Matt Mahan

Thank you all for coming out and being pro-housing.

This issue is very personal for me.

I grew up in a house, remembering my parents argue about how we were going to pay the mortgage, and we were lucky to have a mortgage.

My sisters have since moved out of state because they couldn't afford the cost of living here.

So you asked about the state.

And first, let me, as I come around to what we can do across the board, let me just share what we've done in San Jose, because I came into this problem of we've approved 22,000 homes and they're not getting built.

So we're saying yes, and we're celebrating the beautiful rendering and it's in the paper and everybody's excited except the neighbors who say we don't want it.

And it doesn't matter because we don't break ground.

And if you look at the RAND study, its time and its fees are the two big levers we have control over.

And the state can impose upon cities some standards and requirements and caps that can hold us accountable.

Now, we didn't wait for that in San Jose.

In the last two years, we have moved our multifamily housing approvals in our downtown, all of our planned growth areas along all of our transit corridors to what's called a ministerial approval.

I mean, it's essentially by right.

Doesn't go to the planning commission, doesn't come to the city council.

It's just a weekly hearing in the planning department, and you get told to go.

It actually exempts CEQA.

So you're building by right if you conform with what we've zoned, and we've zoned for dense multifamily housing in these areas.

We have dramatically reduced the timeline for building.

So I am deep in this right now as a mayor of a big city.

We just had a 560 unit project