Matt Mahan

Tens of billions of dollars.

And I think we...

made a mistake politically in trying to convince voters that if they invested in something we need, which is the development of new affordable housing, that they would suddenly see all the tent encampments disappear.

And it's not either or, but the truth is one solution is very slow and expensive and only so scalable, frankly, at least with that mechanism.

And as the tent encampments persisted, I think we lost a lot of public support

for the approach.

And so what has worked in San Jose, and I've stood in room after room, we have built 23 interim housing sites.

And I've seen rooms with hundreds of angry neighbors, red in the face, shouting and saying, we're going to recall you.

And my commitment to them has been, we're going to make your neighborhood better, not worse off.

And this is, I think the details matter.

What we've been able to demonstrate to residents around those 23 sites, and we're not perfect.

I'm sure if I say this, someone's going to tweet at me with a photo of something that's gone wrong.

So I'm just going to acknowledge that up front.

But

What we've done is we've been really radically pragmatic.

When we buy that old motel that's run down and we convert it into transitional housing, or we buy those modular units, some of which are now stacked and built at 300,000 a unit, and you could live in them long-term.

They're very nice.

Some of which are literally just tiny sleeping cabins.

We made a commitment to the neighbors in a radius around that site that there's going to be a local preference.

If you're homeless in that area, you get first dibs on that housing.