Tom Steyer

And so the question is, A, does the technology work?

B, does it drive down costs?

And C, do they have enough orders so that they're making money and able to sustain themselves and then to finance themselves into much bigger enterprises?

And the answer is the state of California can change the building codes.

The state of California can give those orders, and we can actually drive this business so that, in fact, not only do they do what they say they can do, but they can get economies of scale going forward to get the kind of size that it needs so that we can really get what they say they can do.

Because the estimates right now are we can drive down the cost per square foot by 20%.

But I can tell you, because I've talked to them, that the people who run these companies see that as a first step and they can think they can go much further than that.

And let me say this, there are 40,000 units in San Francisco, California that are permitted, that are zoned, that are not being built because they can't afford to build them to a price that people can afford to buy them.

So this is actually, the ability to drive down this cost is an absolutely critical part of building, you know,

multiples of what we've been building for the last four years.

And in fact, solving the housing crisis and putting it in a place where working people, working families can afford to buy.

So it's really getting this right is a critical part of the mix.

You should know that for the last 11 years, we've had 20 people in Sacramento working on legislation and being part of this system for the whole time to trying to put together coalitions and work for progressive policies.

Second of all, I've run three ballot initiatives in the state of California, all of which have required a coalition of legislators, of unions, of...

interest groups, including many times chambers of commerce, including in the case of getting a tobacco tax, getting the people in the medical associations.

But let me say this too.

Listening on this stage, we're talking a lot about how we're going to incent cities and counties.

You're talking about, in my mind, two different things.

One is, how are we going to organize the agencies within the state government?

How are we going to relate to the cities and counties around the state of California?