Katie Porter

I promise I didn't play that.

So first, I love that you're talking about this RAND study because this is the second time that we've had a housing event where we were asked essentially, what makes construction costs higher?

And I think some people still haven't read the study,

because what the study, I have read the study, what the study point, and we got asked about it before and nobody read it and doesn't seem like they have since.

The study is very, very clear that the speed is the driver.

Now that's not to say there aren't a lot of things that were mentioned that contribute to the speed, but if Colorado, if we could be 22 months faster, which is what Colorado does, which does care about the environment and does have good worker standards,

then the estimates are we could take 10 or even 20% off the price, and that was market rate.

So, yes, we need more housing, but we also need that... More housing is a tool to less expensive housing.

And so I think it's really important to think about all the different tools in your toolkit.

I strongly support the pending legislation that would create one uniform statewide permit, making it easier for everyone to have the same permit, easier for the state to monitor those denials.

I also think it's a really good idea to limit how many sort of last second add-ons can come.

So I think right now you ought to have to, if you're a city and you get a permit, you should have 30 days.

That's the proposal in the legislature.

You could argue it could be 45 or 60 to say, this is what the fees are going to be.

This is your contribution for sewer.

This is your contribution for school.

And then you cannot do what we see now,

which is just a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, which is a little bit more delay and then a little bit more cost until pretty soon the project is unaffordable.

So those are just a couple of ideas.

I also do think there are innovations in architectural design, particularly for multifamily, that could be really helpful, especially smaller multifamily, where we're seeing things that are four units have to apply the same standards essentially as something that's 400 units.