05/20/2026
FROM HOUSING ACTION COALITION—Watch Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa sit down with Ezra Klein for two hours and talked only about housing.
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Last Friday (May 15, 2026) in Oakland, HAC convened something rare.
The five leading Democratic candidates for governor of California — Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa — sat down with Ezra Klein for two hours and talked only about housing. Not in the choreographed cadence of a debate, not in the prepackaged sound bites of a stump speech or an advertisement — but in real time, addressing real tradeoffs. They engaged with CEQA, impact fees, Builder's Remedy, prevailing wage requirements, and the messy politics of telling cities what they can and cannot do.
It was the kind of public conversation our democracy is supposed to produce, but rarely does — and we want to take a moment to recognize what Housing Action Coalition, co-hosts the Ezra Klein Show, Terner Center, and the San Francisco Foundation were able to pull off.
What was most striking was what the candidates didn’t do: Not one of them reached for the NIMBY frame. Not one defended the status quo. Every candidate on stage endorsed upzoning around transit, streamlining entitlements and permits, meaningful CEQA reform, and state preemption when cities fail to build their fair share. Every candidate agreed that we need to cap impact fees, legalize lower-cost construction methods, and impose both legal remedies and builder’s remedies as a bulwark against obstruction.
A decade ago, this conversation would have been unthinkable in California. The war of ideas is over, and the pro-housing camp has successfully shown the importance of pragmatic housing policy reform in our state. Now, our next governor of California has to start from the premise that we must build more homes to address our housing production, displacement, and affordability crises.
But winning the argument is not the same as winning the fight, and the forum also made that crystal clear. Watching candidates wrestle with how far they’re willing to go to take on not just their enemies, but also their allies, to make sure housing gets built, was particularly striking. These were not gotcha moments — they were honest considerations. The candidates were being asked to admit, in public, that the coalition that passed the last decade of pro-housing laws will be stretched and tested by what comes next.
Because here's where we are: For ten years, the pro-housing fight has mostly been about streamlining approvals and expanding zoned capacity — in other words, making it legal to build. We’ve done extraordinary work on that front, and we’re also not done. But the binding constraint has shifted — increasingly, the question is not whether we can build, but whether we can afford to. Construction costs in California are twice what they are in Texas, and affordable units in our state pencil out at close to a million dollars a door. Tens of thousands of permitted units across California sit on the shelf because the math doesn't work. And there are few roads to lowering the cost of construction in California that don't run directly through an important constituency or interest group. Every lever we have left to pull has somebody's hand on the other end of it.
That’s why we came away from Friday night thinking less about ideas and more about character. The next governor of California is going to inherit a job that requires real political courage to convert the past decade’s political wins into actual homes people can actually live in. Strategy is going to matter at least as much as policy. We have fought like hell to permit a lot of housing in this state — now, we are going to have to fight even harder to make sure we build it.
The forum was an invaluable window into how each of these candidates thinks, where they will push forward, and how they will bend. No matter who wins, HAC will be right there to hold them accountable for living up to what they committed to on that stage.
Last Friday in Oakland, HAC convened something rare. The five leading Democratic candidates for governor of California — Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa — sat down with Ezra Klein for two hours and talked only about housing. Not in the chor
