Tom Steyer pledges more housing in California governor bid | Politics

If elected governor, he promises to close tax loopholes and bring in billions of dollars in new revenue to the state, drastically reduce utility costs and even build a million new homes across California within four years.

The former manager of a San Francisco-based hedge fund, Steyer’s resume and ambitious policy platform certainly stand out even in a crowded field of candidates.

The following conversation is part of a series in which The Examiner plans to speak with each of the major candidates in the California gubernatorial race. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Why state government? Why governor? What do you know about state government? I walked away from my business 14 years ago, I’ve spent the subsequent time as an advocate. I’ve done an amazing amount of stuff in the state of California. I’ve led or co-chaired three propositions to basically take on corporate interests that were trying to take advantage, or were successfully taking advantage of, California citizens — the tobacco companies, the oil companies, and multi-state companies that were gaming our income tax system. I’ve raised billions of dollars for Californians, without charging them, and closed tax loopholes. It was hard to get it done, and I got it done.

How would you take on President Donald Trump’s administration if you were to be elected? What everybody’s going to say is, “We’re going to sue.” We are gonna sue him. Everybody’s gonna sue him.

NextGen Policy — which is an organization about policy and ideas in Sacramento which we’ve done since 2015, so 11 years — has been working on all these issues … every single issue in the state of California, we’ve reviewed, and we’ve worked on dozens of them specifically.

We also started something to basically raise money for people who are in the immigration system who are being threatened with being sent home. I personally put in $3.3 million just to hire lawyers for people. I think we’ve worked on this situation for a long time on the right side.

I believe that where we’re actually gonna win this is in the court of public opinion, not in the Supreme Court of the United States.

You’re gonna need a governor who — I think [Gov. Gavin Newsom] has done this very well — is willing to go in and be vocal and online constantly about what’s going on and to stand up to Trump intelligently.

I think the other thing you’re going to have to do is — to the extent Minnesota won, it really won in the streets. There really was organization, mass mobilization with some actual discipline, and that is absolutely critical in the sense of, it’s got to be nonviolent. It’s got to be organized. The message has to be right, and it’s got to be consistent. And the only way to do that, in my mind, is through organized labor.

Polls have shown that still top of mind for many voters in California and across the — Is affordability.

Right. My campaign is around affordability and the plight of working people in the state of California, which we’re seeing a teachers strike about and a nurses strike about. I believe the name of the strike is, “We Can’t Wait.” [Editor’s note: A California Teachers Association campaign has taken that name, seeking “improved class sizes, more resources for students, better wages and benefits” in bargaining with local districts, according to the organization.]

That’s my point. We’ve gone to a place in California where people can’t afford to live here, where it’s skewed so much for big corporations and rich people, that working people — they’re just, “We can’t wait.”

So how did we get to this point and where do we go from here to remedy the situation? A lot of it, in fairness to California, comes out of [Washington,] D.C. So if you look at what we’re faced with, which is [1 million to 3 million] people getting kicked off Medi-Cal, that’s a D.C. thing. We’re sending, I think, [$80 billion to $100 billion] net to D.C. every year, which if we had it would solve all our problems.

An awful lot of this is about D.C., but it doesn’t matter if you can’t make rent. The number one thing in California about affordability is housing. People can’t afford to make rent. People can’t afford to buy a house. We’re not building houses; there’s a shortage of roofs for people to live under. That’s a dramatic cause of our homeless problem.

Why is that true? Because we haven’t been able to get things done. We haven’t been able to build houses. There are multiple roadblocks to building abodes. I’ve said we’ll build a million houses, and we can’t have no for an answer.

How do we build a million houses with interest rates being prohibitive for developers — It’s not about the interest rates, honestly. I don’t think that’s true.

The issue is how long does it take to get a permit, where is the zoning, and how much does it cost to build? Those are the issues, not the interest rates.

What role does the state play in mitigating some of those barriers to housing development — such as zoning restrictions and permit delays — that are in the hands of local governments? We will, ASAP, close two corporate loopholes, “split roll” and “water’s edge,” which will be [$15 billion to $20 billion] to the state of California every year. It goes to local governments, and the point is local governments are standing in the way.

We need to make sure [California Environmental Quality Act] reform — which I was publicly for, but nobody else who’s been considered an environmentalist was for — because we have to build houses. Zoning reform, where in fact we build in dense populations near public transportation. We need to have that, and we need to build it.

And the third thing is we need to use different ways of building houses. We’re gonna have to manufacture houses. And if we do, I believe that it’s not just modularization, but it’s a technology that’s a step beyond that, which can drop that cost per square foot by a third right now and up to a half.

Lastly, I’ve been talking about the utilities, they’re monopolies. The job of a monopoly is to charge you the highest price for the worst service.

One of the really big delays, which may come as a surprise to you because it came as a surprise to me, is getting hooked up. After you’ve built the house, after you’ve got the permit, you’ve got the zoning, you’ve hired the people, you’ve put the sticks and bricks together, there’s a three- to four-month delay to get hooked up.

That costs you — I mean, do the math.

Is addressing climate change still a winning issue for a Democrat in 2026? No.

No. There you go. It’s not, “No,” but it’s — I’m talking about it in the context of dropping people’s electric rates by 25%. I’m talking about it in terms of dropping people’s home-insurance rates so people can afford to buy housing and live in them.

I’m talking about it in terms of competition. California against all the other states, California against the world at a time of AI when cost to compute and speed to compute are critical metrics. I’m talking about it in terms of clean air.

I’m sure that there are parts of your campaign platform, that are fundamental to it, that I’m skipping over. What am I missing? Schools. One of the things I said was we’re gonna raise [$15 billion to $20 billion], and half of it is going to go to schools.

Cost adjusted, we spend the 31st-most out of 50 states. Everyone in California seems to think that these teachers are shockingly well paid and their pensions are just, you know, absolutely glamorous. It isn’t true. They’re on strike for the first time in 50 years because “we can’t wait.”

Are there other things we can do to make the schools better? Yes, but the truth is we don’t have enough money, and there’s a whole bunch of reasons that that’s really important, and I’m talking about specific revenue things that we’re going to get done.

The California dream is buy a house, have your kids go to a great public school, safe streets. That’s it. And that’s what we have to deliver.

Talk to me about safe streets. There’s two issues there. You’re asking a crime issue. You’re asking a homelessness issue, right? And they’re connected I understand, but they’re different issues.

We spend $15 billion a year on incarceration, on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

We have to keep dangerous people off the street. That’s part of the criminal-justice system. It’s really important to the safety of communities that that be true. To the extent we can treat nonviolent people instead of incarcerating them … it’s much less expensive long-term and much safer long-term to do that.

Can you touch on the homeless side a little bit? You don’t have enough places for people to go. The fastest-growing homeless population is over [age] 65. These are people who can’t afford a roof. If you look at the stats, one in seven people who hits the street has some serious mental-health condition, either bipolar or some serious substance-abuse mental-health issue. Being on the street is so stressful. It’s so dangerous.

We have had two answers, put them in shelters that they don’t want to go into, or a seven-year process to get them into long-term housing at something between $750,000 and $1 million a key. Two unworkable solutions.

The number one thing is to keep people off the street in the first place — and if they get on the street, to get them off the street as fast as possible before the incredible damage of being on the street catches up. That’s best for everybody. Am I a believer in emergency interim housing? Yes, something that is not a permanent solution but gets people off the street in a place they’re willing to go.

When you think about crime … it isn’t really about the crime rates. It’s about what people see and how they feel unsafe because you walk by people and you think, “OK, that’s a scary person.” But that really matters.

Those people are in a position that is so destructive to them, that getting them off the street is an absolute critical function to save their mental health, to keep the community safe, and to actually revive our downtowns.

With funding from a billionaires tax? I said I’m proposing closing two corporate loopholes that bring in more money over five years that are permanent. I’m in favor of taxing. Trump cut the taxes on corporations and rich people, and he paid for it by kicking people off Medicaid, Medi-Cal. That’s what’s gone on.

Am I opposed to taxing either very wealthy people — including people who are not billionaires, by the way — or big corporations? No, I know we’re going to need to do that.

There’s a specific proposal that addresses the specific issue that I mentioned to you, about kicking people off Medi-Cal. Which is a one-time answer, not a permanent thing, that brings in less money than I’m proposing with the two tax loopholes.

There are issues with it as tax policy. Do I support the idea that we need revenue to solve this problem? Yes, and I have very specific proposals to do it in a way that is permanent and brings in more money. Am I opposed to the idea of taxing billionaires? No.