Xavier Becerra

Every local government must then fall in place to make sure they're doing their fair share.

The lawsuit against Huntington Beach was because Huntington Beach had its own housing element plan.

It itself had...

made it clear that they needed to build several hundred units of new housing, and then they reneged.

And so when we sued them, we said, it's in your own plan.

You're just not willing to do it.

The reason we won is because they were violating the law.

The case against San Mateo County was simply to...

Make it clear that the state has a role when it comes to housing because while we all are Californians and we're Angelenos or Oaklanders or whatever else, we all have to be able to live and work and survive in California.

So the state of California has a role to play.

I defended California.

The law that said that every jurisdiction is accountable to meet its housing responsibility.

And we prevailed in court and found that that law was constitutional, which set the foundation for us to now be able to push and see the legislation that has now become law that's going to let us build more.

Two issues, Ezra, and this I say as the former chief and law enforcement officer for the state of California.

The difficulty with enforcement is sometimes the penalties, the fines are never enough.

It's almost the cost of doing business to violate the law.

You're willing to pay the cost of the fines to not have to go in that direction.

The second problem is, of course, it takes forever.

And so I take when I've been attorney general or when I was secretary of health and human services on the health care side, the approach I took when there's a law in place that requires you to do something.

I would first give you leash.