Buffy Wicks: Hello Oakland. Hello housers. I am so excited to be here today. Welcome to the California Gubernatorial Candidate Housing Forum. My name is Buffy Wicks and it's my real name and I'm very happy to be here. I want to thank the Housing Action Coalition, UC Berkeley's Turner Center, the San Francisco Foundation, and the Ezra Klein Show.

So when I got elected in 2018, I knew I wanted to work on housing. I was in my early 40s. My husband and I, with a toddler, had just purchased our first home in the Bay Area, and it was a soul crushing experience, as I'm sure many of you can attest to.

And you know, I don't come from a lot. I grew up in a mobile home in rural California and I was embarrassed about this when I was a kid. I didn't want to invite people over for slumber parties. I dreamt of a house made of wood. But it wasn't until I was older I realized that that mobile home that my parents purchased for $12,000 in 1978 provided for me the housing security that allowed me to focus on my studies, to go to community college, to graduate from university, to go work for President Barack Obama's White House, to run for office myself, to win to get into the legislature, to become the housing chair, and now to be the appropriations chair in the California State Assembly. That mobile home allowed me to become me. It was the housing security I needed to become my best self.

Buffy Wicks: Why do we have tens of thousands of people on our streets experiencing homelessness in one of the richest places on Earth? Why do we have some of the highest homelessness rates and lowest home ownership rates in the country? Why are we 2.5 million homes shy of where we need to be. And I quickly realized two things. One, California's road to housing hell was paved with very good intentions. Laws designed to slow construction had achieved their express purpose. And the second thing I realized was that there were very powerful entrenched interests in Sacramento that were perfectly content with the status quo. It was serving their narrow self-interest.

So, you know, we've made huge strides on policy in the last eight years, but that change hasn't been easy. And as someone who's not just bore witness to this, but who's been on the front lines of it, I can also tell you the politics of this is really difficult. It means sometimes disagreeing with your friends. We've achieved success in upzoning, in streamlining permitting, and reforming our Byzantine environmental review process.

This person will not be perfect. They will make mistakes. But what we, the voters, want to know is: are they willing to break some glass with decisive and aggressive action to advance a pro-housing agenda? We need more ribbon cuttings and less bill signing ceremonies. So, let's spend the next 90 minutes getting to know who's the biggest pro-housing gubernatorial candidate we have. It is my total honor and privilege to introduce to you the moderator of this forum, Mr. Ezra Klein, and the candidates who are participating in this event.

Ezra Klein: All right. Hello, Oakland. The candidates on the stage tonight are according to the polls the five top Democratic candidates in this race. Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa. Give them a hand.

Governor Gavin Newsom came into office in 2019 with a promise to build millions more homes. And yet, the number of new homes being built in California is basically the same as when Newsom took office. So the question of tonight is what has to happen to convert these good intentions into homes that people can live in?

And Mr. Steyer, we're going to begin with you. A Rand study found that the cost per square foot of constructing an apartment in California is over twice that of constructing it in Texas. Why do you think that is? And what would you do about it?

Tom Steyer: I know that in fact what's driving that up is the way that we construct, the cost of labor, the cost of materials, and the cost of financing. So let's talk about two of them.

One is about the construction offsite. We are building apartment buildings the way we have been doing it for a hundred years and there is new technology to do this where you manufacture the parts of the house offsite the way you'd manufacture a car and then you assemble it onsite. The estimates start at 20% cost reduction.

The second thing is about finance. The nonprofit community bank that my wife Kat Taylor and I started has financed 17,000 low-income housing units. The third thing I'll say is this: The cities and counties in California do not want to have housing in general. They'd rather have a used car lot than they would a new apartment building. I've said that I will on day one call a special election to close a corporate real estate tax loophole worth over $20 billion. So that it's not an unfunded mandate. It's a funded mandate.

Ezra Klein: Mr. Becerra, yesterday you released a comprehensive housing plan. You say in it that it costs too much to build a home in California. You also say that you want more union labor and higher wage standards. An analysis from the Turner Center found that paying prevailing wage increase a cost per unit of housing by about $94,000. How do you both cut the cost of housing and increase the wages behind it at the same time?

Xavier Becerra: I think we need to make sure that we are building with men and women who are skilled and we're doing it at a price that we can afford. If you do infill housing up to a certain height, usually about eight stories, then you have the right as a developer to try to get the labor that you need and try to negotiate a good price. If you go beyond that, you're talking about major construction. Prevailing wage will be the standard. We should not believe that we have to build homes by making it so it's impossible for the carpenter who builds a home to never be able to afford to buy it.

Xavier Becerra: Well, if we could get rid of the Trump taxes, the tariffs, that would help us reduce the cost of building materials. We have to tack it at the local level because of the high fees that are imposed. Very little construction is done with apartments and condominiums. We're never going to reach the number we need if we continue to only build single family homes. That's why the legislation that allows us to really build out, do the infill where we know we have transportation will give us an opportunity.

Ezra Klein: Ms. Porter, you've often said that time is money. The Rand study found that it takes about 27 months to complete a multi-family housing project in Texas and 49 months in California. Why does it take so long here and what would you do about it?

Katie Porter: Speed is the driver. If we could be 22 months faster, like Colorado, we could take 10 or even 20% off the price. I strongly support the pending legislation that would create one uniform statewide permit. I also think it's a really good idea to limit how many last second add-ons can come.

Affordable housing projects face more delays and community resistance. Developers are piecing together financing from seven different pools of money. One consolidated bigger pot of money would help. The other thing is the state should be putting land up for affordable housing.

Matt Mahan: We've approved 22,000 homes and they're not getting built. In the last two years, we have moved our multifamily housing approvals to what's called a ministerial approval. It's essentially by right. Doesn't go to the planning commission. It actually exempts CEQA.

When cities fail to meet permitting deadlines, when they try to use fees and local building codes to block housing, I think the state should override and create mechanisms for developers to move ahead whether or not the city likes it. Lawsuits drag on for years. I feel very strongly that our next governor cannot bring a lawyer's mindset to this problem.

Antonio Villaraigosa: First of all, I'm on record opposing Prop 13 since 1978. What Steyer was talking about, it's called the fiscalization of land use. Because of Prop 13, we reward a strip mall more than we would housing.

When we passed Prop 13, commercial properties were paying 60% of the freight. Now it's the other way around. We've got to change that. We got to fix the whole broken tax system. We over-rely on the people at the top. I'm the only person on this stage that's actually been the speaker of the Assembly. We need to incentivize cities to build housing, not strip malls.

Xavier Becerra: We didn't focus on outcomes. The accountability wasn't there. To me, the homelessness crisis is much a mental health crisis as it is someone needing a shelter. We have to do far more to prevent people from ever becoming homeless. It will cost us far less to invest in someone maintaining their housing than trying to pull them off the street.

We will not let you languish in the streets. If it's clear that you need help, then it's really our responsibility to provide some assistance. We don't let people make that decision when it's clear they're not making the right decisions for themselves.

Tom Steyer: People hate going into shelters because they think they're dangerous. They have no privacy. The strategy we've had has failed. Permanent assisted housing costs somewhere between $750,000 and a million dollars a key. What I'm talking about is something that is much cheaper, much faster, with privacy and a key.

Ezra Klein: What is one book you'd recommend to Californians? Steyer: The Hour of the Predator. Becerra: Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor. Porter: Yesteryear. Mahan: Why Nothing Works. Villaraigosa: Ours Was the Shining Future.