RALLYchat — State Senator Scott Wiener on California Housing

Kevin Singer: Hello everyone, and welcome to #RallyChats, a semi-regular series of discussions among RALLY experts and leaders in politics, communications, and journalism.

Today’s topic is about housing issues: how to be an effective advocate for pro-growth, pro-affordable housing policies, featuring State Senator Scott Wiener, RALLY Principal Leo Wallach, as well as Derek Jansen, Rachel Horning, and Jackie Pomeroy. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to participate!

Leo Wallach: Senator Wiener, you are very proactive on social media and other places pushing a pro housing frame. Do you think there is a future for this as a political movement (the way that NIMBYs has been)?

Scott Wiener: I think YIMBYism has a great future. The dynamic has flipped, and people are starting to really get it that the infinite excuses we’ve heard for not building housing aren’t going to cut it. We need more housing, and most people deeply understand that reality.

Being pro-housing is pro-environment, pro-jobs, and pro-health.

People understand that.

Leo Wallach: It’s interesting to see pro housing with an EDGE. Not just an urban planning best-case world, but let’s do this politically.

Kevin Singer: I think that speaks a lot to the success of SB 35, your bill in the Senate. Can you tell us a little bit more about that bill, what it does and why it’s so important?

Scott Wiener: Sure — SB 35 is pretty simple: if a community is meeting its housing goals, Godspeed. If a community is falling behind on its housing goals, then we need to help that community catch up by streamlining and expediting housing approvals, including for affordable housing. Local control is about how a community meets its housing goals, not whether it meets its housing goals. A streamlined housing approval means that if someone proposes a project within zoning, the project must be approved in a short time frame.

Kevin Singer: I love that you were already lined up with a “local control” argument.

Leo Wallach: Interesting to un-package the housing issue. There is the aspiration: housing, especially for middle and working-class people and families. Is streamlining the main policy to rally around? That feels more consequential than, say, spending on affordable housing, but gets into more weeds.

Scott Wiener: To address housing on a broad scale, it’s an all of the above approach. We need a faster and more predictable approval process, rather than the chaotic and arbitrary approval process we see so often. We need significant investment in subsidized housing for low-income people — since the market won’t produce housing they can afford. We need accountability mechanisms so that communities don’t arbitrarily downzone. And, we need to make sure that communities aren’t using impact fees to stop development.

Leo Wallach: To make an obvious point, it is staggering the level to which housing is an issue in the Bay — it touches the lives and options available to other younger adults we know. That personal impact can really take a political issue to a new level.

Scott Wiener: The personal impact is exactly why we are getting traction on a pro-housing agenda. Everyone has either been evicted or knows someone, has had to move with a growing family or knows someone, has a child who can’t afford to move back to his or her hometown or knows someone. It’s so deep, and it touches everyone.

Rachel Horning: Not to mention the Los Angeles region. Though, in Downtown Los Angeles (my neighborhood), we’ve taken more of a YIMBY approach. Unfortunately so much of our housing is luxury, with little to no investment in affordable housing development.

Leo Wallach: The luxury housing piece is interesting. I’m assuming it’s a lot better for families when developers build a 2 bed-2 bath than a fancy loft.

Jackie Pomeroy: I worry that framing of “luxury” housing risk getting us back into the Measure S trap. New housing projects tend to get lumped in with “greedy developers,” regardless of how badly we need them. We need to fight the narrative that any new development is somehow anti-progressive.

Scott Wiener: I agree — the “luxury housing” argument is used by anti-housing forces. Yes, there are projects that are truly luxurious and 5-star. But new housing is typically expensive not because it’s luxurious but because its scarce. 100 year-old homes are almost as expensive. They’re not luxury. They’re scarce.

Derek Jansen: Well, luxury housing and housing for people at lower income levels are actually similar in how out-of-reach they are to a lot of middle income families, especially in some of the most expensive markets, like the Bay Area. How can we reduce the construction cost of new, moderate and middle-income homes?

Scott Wiener: I’m a supporter of subsidized affordable housing, particularly for low-income people, but anyone who tells you we are going to solve this problem solely through subsidized housing has a bridge to sell you.

Rachel Horning: I totally agree. And having come to RALLY by way of the business world, a key facet to expanding affordable housing will be CEQA reform. Can you tell us more about how that comes into play?

Scott Wiener: CEQA is an important law with many benefits. When it comes to housing, we need to make sure CEQA operates in a pro-housing way. SB 35, though not couched as CEQA reform, was exactly that. In streamlined communities, housing approvals become “ministerial,” meaning not “discretionary.” That means that they’re taken out of CEQA — no CEQA at all. And we got several major environmental organizations to support the bill, because they understand that infill housing is pro-environment.

Kevin Singer: I want to back up a little bit and talk about affordable housing for a moment. You actually co-authored two affordable housing bills, correct? Why won’t streamlining solve everything?

Scott Wiener: This is an important point. Streamlining is essential so that we add enough new housing to help the middle class, since we will never be able to subsidize our way out of our middle-class housing problem. Conversely, the market simply isn’t going to produce housing in many areas affordable to low income people. Housing subsidies won’t completely solve the low-income problem — given its scope — but they can help a lot. That’s why I’m a big supporter of focusing our public investment in housing on low-income people and families.

Leo Wallach: One communications question: what would the vision look like for a future Bay Area with enough housing? Can that be pictured for people? An image they can get behind? I tend to picture taller buildings, like the building out of 3rd street corridor in SF. There’s Brooklyn basin coming across the bay

Jackie Pomeroy: I picture fewer people sleeping on the streets. I think people can get behind that.

Scott Wiener: It can take a lot of forms. And it’s a spectrum. Do we want to make the Bay Area cheap? Well that would require a pretty radical transformation. But I don’t think people expect the Bay Area to be cheap, just more affordable. We can envision a Bay Area with more 4, 5, 6, and 8 story buildings along commercial and transit corridors. If we do that in enough places, in addition to allowing more relaxed density for existing building envelopes, we can produce a lot of new housing.

Leo Wallach: Great point.

Jackie Pomeroy: I also think that we need to rethink what housing can/should be in order to lower the cost. For example, allowing micro-units that might be better suited to the lifestyles of students or retirees, or eliminating parking requirements on units near public transit, which can reduce the cost of a unit of housing by at least 15 percent. Senator, I’m curious to hear what role reforms like that can play.

Derek Jansen: And talking about the regional aspect of housing, and how difficult it can be to move around the entire Bay Area and around LA, it feels like regional housing solutions can’t happen without major transportation infrastructure solutions — including making it easier to travel greater distances at lower cost and less time.

Scott Wiener: I agree. Being pro-housing isn’t just about increased density or making it faster to get housing approved or funding more affordable housing. It’s also about policies that give builders flexibility. A mix of unit sizes can make a difference, and not forcing high parking ratios means more housing.

We’re so far behind on public transportation infrastructure. We did great things back in the day — building BART, the Market Street subway, etc. — then we just stopped. When I was on the Board of Supervisors, I authored legislation requiring the preparation of a Subway Master Plan. We need a ton more transit of all types, including an integrated regional rail system. Our roads and bridges can’t handle continued upward pressure. We need to get serious about funding these projects, and we are finally starting to see that resolve.

We just passed SB 1, which will contribute nearly $1 billion a year to public transit. We just authorized the Bay Area to go to the ballot to increase bridge tolls and generate billions. We can’t stop there.

Leo Wallach: Dark humor: once retail takes another hit, we can turn all that to housing. Or offices I guess.

Derek Jansen: Nah, Amazon is going into retail. It’s resurgent.

Scott Wiener: As ride sharing and shuttles expand, we will need much less parking. Parking can also be converted to housing.

Jackie Pomeroy: Yes! This is my dream. Don’t even get me started on the potential of self-driving cars. That’s another discussion

Rachel Horning: I know in LA, the concept of “first mile and last mile” is a hot topic. Is that a major part of the discussion in SF when it comes to ride sharing?

Scott Wiener: Absolutely. The last mile problem is real, and shuttles and ride share are key elements of a solution.

Leo Wallach: Getting back to the politics of housing, what have you found is most effective in facts and messaging to rally people to be pro-housing?

Kevin Singer: Following up on Leo’s question: what resonated specifically amongst your colleagues? What messages did they say resonated best with their constituents back home, especially those who were on the fence about SB 35 or the other housing bills?

Scott Wiener: You need to make it real for people. When I was on the Board of Supervisors and would preside over a community meeting where people were unhappy about a proposed housing project, I would always start the meeting by asking the attendees “raise your hand if you think your kid is going to be able to afford to live in this neighborhood.” With the rare exception of someone who has a vacant in-law unit in their house, no one would ever raise their hands. Those kinds of reality-check arguments are impactful — getting people to think about future generations.

My colleagues really impressed me with how quickly they got it. I wasn’t sure how they would receive the bill, but they were just terrific. They’re all seeing this crisis in their communities. They hear about it all the time, they see people struggling, they see families have to move. I’ll be honest that it didn’t take nearly as much persuasion as I originally anticipated. Though, to be clear, it still took quite a bit of persuasion, just not on the fundamental issue about whether we needed to do something significant.

Leo Wallach: Never waste a crisis.

Derek Jansen: Does it feel like the people who have been consistently pro-housing have gotten better, larger, or more energetic, or does it feel like the traditional foes of housing are being brought over to understand the crisis?

Scott Wiener: When I was first elected to the Board of Supervisors, our pro-housing advocacy community wasn’t well organized and wasn’t particularly broad or deep. That’s changed. The movement is now highly dynamic and reaches across the political spectrum, from hard left rightward.

Jackie Pomeroy: To Derek’s point, it feels to me like the NIMBYs have always been the minority, just a highly vocal one. The resounding defeat of Measure S in LA made me very hopeful for the future of the YIMBY movement.

Scott Wiener: I agree. They are the minority.

Derek Jansen: A very vocal and effective minority. I know.

Leo Wallach: NIMBY is so specific: a specific project. If we give people something to stand for, they will.

Kevin Singer: Sometimes, Leo, but thinking about the NIMBYs in SF, it feels like a lot of the underlying debate around housing is driven by a fear of change, and often specifically on change related to the influx of tech. How do you reach out to someone who believes that more housing equals more tech workers changing the face of the city?

Scott Wiener: People sometimes make that argument to me. I respond that during many years where we didn’t build much housing, tech workers (and people generally) came here. People move where they want to move whether or not we build housing. Our choice isn’t whether to have or not have tech workers (and, frankly, it’s offensive to me to say we want or don’t want certain “kinds” of people to move here) but whether we have enough housing for a population that’s growing and has been growing for quite some time.

Derek Jansen: To build on Kevin’s point, it’s also about fears of displacement.

Leo Wallach: It almost dampens the future to think that we couldn’t have the next big company because there’s nowhere for it to go.

Derek Jansen: I think San Francisco at least for the past while has done a good job of fighting displacement, and there are a lot of protectionist measures in place to protect people in their housing (i.e. rent control), but when it comes to building more, bigger, faster, that’s a real communications and political issue to address.

Scott Wiener: I support rent control, and if you’re in a rent-controlled unit, your best friend is the person building more housing down the street. A housing shortage puts lots of pressure on rent-controlled units — pressure for landlords to evict. We need to avoid that pressure and just create enough housing for everyone.

Rachel Horning: Speaking of displacement, this makes me think about another political hot potato…Prop 13. Is there any discussion about Prop 13 these days?

Leo Wallach: There’s just no third rail for you, Rachel.

Kevin Singer: Let the record show this received applause reaction emoji.

Scott Wiener: Lots of discussion. Prop 13 creates an incentive for cities to favor commercial development over housing, since you can get sales tax and business tax from commercial, whereas property taxes are capped and grow more slowly. If we adopt a split roll for property taxes — i.e., taking commercial buildings out of Prop 13 — the incentive to build more commercial will grow. We need to find ways re-balance and create less incentive to favor commercial over housing. Regional sales tax sharing could be one option to do so.

Rachel Horning: I heard inklings that something was moving a few years ago toward such a split, and haven’t heard much of late. How’s that being communicated to the public (or how do you think it should be)?

Scott Wiener: There was a big push this year, but the constitutional amendment didn’t move forward in the Legislature. It requires a 2/3 vote, and people get nervous about that.

But the push continues, and I’m hopeful we can move this forward.

Kevin Singer: So what’s next at the state level? What should be happening at the city and regional level? What’s the next big debate?

Scott Wiener: We’re working to improve transportation funding, so expect several ballot measures in the next few years. After the housing package we just passed, expect to see continued aggressive housing bills next year and thereafter. The conversation is just beginning.

Derek Jansen: That’s great. The conversation isn’t going away as long as people continue to feel housing pressure, and I think it’s really important that we keep up the pressure, and let people know there are still solutions out there that need to be implemented.

Kevin Singer: Any policies in particular you’re interesting in learning more about? Any problem points identified?

Scott Wiener: RHNA — the Regional Housing Needs Assessment — needs to be fixed. We also need to monitor impact fees. I support impact fees, but some communities are starting to use them to make new development infeasible.

Jackie Pomeroy: I know we touched on this briefly, but I want to give another shout-out to CEQA reform. Right now in LA you have to jump through more environmental regulations to build an apartment building than to operate an oil well across the street from an elementary school. Do you see that topic getting any traction in the near future?

Scott Wiener: CEQA reform, historically, hasn’t gotten much traction because people try to shove it down everyone’s throat. As we learned from SB 35, if you do it collaboratively — working with the environmental community, labor, etc. — people act reasonably and you can make positive change. But it has to be collaborative.

Kevin Singer: All right folks, any last words before we sign off today?

Scott Wiener: #MoreHousingNow

Leo Wallach: Let’s make pro housing a movement that continues. It’s about messaging but also just flying that flag.

Jackie Pomeroy: We need to get people to understand that you can’t be a progressive and a NIMBY at the same time. Not at least while people are losing their homes and sleeping on the streets. California is for everyone!

Kevin Singer: Beautiful! Thanks to everyone for participating in today’s chat, special thanks to State Senator Scott Wiener for allowing us to approach all sorts of political third rails.

Rachel Horning: And approaching said third rails with such grace!

Scott Wiener: Thanks for having me.