Bay Area Housing Crisis Solution Panel Discussion

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today on Podcast By the Bay, we return to our discussion series and feature the housing crisis. [00:00:07] Speaker B: So what happens when tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people are coming here to participate in our very healthy economy and we are refusing to build homes for those folks coming here. They enter the existing housing market and compete with listing residents for the few homes that become available and drive up prices. It's a very simple supply and demand mismatch. [00:00:33] Speaker A: With an expert panel, including Matt Regan from the Bay Area Council, Armando Sanchez from the heart of San Mateo County, and Gary Pollard, vice mayor of Foster City, to discuss issues and causes, but. [00:00:49] Speaker C: Also some of the solutions and how. [00:00:51] Speaker A: To actually move forward to deal with the housing crisis. [00:00:55] Speaker D: I think the answer is regionalism. Whether it is funding and resources like money, that it needs to be mobile, not located just in a city, it needs to be able to go where the opportunities are across the county and other issues, it really does boil down to regional. [00:01:11] Speaker A: All coming up on today's episode of Podcast by the Bay. Stay tuned. Podcast by the Bay is brought to you by Highways Soul Productions. Check us [email protected]. And in conjunction with Liberty Realty. Liberty Realty serving the Peninsula and surrounding areas since 1986 for all your real estate needs, www dot liberty realtyinvestments.com. Remember to subscribe and download our podcast on itunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. You can contact Podcast By the Bay by their email at [email protected]. And now another podcast by the bay. [00:02:20] Speaker E: This is Andre and this is Patrick. [00:02:23] Speaker C: And welcome to another rendition of Podcast by the Bay. We thank you for being with us. We thank you for downloading this episode, and we definitely thank you for spreading the word about the show. And so today we have a wonderful show. We have a wonderful show. We have special panel discussion here and we are looking forward to really discussing the issue that's on your minds. We're looking to discuss issues that is affecting everybody here in the Bay Area and that is the housing crisis. And so I'm going to go ahead and introduce our panel. We have an expert panel here from all aspects of the Bay Area to really talk about the housing crisis. And we're going to try to identify specifically how we're looking at the housing crisis, and then we're going to talk really about solutions. So with that, we're going to go ahead and introduce our panel. And so first we have Matt Regan. And so Matt is the senior vice president for government relations at the Bay Area Council, and he's been with the Bay Area Council for over ten years. And so for those not familiar, the Bay Area Council is kind of like a think tank that kind of looks at issues and talks about issues and brings in leadership from all over the Bay Area, from organizations, from politicians to really talk about these issues. And so we definitely appreciate, Matt, for joining The Call and being a panel here on this housing discussion. So. Thank you, Matt. [00:03:55] Speaker B: My pleasure. [00:03:56] Speaker C: So next we have Armando Sanchez. And Armando is the executive director of Heart of San Mateo County. And Heart means housing endowment and regional trust. And so Armando brings a wealth of experience from the housing industry as a consultant for Millbray South San Francisco. He has an MBA from University of Washington. And so we definitely appreciate you and your perspective here on Podcast by the Bay. Welcome to podcast, by the way. Armando. [00:04:29] Speaker D: I'm glad to be here. Thank you. [00:04:31] Speaker C: And next we have Gary Pollard. And so Gary Pollard is the vice mayor of Foster City, so he's a current public servant, and he's also the president and CEO of Ambassador Tours, and he's traveled over to 81 countries. And so he's a business owner. He's someone who's been he grew up on a Peninsula. You went to Mills High School, I believe. That's correct. And so Gary is somebody who's been in the community. He understands the perspective and is also the vice mayor, so he's a politician and he's here, and he appreciate you being with us as well, Gary. [00:05:10] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:05:11] Speaker F: Look forward to it. [00:05:13] Speaker C: And next we have Patrick. And Patrick, not only is the co host of Podcasts by the Bay, but he's for 30 years, he's had his own Realtor and a broker business here on the Peninsula. And so he really understands the housing industry ins and outs. He's also been a public servant, and he's currently a delegate for the Democratic Central Committee. And so welcome, Patrick. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Thanks, Andre. [00:05:41] Speaker E: Thanks, Andre. [00:05:42] Speaker C: And so, myself, I'm also a co host on Podcast by the Bay, but my background is actually in quality improvement, so I've worked in organizations and healthcare and quality improvement. I work on a lot of different projects. But also we host Think Tank, Incubators. Here on the Peninsula, and I also have an MBA from University of San Francisco. So let's get to it. Let's get down to the housing crisis discussion and really kind of peel this onion back and try to really understand it, because I think this is really some of the issue when we talk to people about the housing crisis, right? You talk to people and there's different perspectives. And I almost feel like every time I talk or I see somebody post something or I hear an article about the housing crisis, it's kind of a different perspective, right? And some of it could be it's actual the housing market as far as the affordability, some of it's the rental market, some of it's really having affordable housing as far as apartments is your 15% requirement. And so I think when there's a lot of different perspectives, and it could be all of them. So I think one of my questions is and I'll reach out to you, Matt. What exactly is happening in the Bay Area, and really how did we get to this point? [00:06:59] Speaker B: Well, thanks, Andre. It's certainly our perspective. Let me sort of give a little background on who we are and what we do first. We're a business sponsored public policy organization, and part of my scope of work at the council is working on housing, and I've been doing that for ten plus years. And we pride ourselves as an organization on being data driven, not dogma driven. We look at what the actual facts say rather than what may be politically expedient for any particular purpose. And the facts you compared it to peeling back an onion. This isn't a very complicated onion to peel. When you look at the macro drivers of housing affordability in the Bay Area, it's really one data point that we need to look at and point to, and that's the number of units of housing that we're building, or rather not building on a per capita basis. The Bay Area is building about the same number of housing per person as Buffalo, New York, as Gary, Indiana, rust Belt cities with little or no economic growth. We have the hottest economy on planet Earth, and we're building recessionary levels of housing. We're creating in some parts of the inner Bay Area about 15 jobs for every housing unit we permit. On an average over the nine counties. From 2011 through 2015, it was about eight jobs for every housing unit that we permitted. Demographers will tell you the Healthy Balance is one new home for every 1.5 jobs that we create. So we're completely out of whack in terms of job creation and homes permitted. So what happens when tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people are coming here to participate in our very healthy economy and we are refusing to build homes for those folks coming here? They enter the existing housing market and compete with existing residents for the few homes that become available and drive up prices. It's a very simple supply and demand mismatch. As a state, the state of California needs to build 180,000 units of housing a year just to meet organic population growth. For the last decade, we've been averaging less than 80,000. So the hole gets 100,000 units deeper every year and 100,000 units more expensive every year. So until we get to a point where we're building sufficient new homes to meet our population growth, everything else, every other issue pales and insignificance to the actual supply demand mismatch. Until we get that piece of the problem solved, we're never going to solve affordability. We're never going to solve the missing middle. We're never going to solve displacement, gentrification dislocation. We've got to supply and meet the demands of the market. And until we do that, we're going to run around circles trying to solve all of the other problems. It's a very simple onion to peel. It's supply and demand mismatch. [00:10:11] Speaker C: Wow. That's great. Marmondo, Gary, do you guys have anything to add to? [00:10:16] Speaker D: You know, this is Armando, and I completely agree with everything that Matt has said. And I would just add that how we got to this point is not it's been a long time in the making. It's not an accident. I think the phenomenon of the job growth that we are experiencing is simply exposing the flaws in our past actions and they're coming to bear their fruit now. Everything from tax policy like Proposition 13, zoning and urban planning that we have done in the past with an emphasis on single family homes, underinvestment on public transit, all of these are issues that have constrained the supply of housing to a large extent. And there are just tremendous barriers now that we have to overcome to bring those units to market, to create the units that we desperately need now. [00:11:09] Speaker F: So this is gary, let me interject not a difference of an opinion, but an observation as a public official in a city that we've been doing a good job, as I can see, on housing to the best of our ability in a landlocked area. We want to build homes for the jobs that are in the hottest market. But the infrastructure will never be able to keep up with A, jobs and or B, the housing. So what's the priority? Because if we build I'm just looking now from a county, if we build and we continue to find space, what does it do for the infrastructure? Because sometimes I feel that the value is build, build. The rest will happen. But they're all a domino effect of one another. I hear from residents, if you keep building and we got to support the jobs that are coming here, the service workers and all this, how do they get around? Now, we could say public transportation, but we already know that that's not as great as we'd all want it due to historical reasons 50 years ago, or 35, 50, whatever when Bart came along. But I think we need to address a lot of issues that go hand in hand. And I hate to see us only focus on one part of the puzzle. Or if you said there's three legs to a chair, we're dealing with one and leaving the other two out there. So I would ask the housing people, give me answers on how do we deal with that to make it equitable for everybody so that we can continue this hot market. Does that make sense? [00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely it does. I think housing and transportation go hand in hand in order to have a sustainable region. And it goes to the core of some of the dysfunctions we have as a region. We have one regional economy, but we have nine counties, each with its own transportation agency and 101 cities with different priorities. So the governance of our region is very difficult to manage. This sort of world leading economy with so many different government structures, all with a say in how we move people around. And most of the region's commuters cross at least one county line every day to get to and from work. When you have counties with different and often conflicting priorities as it relates to transit and transportation, that's a problem. But we can solve these problems. If you look at Los Angeles, they have taxed themselves to the tune of tens of billions of dollars to improve their transportation and transit systems, and they are building subways to the sea. They are investing in their freeway system and in their bus rapid transit systems. They've done it. And our fear at the Bay Area Council is our economy has eclipsed the La region for decades. We have 20% of the state's population but generate 40% of the state's personal income tax. La has 40% of the population but only generates 20% of the tax. We are worried as a region that unless we make investments in transportation so that people can get to and from work, that they will catch up to us. So regional Measure Three will be on the ballot in June, which is a measure to raise bridge tolls to fund transportation infrastructure measures all across the region. That's something I hope everybody can support, but that's just a start. We need to really invest a lot more in transportation as a region, and how we do that is difficult because we have such a fractured governance system, but it's something we really need to tackle. [00:15:02] Speaker E: Andre, if I could chime in just for a minute. I agree with most everything we've said, and I think it comes from the executive summary from the state of California. I don't think there is no dispute about some less than 80,000 units have been built in the last ten years and that we need some 180,000 additional. But I think we've got to understand the majority of California renters are more than 3 million households, and they pay then more than 30% of their income towards rent. Nearly one third. And more than 1.5 million households pay 50% of their income towards rent. Overall, we have the lowest home ownership since 1940. And this is based on a report from 2017 from the State of California. So California is a 12% nation's population, but a disapproviate 22% of the nation's homeless population. So I think when we look at the ingredients of housing, we don't want to just consider the building. We need to consider what type of building, whether we're building workforce housing, whether we're building subsidized housing. And I think we have a big disparity right now because the growth factor with the technology industry and the biomedicine industry and all of the auto industries are expanding tremendously in the state of California. So I think we're in a very unique position because we're finding the middle class is pretty much being eroded, whether it's your teachers, your firefighters, or your bankers or your average workers with the Unaffordability. Currently, I do property management. I just put a two bedroom, one bath that's been totally remodeled at $4,000 per month in a nice area, but not an outstanding area. So I think we have some disparity here and I think we're not planning appropriately and we just kind of build according to whatever happens. So when the voters or the residents are upset, then we have somebody like Senator Weiner coming out with a Bill 827, which was defeated, coming out with throwing everything out there to try to solve the solution and take it away from the cities and put it back in the hands of the state, which is probably a big mistake. I'm fortunate with Podcasts by the Bay that I have an opportunity to interview 14 mayors on the Peninsula. And I'm proud to live in the city of Foster City. I'm proud that Gary's, Vice Mayor we have one of the only cities that has a requirement to build 20% affordable housing. But with the 14 mayors that I talk to, no one has a policy, no one has a policy that they do it project by project. So it is kind of helter skelter. And obviously economically there's only so much housing that you can build in a project before it becomes not a project where they're making money. [00:18:02] Speaker C: So patrick so just to clarify and then I think we're going to move on, but sounds like that right now we're in a state of crisis and this is what everybody's kind of described and I think everybody, all the listeners are feeling this way. And we feel like we're reacting now because the jobs have moved in. They've kind of started that process where a lot of population has come, not only just the constant growth over the last 2030 years, but now we have this growth of jobs and people needing a place to live. And so this is really where started that. Now the point has the crisis as far as not only the housing costs, but we talk about affordable rent. And so all these components are kind of combined in a way. And so we've reached a point where we started to react in a way like we need to deal with this. And so I think that's what we want to do is before we can get to that point where we start thinking about solutions, let's peel it back a little bit more now when we talk about the housing crisis, right. And I think there's various kind of ways to look at it and I think this is kind of where I'm going to go with this renters. And we talk about renters and I think Foster City is a good example because they have a lot of rental units in the Foster City area. But also when you hear people as far as one of the main concerns. So at the Democratic Convention in San Mateo. There was a lot of protesters down there, and they were demanding housing. And I think that these people really not so much demanding housing per se, but demanding affordable housing. And the reason why I say that is because I can go on Craigslist right now, and I can search for apartments in pretty much city, and there's apartments out there now. Are they affordable? No. Right. They're like $4,000 for a one bedroom. So I think that when I start looking at, well, what is the real issue of what people are frustrated about? And I think it's the fact that the affordability of the living costs have not kept up with their really living wages, so they can't really spend more. So what do they do? They end up leaving. Right. And so that causes that whole cycle. So how are we looking at this? I mean, should we be looking at this from multiple venues? I mean, it sounds like we definitely have a supply and demand issue. Right. That is concrete. I think everybody agrees with that, and that's the fundamental point. But we also have an affordability issue as far as our living wages to the living costs and really the rental markets. Right. And then there's other kind of ways to look at this. So how should we be looking at this and really to really start this process? Or should we be looking at multiple fronts and really starting to address multiple things? [00:20:50] Speaker D: This is Armand maybe let me take a stab at this. The type of housing we need is not just affordable. Our work is in affordable housing, but we need more than that. We need market rate units, we need rentals sales, we need studios, we need senior housing, family housing. You name it, we need it. So the real issue then is it really does boil back down to supply. There's just no two ways about it. If we do not address the supply issue, for example, we can raise salaries of people so that they can afford the $4,000. It's not going to help. That $4,000 unit is now going to be a $6,000 unit because there's more money to rent. So it really comes down, as you initially said, about supply and demand. Our demand is far outstripping our supply, and we need to create more housing. And yes, we do need to address it in a way that takes the infrastructure and those issues into consideration. But as far as the housing itself, it is a supply issue. [00:21:50] Speaker B: If I could add a little comment. [00:21:53] Speaker F: To that as well. [00:21:54] Speaker B: I just want to address something Gary said about foster city's inclusionary ordinance. And some housing policies, at first blush, seem like good ideas. A high inclusionary ordinance mandating that a developer provide 20% of the units that they build at below market rate seems like a good housing policy. But when you look at the overall macro impact of a policy like that, what it does at the end of the day is it kills deals on the market rate side. The building of homes is a business, and if the developer can't make money at the end of the day on the deal by effectively giving away 20% of the product for free, the deal is not going to get it's not going to get built. So if you increase inclusionary ordinances to the point where it kills projects, you're going to get fewer units and you're going to drive up costs and prices. Personally, and I think from an economics perspective, taxing housing to pay for housing, it's a bad public policy on its face. And I think, Gary, it was also you that mentioned, or maybe it was your mando that mentioned the missing middle is something we need to address. Essentially, what you do when you add inclusionary ordinances to market rate developments is that you're cannibalizing the missing middle, you're making the 80% of units that go on the market at market rate more expensive to subsidize the 20% of units that are going to low income renters. So 20% of people are going to win the lottery, but for everyone else, the prices go up and you're pushing those units out of the price point of the teachers and the firefighters and the retail workers and the service sector workers in the community. We need a permanent source of funding for affordable housing. It has to be a permanent source that's spread across the whole community. We can't keep charging the last person in the door to pay for all of our affordable housing, and that's the people who are currently seeking housing, they're the ones that pay these impact fees and that pay the inclusionary ordinance, rent hikes and purchase hikes. We've got to find a better, more sustainable way of doing it, because if we keep taxing housing for housing, we'll get less of it. It's a basic premise of economics. [00:24:14] Speaker E: Yeah, Matt, I can't agree with you more on that. I mean, we've seen that over the last 30 years in any real estate development that there's a breakpoint for a developer to make any kind of money if we force so much percentage of affordable housing. But as you know, in the last 20 years and I know it goes contrary to what you're thinking, what has happened in the past, as you know, you would have had federal or state dollars that was tax credited. Whether you're building to a corridor transportation area or whether you're building in a certain area that doesn't have housing, that they were given tax credits, whether they were state and federal. But you're even right, I agree with your comment. Even with those tax credits, what it does is drives up the price of the development and makes it more unaffordable. But we also have to look at the criteria that we do. We have to distinguish between workforce housing, which is a new buzzword we haven't been using the word workforce housing for except the last couple of years. If you look at our major cities in the peninsula, the police and fire have not lived here for over 20 plus years. There's very few police and fire that lived here. What we've come to is a crisis that because of the inflated concentration of the Bay Area, meaning Palo Alto, San Mateo County, San Francisco, these are the primary areas that everybody wants to work, where it's Google salesforce and all that. So they put the pressure on the immediate Bay Area. Now, the traffic problem, which is just as big if not bigger, according to podcasts by the Bay and what we read out there, just as big, if not bigger than the housing crisis. So we're putting probably I'm just going to guess there's at least 30% to maybe 40% of the people that are on the road that don't live in the Bay Area, but live in areas that housing is much more affordable, whether that's your Stockton, your Martini, Fresno, Vallejo, maybe not as desirable as the Bay Area, but there are affordable homes. So I think part of our problem, at least for the housing thing, is, one, we're not keeping up with demand. That's obvious. Two, we're not, as Gary mentioned, ahead of time, we're not dealing with the infrastructure around. So part of the planning is, and this is what I got from most of the mayors that I interview that are on podcast, we don't plan, we just react. We react to a problem. So in most of the mayors, just if we add five more houses, we feel accomplished, or if we add ten more, well, that's wonderful, I think, but that's not really addressing the problem, is it? [00:26:47] Speaker B: Well, you're absolutely right, Patrick. And let me throw one more data point at you that you referenced. I sit on the association of Bay Area Government's Regional Planning Committee, and I joke, but it's not funny, but that's the committee where regional planning dies up against the buzzsaw of local control. [00:27:04] Speaker F: Sure. [00:27:04] Speaker B: But 170,000 people a day commute into the nine county Bay Area from their cheap single family homes in Mantika, Tracy, Lathrop, Stockton, Sacramento, clogging our freeways because we as a region have refused to build that middle income housing product for those workers. And they're driving into our region 4 hours a day, 2 hours on the Altima Pass in the morning and 2 hours at night getting to and from home. It's no way to live. We can and must do better. [00:27:37] Speaker E: Absolutely. I completely agree with you there. [00:27:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree with you 100% too, Matt. And I guess the question that I think maybe some of the listeners might ask is, when you talk about building these kind of homes, is that really going to bring down the market if we build a bunch of homes? I mean, is there data to support that or are we going to turn into like another Manhattan where we build all these homes but they're still overpriced and nobody can afford it. So how do we approach that to make sure that if there is going to be build that it's going to really provide the sustainable change that we need to really maintain the market for the middle class. [00:28:19] Speaker F: So let me throw out something. I don't know if it's going to answer your question, but I heard this at a coffee I was at with Senator Jerry Hill, somebody asked a question and know what about this option? Have these companies we'll just pick on Facebook and Apple and Google just because they're front of mine and like colleges do have annex in other parts of whether it's the nine barrier counties or even a little further out and have where the people that are commuting in work out in those areas and change the landscape so that they incentivize these companies. In other words, flip the table and instead of trying to get everybody to come into a small area that is and I'm going to continue to use that landlock, you can go high, you just can't keep going wide. Why aren't we trying to look as a Bay Area nine counties estate, why aren't we trying to look at what's creating it more holistically than just trying to I think Patrick, you said it, or Andre you said it is reactionary because that's what we do with council. We react. Residents come forward and they say we need more housing. There's somebody who owns a service station in our city and can't afford to pay their salaries of their people a lot of money, therefore they're coming 2 hours away and it's not worth it. So do we put that person out of business? Do we try to look at what's really creating it and find better solutions than just build? I'm not saying building is wrong, but it's not necessarily the end all to the problem. And I'm looking at this as a politician. We need to be more creative, more partnership with what's creating it than just build, build. Because if we build it, they're not necessarily going to come and in five or ten years, if something were to burst, we're going to have a lot of open or vacancies in buildings that are going to stay idle for years that people are going to complain about. All I'm trying to do is nobody's looking at let's look differently or out of the so Andre, I don't know if that's in your questions, we got to get to but we're not going to solve the housing crisis, but we could solve or attempt to solve looking more creatively. That's all. [00:30:39] Speaker E: Gary, I want to chime in because I agree 100% with what you're saying, but one of the biggest fallacies in the state of California and all of the cities, we fail to update our environmental impact reports. Those environmental impact reports, which is the. Basis of transportation, protection of police and fire. We are building housing with not adequate protection. And that is really because we have outdated environmental impact reports that every city in all of probably the nine Bay Area counties are using. So I think if we're going to address the housing and do it in a much more practical we need to update that environmental impact report because we're waiting for a catastrophe fee to happen because we are understaffed and policemen, but. [00:31:23] Speaker F: Again, they're outdated ordinances and ways to manage because it's not keeping up with the times. But it's still just a band Aid. Patrick and I agree with you. You can always find ways to say, let's reduce the amount of parking spaces if you're going to build housing, reduce the parking if you're near transportation. But all that does is sure, you could say it's less cars on the road, but it just allows for more high density. Now, I'm not saying that that's right or wrong. I'm tired of always trying to just make something fit as opposed to what's creating it. Could Facebook, and I understand Facebook, and they're not here to defend themselves. They want everybody to be on their campus. I get that universities, Stanford and Cal Berkeley was the same way for many years. They've now run out of space and found it to be more approachable to other people by having annexes. So now different people don't have to necessarily go onto the campus to get an education. That concept has now caught on all throughout the country. It happens in colleges, it happens. So I'm just saying that's a creative way. It may not ever work, but it's that creative discussion to help economies in other areas by building up in that area. [00:32:40] Speaker B: That's all. So, Gary, just to jump in, facebook just last week announced, I think, the largest commercial real estate deal in San Francisco history. They're taking a complete building in the Trans Bay Terminal Area specific plan. I think it's 181 Fremont, but it's, I think, almost a million square feet, maybe more of commercial real estate. So this is happening. Companies are expanding outside their campus footprints and moving workforce demands or workforce locations around the region. So it is happening. And then one other thing. When you talk about thinking outside the box and coming up with different kinds of ideas on housing at the Bay Area Council, we've been working for the last three years on promoting the idea of accessory dwelling unit construction as a way of adding more units. We call it gentle infill gentle density. The vast majority of the Bay Area's land that's zoned for housing is zoned for single family homes, and the vast majority of those single family homes are under occupied for a variety of reasons. Prop. 13 and other things. We have a lot of seniors living in large homes. The kids have all gone five bedroom, three bath, and maybe one or two people living in that house. So if there's an analogy, it's like the freeway lane, the carpool lane. How do you better utilize the freeway lane as well? Put carpools on it. More people in each car. Well, how do you utilize your existing housing stock is put more people in them. So we've been with Senator Bob Wachowski. We're on our third accessory dwelling unit build this year, SB 831. And we're seeing a huge uptick in the construction of ADUs across California for the uninitiated. ADUs are granny flats. And hopefully our third bill will get passed this year and signed into law. And there are 1.5 million single family homes in the Bay Area. And if we use Vancouver as an example, Vancouver and British Columbia, similar housing market, similar economy, though not as hot as ours, but they have over 30% of single family homes in Vancouver have an accessory dwelling unit. If we got the 10% in the Bay Area, that would be 150,000 new homes. That would solve our housing crisis immediately. And these units are inexpensive to build, and they rent for much less than traditional market rents for know, Matt, I. [00:35:22] Speaker E: Appreciate that the state has passed that, and obviously, the state has always said you could have secondary units. But they're trying to as you know, they're defining a policy that cities need to comply with the new state law and the new state law, a secondary unit has to be at least the ability to build a secondary unit in each city. And I know that cities are grappling right now, and I know, Gary, the planning Commission is grappling with how does this fit into our city? So I'm excited about that. I think that's a good start. Even the cities that I talked that you would never hear about housing because they don't have housing. Meaning Portola Valley and Woodside are all excited about the secondary unit because even if they build a secondary unit, they're providing some rental stock that we don't have. And obviously it probably wouldn't be something they would sell on the open market. So I think, Matt, you've got a great push to have secondary units. Now, Gary, what's your opinion on that? I know that's a challenge for cities. [00:36:22] Speaker F: It's a challenge for cities. And I know Foster City, we just conferred with what the state had mandated as far as allowing secondary units on properties and basically saying that we already have plans of what size and height and all of that. So we basically are in line with what the state is asking. And I think that's great. It's one option of many. So you take Foster City, and I can only speak of that city as that's what I represent. We have an issue with it's, a personal issue, but it affects everything. There's only a couple of ways in and out of our town, and to get out of our town, you're into the two worst freeways, probably in the country, 92 and 101. And so by adding more again, I'm going back to what I said a while back. It's this we can build and build, but we're not addressing the other elephant in the room. So if we add secondary units and it's great, and we build this, we still haven't dealt with they're not all going to work in a particular city. So they might like Foster City because there's some homes and it's got nice parks and good weather, blah, blah, blah, but they're going to get on a road because we don't have public transportation. So how does a regional issue, which always concerns me, each city has its own set of problems. And so, Patrick, if we build these secondary units, we still haven't dealt with the bigger issue. [00:37:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:37:49] Speaker F: The Eir is outdated or not. How do we get these people to a public transportation which is three and a half miles away, which is the train, or it's about 9 miles, seven and a half to 9 miles to the Bart station. So it still hasn't solved the three pillars that need to be so Hillsborough is another one. They all have secondary units because that's their income based on just how they have no commercial. But do they have the space to really do it? Do they want to do it? They have their own issues. Everybody's got so you can't just generalize it. But Patrick, to your basic point, foster City, we're in a crisis of our own, is we keep building, but we have nowhere to get these people on the road because the roads are packed because of something else. So who goes first in this whole thing? [00:38:35] Speaker E: Well, that goes back to what I've been saying, what I was trying to say. And you agree we are passing stuff with outdated environmental impact reports, which is jeopardizing the infrastructure that we live in because we haven't planned accordingly and we don't have the police and fire here to be able to respond. So as we build in more density and one of the formulas in the environmental impact report is how many people live in a one bedroom unit? The environmental impact report used to say, I think 1.41.5 people. I have been in the city and I know, Gary, you've knocked on many doors too, over the time. We have two and three families ten or 15 years ago that were living in a two bedroom, two bath apartment. So I think, Gary, your point is well taken. We need to deal with the transportation and we need to deal with the environmental impact reports before we even start to build, before we even figure of a solution. [00:39:29] Speaker C: So, Patrick, I just want to quickly ask Armando as well, from somebody who's been on the front lines of this housing crisis, and he talked about senior housing, right? He talked about low income housing. And I know your organization does do some endowment for both developers and some families. So what is your perspective? I mean, what are you seeing on the ground level? You're dealing with this at the front lines. [00:39:53] Speaker D: I absolutely understand the issues with the infrastructure and everything that all the problems that are created. But I do have to say, if you did a real environmental impact report that really looked at the issues, it would not only look at the traffic or the congestion and the impacts that building a unit has it. Would also look at the impact of not building that unit because those people are coming into work no matter what, and so they're going to be in that traffic. And I don't live in Foster City, so I do drive a little bit of 92 to 101, so I see how bad it is. And while I drive in San Mateo, I don't think it's the people in San Mateo that are causing the traffic. I think it's the congestion from the East Bay that's just rippling all the way down into the city streets and causing the congestion. If we house the people more locally through adu units, to getting seniors to move to smaller units so that bigger housing becomes available for housing, as Gary was saying, that alternative housing solutions like getting people to live in the right size unit that fits their family household, I think that's a solution. I think there are a lot of things like that. [00:41:12] Speaker F: Are we worried about Mondo? Let me ask you a question, and I agree that we'll pick on Foster City if we build another 100 units, whatever it is, we're getting close to possibly approving 70 for Sale Townhomes and some workforce housing in another area. But we do that. So it's possible that some of those people that are going to live there may work on the peninsula, so they're still got to go into the 92, 101. So you could say, okay, 70, we've taken some off the road. But the bigger issue is those people. And I'd love to see a study, and I've asked various levels, and it doesn't seem to be one. The people coming across 92 from the UK, where are they going? In other words, are they stopping in Gilead, Visa and Foster City? Are they going south, 101 north? What companies are they going to to really see? Is there ways to reduce that? Whether it's buses now up and down the 101, there are a tremendous amount of Google buses. We're just picking on Google right now. All I'm wondering is, has there ever been a study or can there be of these people coming over from the East Bay? Doesn't matter if it's Tracy Stockton coming across San Mateo Bridge. Where are they going? And how can we try to look at that as just potential understanding of what's been created? Because if you build more homes in San Mateo, at Bay Meadows, when they got rid of the racetrack, they built all these buildings, housing and commercial buildings. Nobody did anything with the traffic or the roads. They just added it on top of the existing no studies are done to anticipate where would people come from if they're going to work at SurveyMonkey? If SurveyMonkey was down on the peninsula, somewhere else down, and I don't remember the exact location or across the bay, did we ever anticipate, hey, we're going to give you this space, but you got to put 90% of your people on buses. I don't see the same buses coming across 92 as I do up and down 101. So I'm not angry at anybody. But again, we sit in a room and everybody has their pet projects that they want. I want more housing. I need this. And Matt, I respect housing. I think there's a need, but there's so many more factors that all have to be thought through and thought and nobody's doing it. And that's annoying that we want us to build all this and build and build and build because there's a need, but there's also a need to get people on or off the roads. That's just as important as building. [00:43:47] Speaker B: Absolutely, Matt. [00:43:49] Speaker D: I think there are studies, aren't there studies? I've seen maps that show the outflow migrations between the counties and think some of those studies have been done. [00:43:58] Speaker B: They have. MTC has all that data. There are very detailed reports on where commutes begin, where they end, where the choke points are, where the job centers are vis a vis the housing centers, et cetera. That data all exists. It's all on MTC's website, buried in their archives. But it is there. [00:44:26] Speaker F: Maybe that's why I can't address one. [00:44:28] Speaker B: Thing you said, Gary, and you are correct. We have been remiss as a region in funding much needed transportation upgrades and investments. We have, as you say, highway 101. It's a 65 miles long stretch of freeway from San Francisco down to San Jose, and bordering that freeway is the most productive 65 miles economically productive 65 miles on planet Earth in the North End. You have salesforce, Genentech, you mentioned SurveyMonkey, and you keep going down the freeway past Facebook and Google into San Jose and the companies that are there, Microsoft, all the way along that freeway. Incredible wealth is being generated, and it's a parking lot from 05:00 a.m. In the morning until 09:00 at night. I want to do more. [00:45:31] Speaker D: I do want to just add that. [00:45:33] Speaker B: Regional measure three, which is on the ballot this June, and it's not going to solve all of our problems, but I urge you to take a look at it. It's going to increase bridge tolls across the bay and all the toll bridges. But the projects that have been selected for funding from that measure are the choke points. They are the major congestion relief projects that need additional funding to get all the shovel ready, projects that need additional funding to get up and running. It will include a huge increase in funding for ferry service. The one asset that we have in the Bay Area that most other regions look at, Jealously, is our amazing bay. And there are very few ferry routes that cross the bay. If you look in Hong Kong or Sydney or New York, we need to emulate that. That's how you get cars off the road, is putting people on boats and upgrading our public transit systems. [00:46:27] Speaker F: If I can interject patrick, hang on. I want to just get this one thing. I concur 1000% with you. We approached one time we approached to try to look at a ferry system from Foster City. Forget if the waters come in and go out, low tide, whatever, everything's manageable. And San Francisco and I can't remember the organization, but who controls ferry systems on the bay would not even talk to Foster City or any cities. Now, Oyster Point, I believe, has something they wouldn't even talk about having a ferry system for whatever the reason, whether it was political or in other words, nobody wants to sit down like we're sitting down, having this conversation. Why aren't people sitting down and going, new York has ferry systems and bridges and tunnels. Bay Area, if it's the hottest market, which was said in the beginning of this conversation, why isn't ferries just running right and left 24/7? It's only an eight mile crossing at the furthest point, which is the San Mateo Bridge. It's not that complicated, but there's I'm sorry, I don't mean to get on my soapbox. [00:47:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:37] Speaker E: But I agree with what Gary's saying and I'm supportive with the regional planning that the RM Three and I had an opportunity to speak and we'll have him live is Carl Gardeno with the leadership in Palo Alto. And that is orientated for the transit and the ferry system. But let's look outside of the box. With the ferry system, we can use hydroplane. There's boats now that are available, whether it's on the water that don't have to be the word ferry. It could be a hydroplane boat that could take anywhere from 30 to 100 people over the water. Because some of the problems that we had was the dredging, the amount of dredging that had to been done in Foster City or surrounding cities to connect all of the peninsula into the Bay Area. But what I really wanted to get is to the crux of the thing. We do not have regional planning. We have regional suggestions, but we don't act in San Mateo County. I had the opportunity to speak with Seamus Murphy, who's a representative for Caltrans Bart, Sam Trams, and also had the opportunity to talk to Carl. We don't really plan what we do is going back like we did with housing. We have a clipper card in San Mateo County, and that's one of the biggest things we talk about. We need to integrate our transportation system now whether we call that regional planning or whether we call it a transit district, we got to stop fighting for the same federal and state tax dollar. Sam Trams fights for a bart fights for it. We all fight for the same thing, but we're not coordinating those transportations together like many European countries that have already done that. [00:49:12] Speaker C: So Patrick and everybody, I think we've talked a lot about what's causing issues. What are the issues? I'm hearing everything from the overabundance of creation of jobs, that it's good, but also there's been an effect, a downstream effect. It's causing traffic, affordability and other things. And so, looking at all these things, we started to talk a little bit about solutions, and I think we talked about ferries and some alternative ways to actually deal with the traffic. But let's get back to really the affordable housing crisis. I think we can frame it like that. Affordable housing cris as well as the supply and demand. I think everybody agrees, talking to the city, the local, the regional, the state, everybody seems to be on the same page that we need to do something. So how can we really leverage and work together to really deal with this and to really develop solutions that are really sustainable? [00:50:13] Speaker B: Well, I think the very first thing we need to do, Armando, is address costs. There was a story on the front page of yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle where Mayor Farrell has convened a task force to bring down the cost of housing. And it's costing right now in San Francisco to build one unit of affordable housing. And this is subsidized 100% affordable. No developer taking a profit to build that unit on average in San Francisco right now is $750,000. So when you say affordable, picture me doing air quotes, because in whose world is $750,000 a door? [00:50:55] Speaker F: Affordable? [00:50:55] Speaker B: And you also have to take into consideration those 100% affordable units aren't paying the same feeload that market rate units are paying. So when people point the finger at market rate developers and say, why are you not building for the middle class? Why are you only building million dollar condos? You point to the affordable developers and go, well, that's all they can build. Why do you think we can build something at a cheaper, lesser price point? We have to bring down cost. [00:51:26] Speaker D: Yeah, I agree with you. The cost of developing a unit is that high. In San Mateo County might be a little bit lower, 165,000 or something like that, but it is high. But keep in mind, too, that that includes the cost of land. And so it's not just the construction. It's not just the trades that are causing that cost to inflate. It is also the cost of land, which is extraordinarily high with one acre in most choice areas going for well over $5 million. So just turning quickly to some of the solutions, and that's what we're trying to do with my organization is like putting aside the issue of building being the only solution. Let's just say we got to build something, okay? So that's what we're trying to address. And so we're saying, how can we build where's the land that something can be built on? So one solution, and I'll leave that to the politicians is upzoning and creating more density and things like high increasing heights. That's a political issue. That's not something that we're going to touch. We are going to only look for opportunities. And that's something like school. I'm sorry. [00:52:35] Speaker B: Go ahead. [00:52:35] Speaker E: Yeah, I'd like to interject and I brought this up to several of the politicians and to city officials and county officials. We have property that is owned by the state and county that is not being used and we still haven't had an accountability. And when we take a look at that, one of the things that I heard recently that Sam trams is going to do, that they have some 30 acres that's right near the train corridor, that they're thinking about building housing because they're just storing cars there. That's all they're doing. And we all agree it's a regional problem. If we have state and county property that's underutilized, why are we not asking our state officials, where is this property? And most of it, I assume, is in the corridor transportation or the unincorporated areas. And I think we need to get the politicians to really unleash that property. And before I cut you off there and I apologize there, you were right. The housing is sometimes going to be incorporated in closed schools. Okay. Some of the schools that are closing. But I think we got to have accountability for this state and county to come up. Where is this property? That's near the unincorporated area of transportation. The state doesn't need to hold onto it. It'll make a more vibrant economy. [00:53:53] Speaker F: Absolutely. [00:53:54] Speaker D: There are a lot of local governmentally owned properties that are available. There are schools that are no longer being used that have property available. There are churches and other religious institutions that have their membership has dwindled and they're sitting in a large parking lot. So there are opportunities out there and I think there's a lot of entities that are pursuing those opportunities. But one of the things I passionately believe is that it shouldn't be about taking their land to hand it over to somebody else to develop, whether it be a for profit developer or nonprofit developer. I think some of our work that is going on with school districts to help them develop housing for their teachers to 100% get a lot of them off the road and have them much closer to where they teach. We're helping them develop their assets to house their teachers. I think we could help religious organizations develop their assets and build housing. So there are opportunities. Cities, we need to work with them. The counties, the transportation agencies. There absolutely are opportunities. And if we remove the cost of land, then that $700,000 cost of creating a door, a unit for somebody is actually a lot lower. If you just look at the construction costs, it comes down to a much more reasonable level once you get the land costs out of the picture. [00:55:12] Speaker E: Someone addressed one of the questions earlier and I heard the word Proposition 13. And I'm not suggesting that we reverse 13, but we also have to understand what happened with 13 with the commercial end of the property that has been staying in families hands for years. And the main reason why is it protects them for taxes, inheritance and all that. But it would seem that if we could free up some of this land and gave some type of tax remedy or relief for building affordable housing or workforce housing, whatever we want to call it, that we could free up some of this land. Because some of these owners have owned property for almost 100 years in their family and they don't want to part with it. And you can't blame them, they don't want to pay the taxes. I propose that some suggestion be look at tax relief for the people that own these properties, which could be on a transportation quarter area. You may have somebody own something on the El Camino that could be ideal for a mixed use situation. I worked on a project for two and a half years on El Camino and it boiled down to basically they didn't want to pay the capital gains on the property because they couldn't exchange it for something else. So if we can have some tax incentives for some of these people that are sitting on property which really is in transportation corridor areas and could be developed into a mixed use situation of housing in retail or housing in small office, I think we could free up things. So I think there's other avenues of how do we free up some of the property that's underutilized. [00:56:42] Speaker C: Well, Patrick, I think you bring up a great point as far as looking at things underutilized. And I think one of the things about what we're witnessing is that, yes, the Bay Area has become the center of pretty much the cris, right. It's really the imbalance of wages. But I think that when you look at a map, if you take a high level map of the Bay Area and you look at the developed areas, you're going to see San Francisco completely built out, right? It's completely overbuilt out. The San Mateo County, pretty much most of the peninsula is built out except for the watershed area. And if you start going and it starts getting more spread and spread the further you go out and then there's more opportunity. So I think Gary brought up a point if we look at how can we balance out for the future, because I think we have to plan for the future right. If we're just reacting to right now to deal with a situation, what's it going to look like in 40 years? And so I think if we start planning for the future and we start saying, okay, these companies like the Facebooks and Google's, well, there's more opportunity for your employees to live out here in a nice house if you move out an hour away and maybe set up some campuses, not so in the center of the location. And I think we all understand why they want to be here because it's a beautiful place. It's a wonderful place. It's full of cultural, it's full of life. Everybody wants to be here. But I think the reality is that in 40 years, if we continue this kind of growth, our resources are going to be completely stretched. So how do we balance that so we can sustain for the future? [00:58:29] Speaker B: Sorry, I'll take a shot at that. Andre. First, we've all been very nice and kind to each other and agreeing with each other and everything that's been said, so I'm going to be the first to disagree. I don't think as a region, we're anywhere close to being built out. If you look at the Bay Area from a satellite map, only about 20% of our region's land mass is actually developed. 80% is either protected open space or agland. We're a metropolitan region that's really a large suburb masquerading as a city. We're very low density developed, and the parts of the region that are developed are developed at incredibly low densities. I mean, we have visitors in our office from around the world on a weekly basis coming to figure out what the secret sauce is of this region's economy. And the one thing that they constantly share with us is they're shocked at just how low density the Bay Area is and how much open space there is. And if you look at some of the most iconic apartment buildings in San Francisco, they are illegal under today's zoning. Most of the Bay Area cities downzoned in the from previous zoning heights. So we've decided as a region that we're going to develop horizontally rather than vertically. And we made that decision in the probably the for the most part. So there's plenty of room to upzone. And I think it was, as Gary mentioned earlier, 827 SBA 27 by Senator Scott Weiner would have afforded us the ability to do that at transit hubs, but it did not make it out of the legislature. So we can if we choose, we can upzone. But again, that brings with it the challenges of adding the infrastructure capacity to accommodate that additional growth. And that's a challenge that we have to face. But then you also mentioned converse to upzoning in our inner core. Can we create better transit connectivity to where we are actually building homes? And that's in Lathrop and Tracy and Mantika, and we are actually working with those communities and. With the northern San Joaquin Valley in Sacramento on a mega regional strategy. If we can't do the right thing, let's do the thing we can do, and that's connect the housing construction that is taking place to the job centers that we have. And of course, can we locate some of those jobs further outside the urban inner center? And that's something that is happening. Again. I mentioned Facebook earlier. They have not only taken a large lease in San Francisco, but they're also taking a large lease in Fremont as well. And we're seeing other large employers looking at the East Bay where there are homes and where housing affordability is within the reach of more people than the Peninsula, that they're looking at the East Bay as a potential place for more growth and development. [01:01:36] Speaker E: Well, Matt, I'm excited that you're talking that because I think it's important. We had an opportunity to speak with Dave Tanner, an 18 year career city council person for Woodside, and he's got a project that he's trying to bring to the council, which is a 380 connection, as we all realize, tanferan shopping center is going to go to the ground and be completely redone. And he's got a transit system like a monorail. And we will be going live with Dave Tanner. And Dave Tanner's got a proposal that he's going to all the cities that would hook all those that probably would take 20% to 30% of the traffic off the road and so that these people could get in a rapid transit system and they could get to those towns in 30 minutes of each other. And I think that's a great idea. I think that we really need to coordinate that transportation, and it has to be fast and it has to be efficient. I mean, Japan and Europe already have their monorail system that hooks to all of their public transportation. We're behind the scenes on that. [01:02:36] Speaker C: Well, I think this has really been pretty awesome discussion, you guys, as far as really getting down to the core of the issues and really talking about some of the solutions. And I appreciate your debate and feedback. And so we'll kind of go around and if there's any last kind of final comments as far as your perspective on really what we should do and how can we get there, we'll go around and we'll start with you, Armando. What's your feedback on really what needs to happen and how should we get there? [01:03:06] Speaker D: I think the answer is regionalism. Whether it is funding and resources like money, that it needs to be mobile, not located just in a city, it needs to be able to go where the opportunities are across the county and other issues. It really does boil down to regionalism. [01:03:23] Speaker C: For sounds sounds good. How about you, Matt? [01:03:26] Speaker B: Well, as an organization that's founded on the principle of regionalism, I have to echo everything Armando said. I think we were founded to create a regional government for the Bay Area back in the 1940s, and we failed multiple times in that endeavor. We're still stuck with 101 cities and nine counties, and from a political perspective, we're the Balkans, and it's very hard to do any kind of coordinated housing or transportation. So I agree with that, with what Armando said. And then I'll go back to my opening comment. I think we need to have a Marshall Plan for supply. All three of the major candidates for governor on the Democratic side have said their plan is to build 300,000 units a year for five years. Now, none of them have actually said what eggs they're willing to break in order to achieve that goal, but that's the sort of plan we need. We need to get to those sorts of numbers, and only once since 1950 has California built 300,000 units in a calendar year. We need to do that for five years in a row. And if we do that, we can really start taking a bite out of this problem. [01:04:38] Speaker C: Sounds good. Thank you for your perspective. And Gary? [01:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:42] Speaker F: Thanks. First of all, I thought this was very informative to just get information out there and have frank discussions, because that's what this is all about. It isn't about the three or four or five of us on this call and those listening to podcast, but it's just to inspire others that discussions do take place. So I thought that was great. But let me just talk about Regionalism. I believe Regionalism, if it's even a word, and I assume it is, I think is very vital. But it has to have parameters that the individual cities still need to have the control, because not every city and I'll take San Mateo County in the 21 cities, they're not all the same. So I think if there's a regionalism in housing that allows the cities to have input so that they're not all treated the same, I think regionalism can be done properly. The one Bay Area plan, just to digress was taught about, I think it was the El Camino corridor, the 82, whatever that was, and picking on Foster City, my own city, we were kind of left off that because we're not attached. So regionalism has its importance, but it has to be all encompassing to say, okay, Hillsborough is this, millbray's got Bart. Foster City has got this. It just needs to be recognized that regionalism has a place. The cities need to have as much input in that without regionalism taking over. And if that doesn't make sense, I'm happy to talk offline with anybody. I just am nervous when it's always regionalism. Regionalism without the consideration of the individual cities, that's all. [01:06:20] Speaker C: Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Patrick? [01:06:23] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:06:23] Speaker E: I'm going to kind of echo what everybody says with the regional planning, but I think the regional planning could be with two cities working together or three cities or a county but I think we need to coordinate the planning of the housing. We have to find out, and I appreciate what Matt was saying originally about the property that we're not using, but the concentration area is still the Bay Area and we are at an edge with an environmental issue and density. So I agree with that. We only use 20% of the land. We have to use the land that we have and utilize it the best we can. And I think we need to look at the properties that are underutilized, meaning it could be property that a family had made own for 100 years. It might be an El Camino property, it may be a Palo Alto property, it may be a Santa Clara property and see if we can get those people to partnership with us to build near the corridor. Transportation, I think we're failing to really address the transportation, the toll bridges. We all realize the toll is nice because the money is going to go into the road or the infrastructure, but the reality is somebody is going to be paying and it's not necessarily going to be moving the people any quicker on the road. We're going to improve the roads, but I think we're not planning how do we get the people out of the cars? And that's one of the biggest failures so far on our planning is how do we get the people off the roads and how do we move people from point A to point B. Gary illustrates a really vital point for us. In Foster City we have the 92, the east west situation. How do we get out for emergencies? And I probably wouldn't be pleasantly surprised that there are other cities that have similar issues. So I'm all for restricted regional planning, but I think we can get the players to the table and I think we need to start doing it and not just make all these reports. The transportation reports that I have seen for the last ten or 15 years have talked about the same infrastructure problems, have talked about the same transportation, they didn't talk about the rapid growth that we've had in the last five years, but they talk about the same problems. But we haven't really addressed those solutions yet. And I think we need to put them in the forefront. We need to plan whether we call it regional planning and we need to plan for the housing and the transportation and the environment. [01:08:38] Speaker C: Thank you, Patrick. Appreciate that insight. So I first want to say thank you to everyone because this has been very informative to myself and to really understanding what's really happening at a regional level, what's really happening at the front lines and really at the city level and some of the things I wasn't aware of. So this is definitely really informative and I think to a lot of the listeners out there, they probably would agree. And so one of the things I'm looking at. And I do agree that we have to hit this regionally and even statewide. I think this has to be a collaboration. But as somebody who's worked in quality improvement and somebody who recognizes on how to actually make sustainable change, I'm going to agree that we have to engage the local communities and the local cities to be a part of the solution. Because if we can do that, they're going to buy in and they're going to make their community how they want to see their community. And there has to be balance. And I think that's really the key, right? I think it's really about sustaining some sort of community aspect, but also the environment. And I think that those are kind of concerns that a lot of citizens have who have been living there. So one of the things, and I think you guys addressed this, we have to address supply, we have to address the supply and demand issue. We have to look at the rental market and the affordability of the whole entire rental market and also just the affordability for building new house. So there's like four or five transportation, there's all types of things that have to be addressed. I think we have to address this simultaneously but with different strategies. So I don't think there's one size fit all strategy, but I think if we look at it, say, okay, how are we going to look at supply issue, right? Then we go to the rental market, okay, what are we looking at the rental market? What's the availability now? What's the current market rate? Then go to the affordability. Well, what are people really getting paid? And so going to look at all those different aspects and come up with specific plans simultaneously, working at the same time altogether, working regionally from a state level all the way down to the local level where people are working together and engage. And I think we can make a change and I think that we can have a future where 40 years from now it's going to be exactly our vision. And so anyways, that's my perspective. So I want to say thank you guys so much for your time, for taking your time here on a Wednesday night. Definitely appreciate it, hearing all your perspectives. And we definitely will get this out in a couple of weeks. We're going to go ahead and sign off, but to the listeners out there, if you hope you enjoyed the show, if you have any questions, you have any feedback, please reach out to us at [email protected] and you can always follow us on Twitter at podcastbythebay. So with that signing off, this is our housing crisis discussion. We're going to go ahead and sign off and we'll catch you on the next time. Podcast by the Bay so with that, this is Andre and this is Patrick. Catch you on the next time. [01:11:56] Speaker A: A podcast by the bay. [01:11:58] Speaker B: Stay tuned. [01:12:09] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of Podcast by the Bay. Podcast by the Bay is brought to you by Highway Soul Productions. Check us [email protected] and in conjunction with Liberty Realty. Liberty Realty serving the Peninsula and surrounding areas since 1986 for all your real estate needs, www dot liberty Realtyinvestments.com remember to subscribe and download our podcast on itunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. You can contact Podcast By the Bay by their email at [email protected]. All material is property and copyrighted by Podcastbythebay, but does not necessarily reflect the views of Podcast By the Bay. For sponsorship opportunities, please contact us by email at [email protected]. Stay tuned.