Xavier Becerra

Look.

We're a society that believes that we must, and we teach our kids to follow rules.

And if you're a city and you see the housing crisis and you're not following the rules,

then get ready because I'm going to enforce.

I will use the powers of the state, working with the attorney general, working with our housing and community development agencies, and working with those who are willing to push the envelope to say, I'm going to give you a reason to do this building.

I'm going to give you an incentive.

I'll put you in the front of the line.

But at some point, you're going to pay the price because we need to build.

And I believe, Matt didn't identify the project specifically, but this was a project in the San Diego County area that was in the hills in wildfire risky areas.

It was a pretty large development, several thousand units.

It had one route for egress.

And we went to the developer and we went to the county and said, this is a safety hazard.

This is something that could lead to the loss of life if indeed we have a wildfire.

This was when I was AG between 2017 and 2021, way before Palisades and Altadena.

And we simply said to them, if you're going to build that many housing units and people are going to be living up there and there's a wildfire that hits, you better have a way for these folks to be able to save their lives.

Having one route of egress was not going to do it.

So we said to them, if you're not going to take care of this, guess what?

We're going to have to sue you.

We tried.

We tried not to do the litigation.