nothing you see what i'm saying and we don't and we and i don't think we talk about that stuff enough because you know we're talking about kind of where we are in the political world right now you got to think about what's next and uh i think democrats have a talking point there that could be more important about how do we deal with the massive amount of job loss that's eminent in the next five years because of the change of technology you know just one other thing in jersey city i mean you started um a month ago we have these robot deliveries now experimenting with uber i mean we have i think 15 of them downtown jersey city experimenting with five restaurants you see them driving on the street on the sidewalk you know they have smiley faces on the front of them and uh they like the technology is crazy and so i think that we would be smart to start thinking about job displacement and how do we train and help those families that are on the precipice of getting that sort of lifestyle change people want to live in urban areas a lot of job opportunities there i think we'd be smart to relies on some of that stuff thinking about uh you know thinking about the party then um yeah we talked a lot about we think a lot about how uh both market rate housing and uh and reducing the the regulations and permitting around that yeah and help achieve uh big goals and democratic goals uh and i i also think a lot about how you know market rate help housing helps fund uh democratic programs and how uh public health whether it's public housing and affordable housing interventions or or other social programs i think a lot about how that same kind of uh uh uh you know allowing citizens to build those same rules help allow governments to build uh and achieve progressive goals so i'm curious about how you think about um some of the more uh you know progressive goals or democratic goals that you have uh especially around building public housing or affordable housing uh and also how the wider the wider picture of uh of you know whether that's abundance or or aggressive building up of market housing how that supports it as well so i i think i i mean i don't know if every state has the same challenge in new jersey with these affordable housing obligations you've had a lot of nymphies that have adopted uh uh advocate control the narrative municipality by municipality and some of it is rooted in fair and reasonable criticism or skepticism and some of it is racism around not wanting to have what they view as affordable housing because people have a different reaction if i say we're building affordable housing they i react one way if i say i'm building housing that's affordable they react a totally different way right and uh that speaks to the core issue that we have i think as governor one of the things that i talk about is you know you got to create more transparency around municipality versus municipality on where they are in their affordable housing obligations or housing obligations so that way you wrestle the narrative away from the nymphies you got to create the opportunity where people to see that my mayor or my elected official is costing me millions of dollars in fighting litigation after litigation uh housing development that isn't productive so so that's number one and i think that as governor what's different that how i approach it is i think that you need to have a carrot and a stick you need to have a governor that ties financial resources from trenton directly correlated to housing growth and that's the only way you're going to motivate a mayor or municipal government to actually want to grow and build and being a mayor and from that experience i think i have a background and track record of doing those sort of things yeah you know you talked about and this is from your website again you say uh you know new jersey currently builds only about 2700 units of affordable housing annually uh you got 20 225 000 units shorted you take more than 80 years at that pace to hit it uh you know we were talking recently with uh uh zelner meiri who's running for mayor of new york city wants to build a million units over the next decade had a really interesting idea around um you know public housing that was uh not just mixed income but mixed use where uh where on the one hand you're having the city build market rate housing that then helps subsidize the subsidized and affordable housing uh as well as having you know schools and libraries not just for the land but in the same building and being able to expand public amenities that way as well we are actually doing that in jersey city the the largest public housing reconstruction project in the state of new jersey is a project under our administration in jersey city at the jersey housing authority probably 500 plus units and it is a partnership with the housing authority and a private developer it is a mixed income community with you know all of the low low income units being returned mixed in with uh market units a library is as the base of that and then there is a handful i think 10 or 15 home ownership units as part of that project it really is something significant somebody wants to google it it's howland gardens in jersey city and um i think we're at the forefront of that conversation it's been a long road and and we have we've implemented the strongest right of return for all of those uh current residents so you know you have a community there in these low-income housing sites that um you know have been neglected they feel that government hasn't worked for them um their places are largely dilapidated and not cared for like they should be and so when we started this project there was a great deal of skepticism so we've gone a long long way to um making sure that every single resident when those new units are are built that look like market rate units but are low-income housing um that they have the opportunity to return it's going to be an amazing thing uh right across the river from new york that's pretty special uh we got to wrap in a second so i just want to give you two questions to finish this off the first is what haven't i asked about that either you're eager to talk about or is a pet issue of yours or that whether it's the the party or or people at home that folks should know i think uh i think you covered a lot just we're at a major crossroads here as a uh state in particular for those people that live in new jersey um on affordability and uh affordability is tied to housing which is tied to transportation so all these issues are intertwined and clearly we're at a crossroads in the country because you have a federal government that doesn't believe in a lot of the things that i think are common sense around climate change and sustainability and uh you know the next four years are really important governors will be the front line of defense and it's important that new jersey chooses wisely june 10th nice uh you know it's been it's been such a treat to chat with you uh for this hour uh you know it's been exciting to watch uh your work you know i think uh 15 years ago jersey city was uh one percent of the total uh permitted units in the and buildings in the states and uh now it's what are nearly ten percent a little bit more i think a little bit more incredible uh so uh you know uh anything uh first of all congratulations second of all appreciate the time and uh uh third of all uh what do you want to leave folks with both to consider and and for folks to know who might want to to figure out how to how to support you in the next i think that the best thing is i'll just plug the website uh stephen full of s-t-e-v-e-n-f as in foxtrot u-l-o-p as in papa stephenfullip.com so please check it out there's a lot on housing there and transportation and uh you know i think we're in a good spot to win june 10th and then in november very cool uh mayor full of thanks so much for us today and joining us on radio abundance thank you so much all right that was stephen full of a mayor of jersey city running for governor of new jersey he's awesome um mayor full of has been like a yinby before yinby was a thing like jersey city built so much housing new york city is like housing crisis would be way worse if like jersey city did not exist the amount of people i know who work in new york but live in jersey city um is huge and it's not just like oh they put a lot of housing it's like dense near transit infill like they've done a lot of like transit improvements pedestrian improvements it's quietly one of the most umb cities in america you know he did not like it when i called jersey city the sixth borough of new york uh but uh but i did in my time living in new york i did spend about three months in in jersey city and and absolutely loved it because you had frankly you were close to everything i wanted to go to it was close to anything i wanted to go to then i would have been in astoria um you had a burgeoning city you could be by the waterfront uh which i remember being able to like leave manhattan but look at manhattan and gaze at the skyline but also look at the water and there were like geese was really lovely um there's a lot of really cool stuff happening there and in terms of the scene that and and mayor phillips leaned really hard into the art scene there i really think he's laid out a model for what new york city and and its five boroughs could be thinking about could be doing uh in in new york um because right now they're getting lapped by jersey city and uh to the extent that mayor phillip doesn't like me calling jersey city the sixth borough of new york i have to also think new yorkers will not like me saying they're getting their butts kicked by jersey city so let's out let's stoke that new york new jersey rivalry and get some buildings built well in jersey actually reminds me a lot of the relationship between san francisco and oakland and that people will say because like oakland for a while was actually more aggressive on like yimbyism than san francisco and people would say like well oakland's so expensive and it's because cities like san francisco which built a lot of office had a lot of economic development were relying on their neighbors to basically pick up slack on housing and jersey city is really like carrying new york city to make it more affordable um which means that like new york has to embrace i think more of the ideas that jersey city does and and mayor phillip as as you mentioned armand he is an og yimby uh he uh was in it before it had a name uh and he's he's also an og yimby democrat for america both in his actual work and uh and as a is a great part of yimby's for harris so that relationship goes back he was a big supporter somebody always saying hey how can i throw in how can i help um which i think is exciting how did you armand first connect i think i first tweeted at him or something like that and i've been tweeting about his housing stuff for a while praising his work talking how new jersey is like picking up the slack for new york and when he heard about this he was just really excited to participate um i think in particular because he was running for governor planning to run for governor and the race is like pretty close he's a clear number two but i really want folks to get the word out about him make sure that people know about him donate to him all that stuff because this is very much like you know the zelno race is different and that the key there is to sort of get something like a new york times endorsement that'll make him pop to people's radar with full up he's there's an incumbent like there's another candidate who's like leading but it's not that much and so really like he just needs to push to get over the top um and all of that comes from just word of mouth social media and helping him get the money he needs to to spread the word you know there was one more thing about about stephen phillip in addition uh to all of what he's accomplished right in addition to uh taking jersey city from one percent of all the building permits issued in new jersey to now more than 10 percent uh making vision zero actually have zero traffic deaths on his streets he's done a lot there's a lot he can do for new jersey it also seems really interesting to me that stephen phillip is a veteran so stephen phillip as we talked about in the interview is somebody who watched 9 11 happen with his own eyes and it's interesting to me that uh stephen phillip is a veteran and all three of our guests last week governor westmore in maryland secretary of housing for maryland jake day and congressman jake auchencloss all three of them are veterans as well and they're all between about 37 and 48 years old they're all that generation that either came of age around or right after 9 11 said you know i want to i want to do something i want to serve my country uh you know committed to both you know keeping america safe commit wanted to build a better life for people around the world and also emerged and perhaps went in deeply disillusioned with the bush administration came back to the us and started nation building here they're building here they're building up america they are fighters they are democrats and they are builders and i think this isn't a coincidence and i also think it is part of the path forward for the democratic party because you'll notice uh you know in just this year right the amount of slashing of government employees that donald trump and elon musk have done means throwing a lot of veterans out of government and a lot of veterans out of their job and i think there's a lot of those folks a lot of folks who fought for this country who are fighters by nature who are deeply committed to this nation and to our democracy and to our people and i think as we think about who's going to emerge as a brand new never before heard of candidate in 2026 and beyond i think a lot of democratic veterans are going to maybe take the way both in saying what is real patriotism what does it mean to stand up to the trump administration and also what does it mean to build america and build a more progressive future for us i think a lot of veterans can lead the way on that i mean i think being a veteran especially if the iraq and afghanistan wars you will see the us military drop into like nothing and build a giant base in way faster time than it takes us to build like a duplex in the united states um so i think there are people who really understand like what government can do um on a scale what scale it can do when it really decides to do yeah state capacity can't just be for for the military and it can't just be for people from other nations we know a thing or two about the fact that to win hearts and minds abroad you have to build civic life and arts and civic culture and i think it's too easily forgotten at home how important that is to our own culture and our own civic fabric you've been listening to radio abundance join the movement for Progressive Abundance at yimby democrats.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 to beat fascism and unleash the era of Progressive Abundance join the movement at yimby democrats.org we used to do big things in new york city we built the empire state building in 13 months this is new york city come on now we have built more than most of the boroughs of new york city it's not rocket science smaller developers are often people of color they're austin women this governor's race is going to decide what the future of housing looks like in new jersey people are expecting the democratic party to deliver for them in this moment i have a track record and credibility we've built more than anybody else in new jersey not just to pay them lift service but to actually provide solutions to their everyday problems to help bring down the cost of living the four years are really important governors will be the front line of defense that is what my vision for this city is it's important that new jersey chooses wisely we can go in a different direction if you want to help me get there sell more.nyc steven phullip s-t-e-v-e-n-f as in boxtrot u-l-o-p as in papa stevenfullip.com 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 when the 2030 census hits california will lose four electoral votes meaning every year every presidential election we could sweep the blue wall win every state we won in 2020 and lose every election until 2044. austin auckland tokyo cities around the world when they build more housing we see rents go down if we go that long will we get another shot will we see another democratic president will the republic endure it is the progressive position to support building housing billions of people not yet born are counting on us to do something as simple as to say yes to new homes and welcome to new neighbors Thank you.