Mark Dunkelman

And that, by the mid-1970s, speaking truth to power is the central idea of the progressive movement.

I think what abundance has done for the first time really since then is to open up a conversation about whether we need to rethink that core notion of what progressivism is about in the old notion.

The sense was that we needed to, in all cases, put more oversight on government rather than letting it cook.

And now I think we're beginning to say, many of us on the far left and in more moderate circles, like we need government to function just sort of generally.

And I think like that was not a conversation we were having 18 months ago in nearly the same way.

Well, housing, to my mind, is sort of an outlier within the abundance agenda because

Because unlike in linear infrastructure, transit lines, train lines, electrical transmission lines, the challenge here is to empower someone who owns a plot of land to build housing or more housing on it.

And I say that because in this circumstance, in the world of housing, the challenge is that the state wants more housing, and the person that has purchased a plot of land wants to build housing, but the neighborhood

Doesn't.

Right.

So you've got it's sort of a sandwich and it's the peanut butter and jelly that's gumming up the works.

And in this case, in the case of housing, like what Buffy Wicks and Scott Wiener have largely tried to do is to push power down to the homeowner.

which feels good to us as progressives who want to speak truth to power.

We don't like it when some oppressive force sitting above us tells us we can't do the thing that is good.

And so empowering someone who lives near a transit stop, who has an underutilized piece of land in the city that they can build a bunch of housing on it, feels good to us, and that's largely what's passed.

It's pushing power down

to land owners so that they can do more.

And then you reach into these challenges of financing and whatnot.

I have to say, in the scheme of things, you guys are journalists and I have spent a long time in politics.

The idea that a year later you'd have a bunch of more housing built because of a book seems a little far-fetched to me.