Tom Steyer

and the estimates that people have both from the real world of having done it but also projecting what they think they could do start at 20 and they go up from there and these are real things and these are companies that are like manufacturing companies so therefore they need revenues and orders and the state of california can do that and it can change the building codes

The second thing in order to drive down the cost of housing is about finance.

And the state of California has a number of finance programs.

In fact, Buffy Wicks is proposing a $10 billion housing bond, which I think is incredibly important.

And I should say... Excuse me, excuse me.

Hold it till the end.

And I should say that the nonprofit community bank that my wife, Kat Taylor, and I started in Oakland, California, has financed 17,000 low-income housing units.

We need to use finance much more aggressively to drive down the cost of housing.

And the third thing I'll say is this.

The cities and counties in California do not want to have housing in general.

As someone said to me one time, they'd rather have a used car lot than they would a new housing, a new apartment building.

The reason is used car lots don't go to school, used car lots don't take healthcare costs.

And so a real reason that housing is so expensive, both in terms of the time that it takes to get permits,

But also, cities and counties will charge very large fees up to 20% of the cost of the house so that they can sort of preload the cost of having new inhabitants in their community.

I've said that I will...

on day one, call a special election to close a corporate real estate tax loophole worth over $20 billion to the state of California so that instead of when we're talking about a new housing facility in a city or county, it's not

An unfunded liability, an unfunded mandate, it's a funded mandate.

And we can then work with the cities and counties and they can stop dragging their feet.

Well, let me say this.

There is a reason they failed, and there's a reason that most startups fail, which is they don't have revenues and they don't have orders.