Affordable Housing And Homelessness: Insoluble Political Problems?

Nationally-known housing policy expert David Garcia walks us through recent national, state and local attempts at housing reform. 

Transcript

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Inside Golden State Politics. I'm Bill Boyarsky, former city editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and with me is our producer director, Nancy Boyarsky

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 0:14

and I'm Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, political analyst and self-styled media maven, coming to you from a realization that it's been a while since we discussed and focused on a specific singular policy issue from among all the major issues defining this critical election season, and on the impact that issue will have here in the Golden State. gonna start to remedy that omission today. So listen up, and let me turn to my co-host to fill you in on the topic of today's episode and to introduce our guest who's here to walk us through of it. Over to you, Bill

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 1:02

our guest is David Garcia, one of the real experts in the country on the subject of affordable housing, the lack of affordable housing, and how to get more of it, and for the whole aspect of housing. David was director at the Terner Institute for Housing at UC Berkeley, and he's a leader in Up for Growth, which is a well-known organization which presses for more housing rather than less. And that brings us to the guts of today's discussion. David, there's a relationship, I think, and everybody says, between homelessness and the housing shortage. Not enough housing, not enough room for the homeless. Nobody's able to do anything about it. It's a subject you have done a lot of study and talking about. What about that? What do you have to say?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 2:10

Yeah. First of all, thank you for having me. I'm happy to have this conversation. With regards to that question of the nexus between the lack of housing, in particular affordable housing, and the challenges we face with homelessness not just in California, but in a lot of states. I think actually, a, a lot of the conversation kinda starts in a, a place of, it needs to start at a place of kind of education. So a lot of folks understand homelessness by what they see on the streets. And we understand in the academic community that the issue goes a, a lot deeper than just what when we talk about the high number of individuals who are homeless, we oftentimes think mostly of unsheltered individuals that we see on the streets. But it goes further than that. It's folks who are living in a car they're living with temporarily with family or friends, but don't have their own place. And oftentimes the conversation kind of starts around, oh, okay why is-- are these individuals homeless? I think a lot of folks start with some misunderstandings such as it's it's a mental illness or it's a drug addiction. But we actually find in the literature that the majority of folks who experience homeless when they first experience homelessness, they are not suffering from me- mental illness, and they do not have a drug addiction. Many of them fall into these challenges as a result of being without shelter. But by and large, the folks who fall into these challenges, had jobs, had stability, and simply couldn't keep up with the high cost of housing or suffered a one-time event that drained them of their finances, like having a, an emergency medical bill, these kinds of things. And we understand that, the-- there is not a strong connection between, substance abuse mental illness, and homelessness. The strongest connection is actually between the availability of housing. and so there's been some great work done in this space by Greg Colburn at the University of Washington, who's done-- who's associated-- found that the strong association of homelessness is actually vacancy rates and lack of housing. This makes intuitive sense. I think if we have a lot of folks who don't have homes, it's probably a, a lack of homes, and that turns out to be the strongest predictor of homelessness rates in not just California, but in most places.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 4:25

before we go any further, would you give us the definition of, quote, housing," end quote?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 4:34

Sure. So I think the definition depends a lot on on how you're using it. But I define affordable housing, sometimes I'll refer to it as like a capital A, Affordable Housing. It is housing that has been built specifically individuals at a certain median income and held at rates that those individuals or families can afford. And so these are a lot of the new housing developments you see that are subsidized with things called low-income housing tax credits, which are d- dispersed from the federal government down to the states, as well as supported by local funding sources, things housing bonds or state affordable housing programs. These are units that are legally tied to some people say affordable housing just as a, housing that I can afford, like me individually, and I think that is also true. If you are paying more than 30, 40, 50% of your income on housing, that may not

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 5:33

heard

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 5:33

really be affordable, right? And but if you're lucky enough to not have to pay that much, even if it's not a traditional like deed restricted affordable unit, it is affordable to you. And so a lot of times we conflate the two things. But when I speak about affordable housing, I generally am talking about the housing that is built with subsidy sources and has a deed restriction that requires that unit to be rented out at a specific rent level and to people making a certain income.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 6:01

So the,

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 6:01

who determines all of that, all these ceilings and guidelines and demands? hear you say it depends on X, Y, and Z. Who defines X, Y, and Z, number one? Number two, where does the money come from to

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 6:18

Yeah.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 6:19

it all?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 6:20

Good question. There's there, there's in statute that defines affordable housing when we refer

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 6:26

The federal statute, the new

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 6:28

to-- But there's things called, there's area median incomes, and so the median income in an area for, a one-person family up to, five, six, seven-person family. That is all kinda defined through regional, local, statewide statistics. And that also informs, who qualifies to live in, capital A affordable housing. And so all that's kinda defined by statute. With regards to where does the money come from, it comes from a few places. Across the country, the vast majority of funding for capital A affordable housing comes from the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. This is not a direct subsidy source, but it is tax credits provided to developers of affordable housing. They then do something called syndication. They take those credits that they've been awarded and actually find investors to buy those credits that would benefit from a tax credit, and so they sell those on the market. and that typically covers the majority of the cost to build an affordable housing unit. That's been the way we've affordable housing in the country for decades now. but that typically is not enough to finance the whole project. And so particularly in California, you need three or four or five other sources of funding to make a project work. Oftentimes this is a low-income housing tax credit is combined with funding that comes from the state of California, from programs like the Multifamily Housing Program. A lot of local funding sources can go into these projects as well. For example, if you are in county that has passed an affordable housing bond, that money has been passed by voters specifically to go to these kinds of projects as well. So these all go into what we call the capital stack, which is a fancy way of saying all the different places you need to go to find money to make the project work out.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 8:15

Death ri- right

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 8:17

it comes from a lot of different places.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 8:18

That right there David, it's been my experience with working with not-for-profits and organizations which try to build affordable housing., What seems to me and seems to them too, is to put together these various funding sources, and you're talking five or six.

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 8:40

Yeah. Yeah, sometimes more

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 8:42

yeah you-- it's extremely hard to do and you have to be a, a genius at grantsmanship to to actually do this. And I'm just talking about getting the money. Why can't they simplify the process?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 9:00

That's a great question and one we've done a lot of thinking on. And I think that the challenge is we are building homes today, affordable homes using the, structure and the rules that have been in place for a long time. And it's a lot harder to, let's say, start from square one and build a more simplistic, straightforward approach than it is to, let's say, tweak what we already have or be additive and put more rules or requirements, resources on top of that. So I think that's just a general policy issue, a p- challenge with policy that we have. I don't know that's specific to housing, but it's certainly prevalent in affordable housing. It's just really expensive to build housing today, and that's part of the reason why everywhere, not just California but costs have been rising across the country, and that's one of the reasons why affordable housing developers have to find so many different pots of money to cover the costs to build these homes. And so that's, I think, another issue that can partially be addressed by state and local policy, but it als- is also dictated by, events that are completely out of our control, right? Like interest rates, tariffs, the pool-- labor pools, things like that. And developers have to contend not just with, "Where do I find my money?" But also "How do I figure out, a way to keep my costs low so that I don't need to go out and find even more money?"

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 10:21

I'd like to go back to Bill's question because what rang in my mind was something that you were quoted on, oh, everywhere in the whole wide world, and that's the relationship between climate housing. And The CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, the Prop 45, which is on the ballot in November in California, which is trying to speed up and simplify review. And the argument is that's part of the reason that housing is so expensive and building housing is so expensive in California. do you stand on that?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 11:03

Yeah. So I really point the finger at any one thing when it comes to the cost of building in California or anywhere. I think it's a confluence of, several factors. That being said, one of the biggest factors with regards to the difficulty and the cost of building California is risk and uncertainty lawsuits brought against housing projects or just the threat of a lawsuit from the California Environmental Quality Act adds a lot of time, uncertainty, and risk to a project which raises the project's cost. Investors don't want to invest in a project that they think may face, years of litigation. developers have trouble acquiring sites or just getting a loan from a bank if they know that that developer still has to go through a pretty lengthy environmental review process. And I think that-- I don't think that it's that we have to choose one or the other, whether it's, supporting environmental protections and adding more housing. I think the challenge is we often at times have those conversations in a silo. We don't understand that they're actually quite complementary. There, there's a lot of research out there that shows that, providing more housing particularly within existing communities and in places that already have density are actually really environmentally advantageous to, say, having a lot of greenfield development in the Central Valley or the Inland Empire or in other states entirely, right? So if California is not building enough homes to house everyone that wants to live here, those people are oftentimes forced to move to places like Nevada, Arizona, Texas, that do not have the same environmental quality standards that California has. People need to live places, and even if we are not building the homes, they will live somewhere. And if we're not meeting that demand that's why you see tremendous growth in places like Texas and Florida, and they are not-- their rules around environmentally sensitive building are much looser than ours. And so we actually end up e-even though CEQA is meant to protect in many cases, en-environmental-- environmentally sensitive places or help mitigate against climate change if we're pushing people to Texas we're actually doing the opposite. By pushing people to Texas, limiting the ability of oursel- limiting the ability to build homes because of a lengthy litigation process that leads to a lot of risk.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 13:18

Woof

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 13:18

So yeah, there's a lot of overlap between the two.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 13:21

Well, what, CEQA, the California Environmental Protection and all that, It was created to protect the environment from the coastline and the environment. It's now used by neighborhood groups as a weapon to stop construction of housing in their neighborhoods. For example, to stop the construction of multiple units, five-story units in, in their neighborhoods so that the single-home mistake will continue. Isn't the day of the single-home dwelling ending? Aren't people-

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 14:05

I'm like, I'm gonna sell mine.

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 14:08

I wouldn't say it's ending. I would say if you look at the housing stock throughout California, the vast majority of our homes are still single-family homes. The vast major-- I say the vast majority, but, the the majority of homes that we continue to build in California and most communities continue to be single-family homes. And so that also is something that is highly desirable by first-time homebuyers. A lot of people aspire to living in a single-family home, and so I don't think we're ever gonna not build that housing typology. Ex-exactly, and, we built so much of it, and I think the challenge has been we haven't always balanced out the desire of people to ultimately have that, white picket fence and large yard with of the realities of the need for really much more diverse housing stock. And so for a long time, we had a series of rules in place in most communities that only allowed for single-family homes. Which again, is not a bad building typology, but a lot of folks, need apartments, or they need smaller single-family homes, or they need a townhome or a condo. A lot of local rules would strictly prohibit those things in many parts of the city. And so I think now what we're seeing is a rebalancing of our housing priorities, understanding that while a lot of people aspire to homeownership, particularly like large-scale homes we haven't allowed for other things to people to build up to that point in their lives. We haven't built enough rental property for people to live affordably and save enough for a down payment. We haven't built enough smaller scale starter homes for people to finally get, a toe into homeownership with hopes of maybe upsizing down the road. We just have se- there are several rungs of the ladder towards homeownership and just housing stability. for a long time, California's only been building at the top end of that ladder which is again, the large single-family home.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 15:51

That's an interesting point that I, I-- This, you've really just opened my eyes to that I guess you would say a problem. But that's where the money isn't it? Building the

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 16:01

Yeah

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 16:02

and selling them, and that's where the politics are

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 16:06

It-- yeah, I think that's generally true. It is much easier to buy one large plot of land on the outskirts of a city and build, hundreds of homes than it is to many times build, like a town home on a plot of... on a parcel that's in a community that's already built out. It's hard to do. And so I do think going back to the earlier question about, how CEQA can be used to stop projects I do think, we have seen lawmakers understand the need to rebalance some of our policies with need to allow for more housing. And so many laws have been passed in recent years to create some exemptions for housing that the state has deemed kind of a priority. So this is again, like capitally affordable housing or small-scale homes like accessory dwelling units, backyard cottages, things like that. So we've created some exemptions from the CEQA process and the general approval process in instances where the lawmakers have agreed and stakeholder groups have agreed that we should be supporting more of this kind of development. And and, the, the governor has put his foot down on this too. Last year, he signed legislation that greatly expanded exemptions to CEQA. And you mentioned this earlier, but there's now also a proposition on the ballot too that would even go a bit further than that specifically for housing. This is that California did before a lot of other places was to kinda create the the create the California Environmental Quality Act. And I think we're also one of the first places to realize that there needs to be a restructuring that policy to both continue to allow for projects to be examined for environmental issues particularly in sensitive places, but also it doesn't continue to be a barrier to more broader housing supply creation

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 17:57

Can I just personal for a minute? I have a friend who lives in manufactured housing, which we call some, RV parks.

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 18:08

Sure

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 18:09

She is very worried, as are her neighbor- neighbors in the park, their park may well be sold to a developer Who will then build a large housing, but not RV not manufactured housing, not motor homes. she said there are fewer and fewer, that California, and I'd like to know if you think this is true, has really lost a lot of these homes to dev- to developers who are gonna use the area to build different kinds of housing. And that is just alienating some, what she thinks is a very good resolution to the problem of affordable housing. Just being able to live in an RV park for many people, including this friend of mine is what they can afford. And she argues that, sure you can move the house, but it costs, she says, like $40,000. Why isn't some interest, some concern being focused on that issue? I agree. I think that the the, the manufacturing housing, the mo- the, the mobile home is a, a good idea to help with this problem, yet the number of the parks in which they can live is shrinking

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 19:31

Yeah, it's a really great point, and I'm glad you brought it up because there's, I think in a lot of the policies passed in recent years, there hasn't always been explicit guidelines for or explicit prohibitions for property that has manufactured housing on it and mobile homes on it. I think some lawmakers have been trying to backpedal and include those protections. But by and large, the i-idea from a lot of the reforms we've seen at the state level there is a recognition that you don't want to directly displace people in favor of housing that then those displaced people cannot afford. And so in many of the laws, there's explicit language that prohibits developers from accessing CEQA exemptions if people have been living on that site for, la- any time within the last 10 years or what have you. I think with manufactured housing specifically and I think this is not just an issue of of builders buying these sites for new housing. It's actually become a target as well for private equity who a lot of times will come in and acquire these parks and raise, raise the fees or the prices that they charge because they understand that those those communities may be in a strategically important place for them from an investment perspective, and they eye an opportunity to squeeze out individuals in order to get more out of their investment. So I think it's a problem that is coming from a lot of different angles. But I would say California is probably a lot better than other states in terms of

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 21:02

really?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 21:02

Including protections for who live on that site already. Because I think there's a real concern, and we've seen this in past practices, that you will have developers who, offer to buy property at a rate that is not what the property is worth, as a means to lower the land value. and so there's been a lot, again, in some of the legislation that's been passed recently that's supposed to stop those kinds of practices. I don't-- Again, this is-- I don't think for mobile homes has been extended the same way it has been for, say, apartment buildings. So I think that still remains a challenge and I know some lawmakers are trying to extend those protections to those those residents as well.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 21:41

The lawmakers have passed and they're discussing measures that would really change the shape of Los Angeles in that it would permit the construction of multiple story dwellings near transit s- stations. The idea is very worthy. You want people to get out of their cars and get on the trains and and use public transportation, and that's the goal of these measures. The opposition to it though is that "Hey, wait a minute. I I bought this house here and put some money into it, and and we love this house, and now the city's gonna let them build a five or six story monster, down the street from me or in my backyard."

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 22:32

Yeah.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 22:32

I, I've gotta say I've... I'm sympathetic to that too. So how do you balance

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 22:39

I

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 22:39

it? You're talking-- This, this thing with the transit station construction really exemplifies the issue that's before us when we talk about building more affordable housing, because the affordable housing would be high rises and the victims would be people who have single family dwellings near those high rises. So how do you balance this?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 23:09

Yeah, I think it's human nature to reflexively be opposed to change, particularly when it comes to something like your home, where you have, like you said deep investments both emotionally and financially. And so that I think is a kind of a, a fair reaction to something that may change the look and feel of a place that they-- that s- that someone lives. A- and I think a lot of times when we talk about the changing aspects of the neighborhood, most of California, does not live near a rail station. don't live near a subway platform. And so a lot of the laws that we talk about, specifically, I think Senate Bill 79, doesn't really apply to the vast majority of places in California. Now, in the instances where it does, particularly in Los Angeles, where you have significant investments in transit infrastructure next to fairly low-density housing, I think the question is those investments in transit infrastructure, are they being supported correctly by the housing or lack of housing around those stations? And so that's the intent of not just Senate Bill 79, but a lot of cities themselves are undertaking these rezonings or changes in their laws to promote more housing near transit. Now, sometimes that could result in a single-family home being turned into a multi-family building. I will say we don't have that many examples of, a tower going in next to a single-family home. Many times, the requirements for height or bulk are stepped down the further you get away from a rail station as a way to mitigate that really kind of jarring juxtaposition of a high-rise in a single-family home. But I also wanna take a step back and recognize when we have these conversations about, oh, we're gonna put that maybe is visually unappealing to me next to near my home also talking about people living in those homes. I think it's important to have conversation not about units or buildings but about individuals and families who will ultimately be served by that, and have-- then have a real honest conversation about what that means for that community, right? There's a lot of concern that, oh if something is built next to my property, it's gonna devalue my single-family home. We have no evidence that ever happens. In fact, higher levels of construction near existing neighborhoods actually increases home value. So laws that we have that would, say, allow for, multiple units on a single-family home that actually raises the value of the land because then you can actually build more on that land if you wanted to sell that property. And so I think that there's a bit of a cognitive dissonance between, my desire to protect my property value but also the fact that, something- being built next to me that doesn't look and feel like the home I live in, and so that feels like that is maybe not intuitive

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 26:04

I don't know. This is really causing me to-- my little brain to whir around. But let's say West LA, of a sudden comes in. Who's gonna be able to afford it? And if there is a affordable housing written in to the construction, the politics of that be amazing. I can see a, an organized protest against it among single family homeowners who may not want the kind of people who need help with affordable housing in their area. That's a hot political potato. What do you do?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 26:50

You say you could envision that happening, and it's like that's happening already.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 26:53

Yep

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 26:54

on a project-by-project basis, you probably have seen this in different neighborhoods. I see it all the time in the Bay Area.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 26:59

has signs

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 27:00

Yeah, exactly.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 27:01

Up zoning. We

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 27:03

Exactly.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 27:03

near her.

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 27:05

see that a lot. And I think, again that's not surprising because you are talking about changing the way a neighborhood looks and feels. At the same time, I think we have to, recognize that we as a state have a shared a shared value in making sure people have places to live, and there's not always going to be the exact same neighborhood for years. Cities are meant to grow and change, and I think part of that is introducing new housing in thoughtful ways. I think there are certainly examples where, something may be built that is ridiculously out of scale with something, in-- that already exists in the community. always gonna see pushback about that, and I think a, a savvy developer would sit down with the community and come up with a compromise. 'Cause generally, when you have these conversations or when you have people who are opposed to a project, they will oftentimes say we would like to see something built, but we would like to see something built in a different way." and if you can actually come to some sort of understanding about, maybe it's not 15 stories, maybe it's 10 stories or, maybe it's even shorter than that, or maybe it's spread out along greater area, you can, I think, get most of the people on board. I think the challenge is you're always gonna have a couple folks who are just not happy with new housing whatsoever. And in California, we've created a policy structure where that one person or those two people can completely derail a project even if the full community supports it. And that's where we have to find this kind of rebalancing where if we don't necessarily wanna just allow anything everywhere, but at the same time, we don't wanna allow individuals to s-simply stop projects for years on end just by the threat of a lawsuit. They don't even need to necessarily file one.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 28:54

That's the that,

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 28:55

There's a political government

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 28:55

that's the use of the environmental laws to stop projects is what you're talking about. People are doing that. We were talking about that earlier, right?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 29:04

Exactly

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 29:05

That's a tough one. It's been very politicized. There are two camps you might say. There are the NIMBYs, not in my backyard, And the-- and then there's the yes in my backyard.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 29:17

Diamonds

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 29:17

Yes.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 29:18

and you

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 29:19

can

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 29:19

and with your writings and your your jobs are-- seem to be more in the yes in my backyard camp. that unfair?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 29:27

No, that's I think absolutely fair. I think if you look at all of our body of work our, goal as an organization is to pro- promote solutions that will increase the supply of housing of all kinds, housing permanent supportive housing. That is why we exist, is to examine and explore ideas and policies that can alleviate the hous- housing and affordability challenge. And the root of that, I firmly believe, is that we just haven't built enough homes. If you look at the state of California today, we permit 100, 120,000 new homes per year. you go back to the '60s and '70s and '80s, the state of California was permitting a quarter million to 300,000 homes per year. That was with a much smaller population and a much smaller economy. So we have through policy decisions, made it really difficult to build enough homes to accommodate the people who would like to live in California and remain in California. And so-- And that to me is, again, it's a policy choice. We can have a choice that our neighborhoods are gonna look the same forever, that we don't want to change the look and feel of any place in California. Or we can make a choice to balance, the des- concerns and desires of people to live in a, a livable place. But recognizing that we need to do a lot more when it comes to building housing, and sometimes that's gonna require some change, and sometimes that can be uncomfortable. But I firmly believe that you can accomplish both things. You don't have to necessarily, build nothing but high-rises everywhere. There's a term that we c- talk about in housing called gentle density, which is creating homes that used to be legal 40, 50 years ago. Things like, duplexes or townhomes kind of cottage clusters, things that add more people to the neighborhood without really changing the look and feel of the place. I think we get caught up in these conversations or debates around like a high-rise near a transit station, when again, the majority of the state is low-density single-family homes, and we're not talking about building, huge towers in those places. I think the conversation needs to be about how do we legalize the thing that used to be legal many years ago and that many of us recognize as being like charming and and inviting and at the s- correct scale? Most places c- explicitly ban those things. So in, in a neighborhood where, most homes are single-family homes, I am not allowed to build two homes. That's just the law. And that's an explicit policy choice by policymakers in that city. And a lot of the laws coming out of Sacramento are meant to chip away at some of those exclusionary practices so that we can build not just in hu- in, in really dense nodes along transit, but more I think understandable or reasonable type of housing, h-housing typologies in more neighborhoods overall. To me, that's kind of the sweet spot. I think you, you do need to invest in housing in high-quality transit corridors because we have also an issue of ridership with transit, and part of addressing that issue is getting more people closer to transit so they use it. But the v- again, the vast majority of California does not have transit or at least the kind of transit where people are gonna use it regularly. But that doesn't mean that we can't be adding housing in those communities too. There's still plenty of environmental benefits for building infill housing, even if there's not transit accessibility. There's... You can leverage existing infrastructure, proximity to good schools and amenities. We don't need to give people access to those things by completely changing entire blocks of neighborhoods per se.

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 33:03

I wanna take the last question, and it's not an easy one. I wanna know, David, do you actually believe that we can ever solve homeless problem, the affordable housing problem? I don't see it. do you think? How? If? Why?

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 33:26

Yes. Yes, I do believe it, and I think that's why I'm in this work is because I do believe there is a path forward. I continue to believe that because I look at what we've been able to do in the past. I said the numbers earlier, but, in the state of California and the country at large to build a lot more. And we used to build a lot of things that today we would go into... We were smaller. We had a,

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 33:51

But we were

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 33:51

a--

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 33:51

the politics were different

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 33:51

Exactly. We were a kind of a...

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 33:54

money.

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 33:55

And we've gotten I think a lot of, We have a lot of opportunity to revisit what we used to do right as a state and think about what does that look like today. So not necessarily taking, cutting and pasting what another state is doing or what we did 50 years ago and just plopping it into 2026. It's really looking at what is the outcome we want as a state, how to, how do we learn from how we were able to do this in the past, and how do we tailor that for what people need and want today. So again, that's l- that looks like allowing more homes in more types of places and not concentrating all of our development, let's say, around transit. And I think it also requires an examination of what are the other rules and requirements that we have as, in a state that have made it so we're only building 30% of the homes that we used to build decades ago, right? What is driving the cost of construction? What is making it hard for builders to obtain financing? What are all of these things that we need to untangle in order to really get the spigot turned on and get the housing built that we need. And so I think it is not again, it's not one thing. I think we oftentimes talk about is it CEQA? Is it impact fees? Is it, this or that? It's all of it. I think there's not one policy you can enact that's gonna completely change the dynamic. It is taking a holistic, comprehensive, and honest look all of the factors that go into the cost to build a home and the difficulty and the risk associated with doing that.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:27

David, thank you very much. Helping us dig into this, really

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 35:31

I

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:32

the,

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 35:32

about this stuff for hours, so I appreciate...

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:34

We'll be

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:35

it's going to be the, it's going to be the issue, it's gonna be one of the issues, the issue maybe, in the November election for mayor of

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:43

In the mayor's race

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:44

Los Angeles. We'll all be talking about it, and you gave us a good head start. Thank you very much for being here

squadcaster-1c7a_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:51

thank you

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 35:51

for having me, and I look forward to being back.

host-4ha0_3_07-22-2026_115435 35:54

Bye-bye

david-garcia_3_07-22-2026_115312 35:55

Take care