 All right, it's ready. Victoria, do you want that? It's a card. If you can hand it to me, please come to the stage. We've got three cards. Just this. All right. Does everybody start settling in? Are you having fun yet? Yeah. So I wanted to start out just thanking everybody for coming to what has been a really moving and incredible conference for me. It has been so wonderful meeting people, meeting people from across the country who feel as passionately about this issue as I do. You know, sometimes in San Francisco, especially I feel like I'm this great person hanging out with them out there. And it's nice to know that there's a big, broad community of people who believe in cities and who want them to function for everyone and who believe that it is going to take a lot of political work to get us there, who are going to engage in that political process with us. And on that note, I want to introduce one of my favorite people in local politics, Senator Scott Wiener. So one of the first things I did when I was kind of getting excited about this issue is I wrote an article, like an op-ed in our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. And I was like, well that's silly, like no one's going to care, but I did it, yay. And I get this like, oh my god, it turns out Scott Wiener said, find me that woman. And immediately scheduled a coffee date and was like, I want to talk to you, figure out what you're about, because it seems like you really care about this issue. And he has done everything he can to empower this movement from day one. He was one of the first people who recognized the power that we were going to have to change the system and wanted to be the vanguard of this movement. And so I just want to say thank you so much, Scott Wiener, for everything you have done. So the first question, what's it like to have so many fans? Well, I apologize to your fans and sometimes you have detractors too. Although they're here protesting you, not me. Usually I'm the one they're protesting. So I have to say I am, I really love what the Yimbi movement is doing. Not just because it's empowering people and especially young people that get involved who maybe haven't been involved before. But in a very selfish way, it allows me more space to do the work that I do because you are a partner, you create political momentum that didn't exist before. When I first took office in 2011 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, it was pretty lonely being pro-housing in City Hall. You would have hearings on projects or on legislation and it was just all these people opposing and just being anti-housing and anti-development would be there and the only people who were really advocating for more housing were people in the planning department and the developers. And of course people, you know, the developers have a financial interest so people don't listen to that very much. And then over time, as the Yimbi movement grew, we would have a counterbalance. We would have people showing up and talking about what about my house and what about my future? What about I want to have a family? I want to be able to stay here in the Bay Area and have a life. And that is just a very, very, very powerful thing and it has completely shifted and balanced out the dynamic. We still have opposition and that's fine. It is a free country and people have a right to whatever view they want but we now have a much greater diversity of viewpoints represented so thank you. So a lot has been happening since we, and I take credit for this, since we moved you up to Sacramento. You know, I think there's a lot, a big appetite in a way that we had never seen before for doing real statewide change on these issues on saying that the problem is statewide and therefore the solution is going to be statewide. And I think you as a junior senator is how people refer to you disparagingly often. Refreshing. Refreshing. Have taken an incredible leadership role validating my choices. And I'm wondering, you know, this sort of you taking, did you think that new blood was necessary? It seems to me like someone brave and new blood was needed to really take the lead on these California-wide issues but what has been your experience since moving up to Sacramento? Sure and thank you. A lot of people in this room really did help get me to the Senate. When you have a friend of one who did follow the race it was a sort of crazy race and I won by 8,000 votes out of almost a half a million cast. So it was a very close race and so I'm really appreciative of all the support and housing was definitely a big issue in the race. There were several stark differences between me and my opponent so thank you. And getting up to Sacramento, one of the, there are many ways, many reasons why being in the legislature is so much better than being in Congress and God bless everyone in Congress who's fighting the good fight for us right now. But for the, there are reasons that you know but one of the reasons that you may not know is when you go to Congress it takes like forever to be able to get this and you're already necessary to do anything. It can take 10, 15, 20 years. The great thing about the California legislature is you can hit the ground running on day one. You don't want to be arrogant about it. I still have a lot to learn and I am very respectful of the people who have been doing this longer. But you really have the space if you choose to take it up to be aggressive. And so on housing I decided early on and I wanted to be very aggressive on state housing policy because really in the end the state is the only entity that has the power to hold local communities accountable for doing what they need to do. And I don't like to demonize local government because people in local government overwhelming their people who just care about their communities and they're trying to do the right thing but they often, they don't have the space to do it because there's so much opposition and it's really hard to be a local elected office if you're trying to make a positive change around housing. And so the state can provide some of that support and some of that coverage. I've had a number of city council members around the state who have approached me over the last six months and said, you know what, I can't say this publicly but thank you for doing a streamlining bill because it's so hard for us to push back when we get all of this resistance to development. But this will just be a nice gesture we'll work on it for the next 10 years and hopefully go out and get something done. And what I realized pretty quickly and I was pleasantly surprised was that the amount of pro-house will see that it's gotten to a breaking point. And so we have bipartisan support. I have some very conservative Republicans and some very, very lefty Democrats who are supporting it. I also just want to give a lot of credit to the leadership of both houses. The president of the Senate, Senator Kevin De Leon, who represents part of Los Angeles, from the minute I went to see him when we started this and talked to him about it, he didn't even blink. He immediately said, this is a great idea. He said, you know, we've, you know, enough with the instructionism. He got it immediately and has been just a staunch supporter from the very beginning. And the speaker of the Assembly, Anthony Rendon, has also just been a staunch supporter. And so without the support of the legislative leadership, it would have been really hard to move the bill. So it's been good to be able to get a quick start. Really awesome to hear that there's a lot of hope. I think that some of us who've been in the trenches feel, you know, often pretty embattled in this issue and you were out there putting your neck out, you know, earlier than many of us. And one thing that I want to ask, I think, is what keeps you motivated? What keeps you saying, I want to keep banging my head up against this wall? Obviously success is always fun, but I'm wondering, you know, when you have the days when things, when you feel like, you know, the law of legislation that you're trying to put forward, and some walls, what are things that keep you going? Sure. I mean, for me, it's pretty personal. So I've lived in San Francisco. I am a district for 20 years. And I've lived in your old gay man coming to San Francisco, to the Castro for the same reasons that generations before me have done, both gay and straight, people coming to the city to make a life for themselves. And what I've seen over the years is that it's become progressively harder for people to do that. And, you know, for me, I was lucky. I came, I got a rent control department, and then seven years later, in 2004, I was able to buy a very small 500 square foot condo in the Castro, and so I feel like I'm lucky. I will never, in a unit in the Castro, be bigger than the unit I'm going to be in this unit until I die. Probably I can't afford anything else. I could not afford to come into my own neighborhood today, and I'm not poor. And so when I see around me, in my own community, the number of, for example, LGBT seniors who are being pushed out, who are people come up to me on the street and say, my landlord is painting my building, and I'm terrified that that means I'm going to be a victim, that we've gotten to the point where tenants are scared when they see their landlord doing something that should make you happy, painting the building. And, you know, the number of people I know in my community who they have a kid, and maybe they have a second kid, and they can't make do in a one-bedroom apartment anymore, and there's nowhere for them to go that they can possibly afford it, so they leave. Sometimes I come over to the East Bay, putting gentrification pressures in Oakland, and hence some of the protests that we see, sometimes they leave the state entirely. And so for me, it just breaks my heart when people who are so committed to San Francisco, to the Bay Area, to California, just can't make a go of it because of bad housing policy for the last 50 years, and so I'm committed to changing that. I think so, California... California, I think we've had the benefit of things being the worst here, in a strange way, you know, it gives us the leadership opportunity, I guess, to turn it around, and I'm wondering what advice we've got people from as far away as London here, and I'm wondering what advice do you have, especially maybe for other people, elected officials who are looking to take a leadership, what advice would you learn that you think would be helpful for people? Sure, well, I think for leaders, people who are in elected office or who may aspire to be in elected office, you have to be prepared to just be abused. And it's not just around housing, around any kind of like when you're talking about fundamental change, you know, you're going to rile people up, so I, you know, for my six years in the Board of Supervisors and now in the Senate, particularly when I was in the local office and I was, you know, they tried, they were in the Mission District in San Francisco with a terrible problem with this place and that neighborhood particularly of our Latino community. Frankly, it's been going on for, you know, about 50 years. I've read articles in the 70s about mass protests and the mission because Latino families are being displaced, but it's accelerated over time, and it's a problem and it's bad. And, you know, we all want it to stop and do what we can to help. But there were some people who, in my view, had a misguided idea that the solution was to put a moratorium on housing in the Mission. They went to the Board of Supervisors and they went to the ballot. Unfortunately, we were able to defeat that measure. And I was one of the most vocal opponents of it and I felt like even though it would have been easier to keep my head down and just not support and not say anything, I felt like it was really important to have vocal political leadership to say this is not the right approach. It's just going to make it even worse. I, you know, I got protests in my house. I got, you know, this, you know, like this on a number of occasions. That's why I was happy when they protested me today. You know, PTSD eventually. And you just have to have super thick skin because the people who are protesting are raising, you know, these folks outside, they're raising real issues, right? These are real issues about people being pushed out and it's on us to try to really get the message out that the solution is to have more housing. And so it's also, I think, you know, just being so tightly organized and having sort of the shock troops who can, you know, Laura and Sonia and Brian and everyone who like, you know, get people out to a public hearing or bust people up to Sacramento to testify. That kind of tight organization really matters. And building out an organization where year after year after year you continue is really hard. It requires enormous energy. It requires succession planning because we all have shelf life. And then, you know, we move on to other things. And so just keeping that momentum and having a strong organization really matters a lot. So are you hiring? Not at the moment, but I did. I hired one of my legislators. I thought maybe she would be here today, but she deserves a break. Andy Fryman, who I hired, she was one of the original EMBs. And I hired her as a legislator. She does all of my housing and transportation work, including SB 35, which is like a labor of love for her. She's just done tremendous work, but we'll be hiring some. So a lot of the ways in which EMBs engage with this is in campaigns. And campaign work is some of the most brutal work that I think elected officials do and that activists do. And I'm wondering, you know, when you're picking kind of, I think that you got pegged as like the smart nerd. You have to be a square video. Anybody else is really good. You know, you have fully leaned into your identity as a policy walk. And I don't see that very common at all. And I'm wondering, you know, is that more of a personal choice that you've made? Is that, you know, how do you recommend, I think we're trying to go towards science-oriented legislation in the future, and that's a national trend. I'm wondering sort of how you see yourself as part of, where I see you as part of that movement, and I want you to validate that I see that. You know, I, my, and I was really bad at science, by the way, but I trust other people. My view of elected office and succeeding in elected public life is just being who you are and not trying to be something else. And if you think about who are the people that you like the most, whether in politics or in entertainment or in sports, I bet you if you put a list together, it's a lot of people who, it feels like they're authentic. You know, some of the, you know, I love Katie Curry. One of the reasons I love her is I feel like she's just who she is. And she doesn't, you know, and I find that in sports too. Like, there are people who, they just are who they are and they don't try to like, just sort of create a persona. You just feel, you can sort of feel like they're just who they are. And I've tried to be that way in politics. I know that I am, I'm not the life of the party. I'm not the most fascinating, you know, I'm always, you know, in person, in the room. I'm not, I'm sort of a little introverted by nature. So I'm not going to be one of those politicians who's going to just bowl everyone over because I'm like just the sheer magnetism. And so for me, it's always been just being who I am and that is a little bit nerdy. But I've also been, you know, tried to be open about, you know, my own life as a gay man. I, a few years ago, announced three years ago now that I take a medication called PrEP, which is a one-stale pill that almost eliminates the risk of HIV. And at the time, people were telling me, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. You're revealing too much, but I did it because there was a lot of stigma around HIV prevention. And so I thought it would be important to, you know, to try to raise the conversation. And it worked pretty well. And so I've tried to always in all aspects to sort of be who I am, be very transparent. And I think voters like that. I think they like sort of feeling like they know who you are and what you're about. So I'm going to pivot a little bit back to housing because that's what we love. I often run into this conversation, and I know you do too, of housing is a fundamental and it touches every part of our lives and every part of government, that you think you're having a conversation about housing, and then you're having a conversation about transit, and then you're having a conversation about schools, and you're having a conversation about access to services. And, you know, it is so fundamental to our lives that it is very easy to be sidelined into saying we can't solve X until we solve Y. And I have seen you really hit that head-on and say we're going to solve X and we're going to solve Y. And I'm wondering, you know, in those conversations, how do you keep things on track in a sort of solution-based policy? Yeah, I think in talking about housing, it is really important to show the linkages to other things because, as you say, housing is foundational to everything. So we're all trying to try to get more resources into public education to try to make sure that we're doing right by the next generation in stopping the chronic underfunding of public education in California. But you can have the best schools in the world, and if a kid is living with his family couchsurfing or living in a car or in a homeless shelter or overcrowded with 10 people in a one-bedroom apartment, that kid, I can guarantee you, is not going to reach his or her full education potential. They're going to come to school tired and maybe hungry. And so there's that linkage. We try to, you know, one thing that I try to say over and over again is that you cannot be, you cannot say that you are an environmentalist unless you are pro-housing. And, you know, even apart from the extreme examples like the local San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club that persistently opposes infill density, even putting that aside, you know, there are many environmentalists who aren't necessarily opposed to housing, but they're not fighting for housing. Environmentalists must be fighting for housing because we know that if we're just pushing people into long commutes in the sprawl, that is terrible for the environment. 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in California come from the transportation sector, and we have to get that down. And the way you get it down in significant part is letting people take trans to work, walk to work, bike to work, or if they're driving, have a much shorter drive. You know, we talk about economic development, and I have been really frisky 35 and working hard to build business community support for the bill, and we've had some success because, you know, the lack of housing is a huge threat to our economy. If employers don't think their workers are going to be able to find housing somewhat close to work, they're not going to come here or they're not going to grow here or already seeing evidence of California companies who are choosing to grow elsewhere is precisely because of housing. And so it links to so many different challenges that we face, and we have to keep getting that message out. It's not just about housing. It's about housing as a foundation for everything else. So on that note, you know, housing touches everything. Who do you see as the sort of core coalition? We've talked a lot about coalition building at the conference and building allies. What do you think are maybe undertapped resources for us? So I think there's a lot of potential. So we have the affordable housing nonprofit developers who, people who are building housing for low-income people in particular. I think historically they've sometimes just done their own thing, advocated for their own, but I think they've realized more and more that the obstruction of housing, they're just completely tied. They know that they're tied in to that. And I want to recognize Sam Boss from Mission Housing who's here and who's been just a tremendous supporter of pro-housing policies and has taken a lot of heed for it. So thank you, Sam. And so really working with the affordable housing nonprofit and the development world is important and I think it's a very powerful coalition. They're a powerful voice for what we're trying to do, but it's broader than that. You know, some of our strongest supporters of SB35 in addition to the affordable housing developers are the California Apartment Association, the California Association of Realtors. I have disagreements with both groups. I support rent control. You know, we don't always agree, but in terms of needing more housing, they are strong supporters of that. Having that voice, you know, when we talk to more moderate Democrats or even Republicans and they hear that the Apartment Association and the Realtors are supporting it, they might have been skeptical at first, but then they come on board. And I think we have to, you know, what I mentioned before about environmentalism, there are plenty of people in the environmental movement who get it about voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council on board with SB35 even though it is a sequel exemption. We're taking projects out of sequel entirely and we worked with them on some more substantive environmental protections and they've endorsed the bill. And so we shouldn't write anyone off and assume that different groups are going to support. And we even got labor on board. There's a lot of negotiations and we had to make some compromises on the bill. But we were able to build, I think, a pretty diverse coalition and I think we need to build on that for future efforts. So I'm wondering also, there's people here from everywhere. What do you think is next for the new movement? You know, you've been here kind of since the beginning. What do you think is the next challenge for us or opportunity? Where do you see us going? Well, I want to see just more and more of the, whatever you call it, chapter or whatever the term would be, grow around California and in other cities. And so it's become more and more developed in the Bay Area. But I love that there's more happening in LA and, you know, in Orange County and we need it like everywhere in San Diego and then other cities around the country just keep growing the numbers because that's what really matters and getting involved in electoral politics. And there are a lot of people who don't like getting involved in electoral politics, but ultimately when you will, you know, if you can choose candidates for city council or the state legislature or for governor or whatever the case may be and get behind these people, particularly in local office where it doesn't, you know, a modest effort can have big dividends in local office and you can get people elected. We've seen some city councils in Silicon Valley and the South Bay and the peninsula like Palo Alto amounted to you. The councils that were very hostile to housing that are now pro-housing majorities. And so you can flip city councils. And so I think being involved in electoral politics matters. Well, I will second that. So this has been really wonderful. And I'm wondering, you know, last words that you have, we have talked about kind of everything in this movement. I mean, I see us as touching on environmentalism, on social justice, on renters rights. There's so many things that pull together the people in this room together. And I'm wondering, you know, any last words you have so that I want everyone to go out and fight? You know, what I will say is this has to be a long-term movement. I was just talking to some of the folks from LA before about the fact that when we look at trying to get communities today to meet their housing goals, which this state establishes for them, and there's something called the regional housing needs assessment, which I'm sure you're all familiar with, you're in California arena. You know, it's great. We're trying to get people to comply. But there's a backlog. There's a deficit from years and decades on the building. And, you know, as an elected official, the reason, and it's starting to change up, the reason why historically a lot of elected officials have avoided housing as a signature issue is because, unlike some other issues, it takes a long time to solve it. Everyone who made the Affordable Care Act happened. You know, as big as that was, within a few years, there were already tangible benefits, as millions of people went on to health insurance. So even that massive, you know, within your tenure in office, you can deliver results. You can, you know, for even transit infrastructure, you can deliver results. Housing, you know, even if we do everything we're going to do, it's going to take a long time to dig ourselves out of this hole. And as an elected official, that's hard to say, I'm going to do all this work and get beaten up and spend political capital for work that may not bear any visible fruits until after I'm out of office. And that's why you have a lot of elected officials that sort of shy away from a lot of downside and not as much upside. And that's why this has to be a long-term fight. Because if we just, you know, do this, you know, if the YIMBY movement does all this energy and great work for, you know, five, six, seven, eight years and then sort of peters out a little bit as people move on to other things and you haven't done succession planning and kept recruiting the next generation, it's going to, you know, I don't want to say it's all for naught, it's not for naught. You've already made a big difference, but it's not going to meet its potential. If we can make this a movement, like other great movements in this country, we have an environmental movement, we have a civil rights movement, we have had a movement to support children, you know, a movement to support the humane treatment of animals, movements that have sustained themselves for decades, if we can create a housing, a pro-housing movement that sustains itself for decades, we will absolutely make profound change in California and in places across the country. So that's what it's about, long-term sustainability, building a long-term pro-housing movement. Thank you. We're going to take some questions from the audience. I'm going to try and find people, so, yes. Thanks. So what I'm going to ask you is, how much do you think people like the ones outside protesting are mistaken and how much do you think they're opposed? Like, can you analyze and describe for us what you think about the opposing forces and what motivates them, a degree in which some can be reached and some can't and how to reach that, how to interact with that? Well, so... That'll be told in the closer. Okay. So the opponents, they are correct in identifying the problem in terms of escalating housing costs and evictions and displacement. I completely agree with them in identifying that problem. And we all want the same end result to let people stay in their housing, let people thrive. Where I disagree with them, and I think they are mistaken, is that shutting down development will somehow achieve that goal when we know that it will just make that goal even harder to achieve. I think that, and the people outside, I don't know them. I know a lot of the San Francisco protesters. I don't know the Oakland folks as well. I think that there is a real mix. I think that there are people that can't be reached and who you can have that conversation with. There are some people who, the ideology of development is the enemy is so deep that you will never reach them. And the unfortunate thing is, and it's less about the protesters and more about people who, the broader population who might be tempted to listen to that message of new development is what's causing the problem. And those are the people we have to, not necessarily the people on the bullhorn, but the people who are following them on social media and seeing the protests and just getting that messaging out. The unfortunate thing is, there are some very, very, I think, malicious people, and I will not name any names, but some of the San Franciscoans know how I'm talking about, who put out, they're sort of the enablers, whereas they put out theories that are just false, like the theory that supply and demand just simply doesn't apply to housing. The theory that building more housing makes housing more expensive. They'll say that. We've been, I think, shaming them about that they say it less, but they have some, you know, just plaques who will put out papers writing that, that building more housing will make housing more expensive. And, again, not that I don't want to buy into like a simplistic view of supply and demand. Housing, you know, is a unique thing. It's not just like going to the dry cleaner, but the idea that, you know, building more housing makes housing more expensive, and if we just shut down, reduce the amount of housing that we create, then housing will be more affordable. It's a ridiculous argument, but there are people who make that argument, make it in a very sophisticated way and sound really sophisticated, and then it manipulates people and for people who, for people who they see the new development and they don't like it for a variety of reasons. Some people, it's because, oh my God, it makes my neighborhood look different or it brings more traffic in or it blocks my view or there's less sunlight reaching the street and so they don't like it. Other people who say that I hate that new development because wealthier people are living there and I don't want them in my neighborhood. It changes the fabric of who's in my neighborhood. So people have sort of reactions to development which are all, you know, they're entitled to their view, but then what happens is you have these quacks who come in and give them the sheen of this, like, academic, you know, in addition to the fact that you don't like it, it's going to make housing more expensive so it's counterproductive, and they sort of manipulate people into sort of confirming what their internal bias is and that's what is a real, to me, that has to be countered in a very, very forceful way. Okay. Hi, Senator. I'm Alex down in Silicon Valley. Can you help us get into the heads of more so elected officials but potentially developers if you're more comfortable with that? What are elected officials and developers thinking about our kind of ideas? What are the messages that resonate with them in negotiations on your bill or other conversations you're having with them? What are the lessons you're learning from those that you could impart on us? Well, I think that for developers there's a variety and a lot of different kinds of developers and there are developers who are very sort of good government policy oriented. There are some developers that are less so and so we have a mix of experiences. So, you know, there are some, there are developers who their whole business model is sort of single family home building further and further and further out but there are developers who are very committed to building dense and bill housing and really, you know, they understand the policy and they're committed to that. I mean, understanding that, you know, private sector developers that they need to make money and they have to answer their investors so no one has a halo around their head but there, it's a mix and there are, when we work on legislation we talk to a lot of different people from across the spectrum but there are some developers who, they just, you know, they may not agree like on SB35, I have developers who don't agree with every aspect of the bill but they have really valuable input and they can tell you, hey, this is not the way you're structuring this isn't going to work for X, Y, or Z reasons or this will work and so having that expertise helps as long as you view it in the context of other voices as well and so I think that the development community again, at least certain voices within the development community can be a very valuable resource and, you know, in terms of helping us achieve our goals in terms of elected officials it's such a mix because there are elected officials who are passionate about housing there are elected officials who are just, their politics in my view are good they tend to be much more sensitive to the more oppositional voices and then there are a lot of elected officials who are either housing is just not a focus for them, maybe because their community is just less impacted or it's just not what their passion is their passion is education or some other very important issues it's not criticism of them and that significant swath of elected officials are I think really important because if you could just persuade them say listen, we're not asking you to make this your life's work you can continue to work for children's health or for, you know, whatever issue you know, it really gets you up in the morning but at least go the right way and those are the, in my view that elected officials need to focus on just making sure people are educated even if it's not an issue that is the focus of why they ran Do we do about cities like Berkeley that seem to take all of their intellectual prowess and political savvy important to getting out of state law as fast as y'all can create? Council? I think fundamentally in the state there's a lot we can do and we are doing things like in addition to SB35 Senator Nancy Skinner I will go to Niagara from Southern California have bills to strengthen the Housing Accountability Act we have some other good bills as well trying to close some of the loopholes but it is still it is challenging for the state to sometimes enforce on the local community that becomes a political thing in and of itself so in addition to having strong state laws we have to have the local political pressure electing good people to office making sure that there is visibility and transparency accountability of these local decisions when the Berkeley City Council was proposing to downzone the city there was they backed down on that at least for now I think there are always other ways but there was a public outcry and I sent in a letter Senator Skinner sent in a letter there were a lot of people who showed up and it had at least some impact I'm not saying the place is over when Brisbane decided that for the Baylands project and for those not in the area Brisbane is a small really beautiful town directly south of San Francisco and they have this big swath of land right between their developed area and San Francisco called the Baylands that a developer once put I think 3,500 years on it and they announced that they prefer to have pure commercial and office and no housing there but there was a real outcry a major major regional outcry about them they were going to criticize not just by San Francisco because we would be absorbing have to absorb all that housing but by voices in San Teo County who were saying absolutely not so now they come back to the drawing board and there will be housing we can make sure that it's a larger amount so I think that that kind of public pressure and transparency really is important you have to play the key role in all of these fights just sort of flushing all of that to the surface and making sure that communities aren't able to do this under the radar which is how they've done it for years Hey Scott first of all I want to say I love the fact that you're making sure that communities build housing that's zoning compliant that's great but what are we doing to address exclusionary zoning that's inherently racist that favors high income communities because a lot of these local organizations be it META or whatever they're noticing that development is disproportionately put in their neighborhoods and there's a reason there's no development like Ingleside or Berkeley House what are we doing at the state level to make sure that we can continue this modern form of redlining which unfairly targets low income communities Hey everybody clap that's a really important point and I always view it as in terms of what hinders housing the three major issues so the three legs of this tool one is the process that even if they there is so much of zone housing capacity that simply doesn't get built because of the process and that's why the ST35 and the Housing Accountability Act are trying to address the second is the issue of fees and I'm not an opponent of fees in development of supportive inclusion or in housing and other exactions but at some point it gets to a level and it could be unintentional or it could be intentional where it makes housing infeasible and so we're I think that's something that a lot of us should take a look at making sure that we have you know rational approach to fees and then the third of the most fundamental is zoning and it's the hardest it's the hardest because that has always been just exclusive local control and people can zone however they want especially communities that are zoned for single-family homes we know even in San Francisco the neighborhoods that are zoned if we have neighborhoods in San Francisco that are zoned not just for single-family homes a lot of that but for detached single-family homes in San Francisco in our tiny little 7x7 densely populated city and the people who live in those communities will they will fight unbelievably hard to protect our zoning and again not criticizing they will say this is why I moved to this neighborhood and how dare you try to change a character in my neighborhood but we do have to address the zoning issue particularly I've been very I took a lot of heed from being public about how there are so many BART stations and CalTrain stations surrounded by single-family homes that should never happen that should be threatened and so that is something that is definitely on the radar I don't pretend to have you know the solution that we're going to be able to get through but I you know if the voters choose to keep me I'll be in the state center for 12 years and I have other allies and I know that it's an issue on our radar about how do we start over time impacting exclusionary zoning because you are 100% right it is exclusionary it has huge impacts on low income communities and communities of color let's get some ladies I know I'm a lady but alright I'm going to pick a mayor or somebody else nope you're a man too sorry you gave me a moment my name is Madeline Hyde I was wondering have historic districts come up all the way to California legislature all this year from Oregon and that was our big fight this year we lost part of it well so we have we've taken historic resources all in California through CEQA and we historic resources are protected by CEQA and they've been defined very very broadly if it's 50 years old or more then it is a potential historic resource that has to be analyzed and there are some 50 year old hand handed approach but by historic structures I'm a supporter of protecting historic structures but let's not just assume it just because something is of a certain age that it should have the same level of protection and we have so there's that and that's a CEQA issue SB35 takes a whole bunch of buildings out of CEQA although we do have demolition controls in SB35 and it's here now we're in controlled housing in particular so in terms of historic districts I know San Francisco best we have historic districts it's not there hasn't been an explosion of historic districts we have some in our planning department that try to talk about potential historic districts and so you have a potential historic resource in a potential historic district and so it makes things a lot more challenging so that is that's something that we're trying to grapple with but it's really hard because people get you know it's a hard issue politically but we've had some real horror stories about our historic preservation people in the planning department taking just absurd positions about what is protected as historic when it's just not we just have a more thoughtful approach because it gives historic preservation a bad name when you start saying that this is we had examples of just really outrageous situations and I also know a handful of buildings being used as a new tool by improvements if they don't get the down-zoning then they go to the natural please do how much do you think that that already will help with CEQA reform versus what other CEQA reforms might be helpful to enable more housing production for people who don't know level of service is about when you do sort of traffic analysis around CEQA in terms of the traffic impacts of new development historically it's been about a number of vehicles going through a particular intersection as opposed to the number of people going through an intersection and so for example when a bus goes through an intersection there might be 75 people on the bus but that will be treated the same as one car going through which might have only one person so level of service or eliminating level of service was designed to really focus on the number of people moving through not the number of vehicles and it really once it's fully implemented and it's not yet it's been slow but once it's implemented I think it'll be helpful in reducing the ability of people to use traffic studies to oppose new development so we just need to make sure that our approach to transportation analysis is supportive of new housing and not undermining new housing so the question was what do we need to do beyond that are there more steps that you would want to be seeing and see reform beyond that I mean I want to talk to my dad I don't live here but we're happy to have that conversation so I want everyone to give our amazing State Center Scott Wiener who wants, we're going to do it this way we're gathering here oh my god Scott can you do the photo cause you're tall enough how does this work so everyone is on this side move to this side far away so so get in as tight as you can like sitting so that you can see everybody's faces and then a whole bunch in the back now scooping in all people please please for more than all sort of people moving to the back for a hunch should we nail on the ground and you can if you want to scoop it at the end of the line as well so so and then lunch is just ready