Most people would not consider ADUs, bonding capacity, and prevailing wage policy to be juicy conversation topics for a fun Friday night out. We somehow ended up in a room full of exceptions to that rule.

Housing affordability is the defining issue of the next Governor’s race and on a beautiful spring evening less than a month before the primary, just across the street from Oakland’s Lake Merritt, hundreds of people packed into the Henry J. Kaiser Center to watch the five top Democratic candidates duke it out over who had the best solutions to the state’s most unsolvable problem. 

The line snaked around the recently renovated venue. Call it Bonnaroo for those building “backyard casitas,” or Coachella for takes on modular housing. The crowd was predominantly think-tank employees, academics, lobbyists, and other young-ish professionals in horn-rimmed glasses. Two lovebirds (an architect and a fundraiser for an environmental nonprofit) were even there on a date.

It was not a debate, moderator and neoliberal heartthrob Ezra Klein insisted, but a forum for substantive policy discussion. The housing crisis is at emergency levels, with the state facing soaring homelessness, scores of residents fleeing over high costs, and residential construction stubbornly stuck despite more than 100 laws meant to cut red tape and build faster. 

Buffy Wicks, an East Bay state Assemblymember and perhaps the most stridently “pro-housing” California lawmaker besides Sen. Scott Wiener kicked off the festivities with a fiery speech. “Hello housers!” she said, greeting the audience before explaining how we got here: “Our housing hell was paved with very good intentions.” 

The event featured the top-polling Democrats still in the race: Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa. 

“One of these candidates is going to be our next governor,” Wicks said. “They are not going to be perfect, they’re going to make mistakes, but will they be willing to break some glass to advance a pro-housing agenda?” 

The audience roared. Although the event was billed as nonpartisan, notably absent were the two leading Republican candidates: former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Organizers said both declined to come. 

If you’ve read this far, you’ve clearly read (or listened to a podcast about) “Abundance,” so here’s a rundown of the highlights.

In a rizz-deficient lineup, many observers pointed to the former Southern California congresswoman as perhaps the most charismatic candidate on the issue. Porter was the only candidate onstage to say union labor had become an obstruction to housing construction. 

“I do not think today is the time to do prevailing wage on residential housing,” Porter said. “I am not scared of anybody because I have three teenagers and I don’t want them to be living on my couch.”

Translation: California should not require developers to pay workers the prevailing wage to build housing. Porter’s argument is that cutting labor costs will have to play a pivotal role in bringing down the cost of construction even if it’s politically toxic to do so. 

Becerra insisted that carpenters should be able to afford the houses they build. Pressed on what else could bring construction costs down, the former Biden official blamed the Trump tariffs and the war in Iran before landing on cutting red tape and reducing local fees.

Housing experts observed after the event that while Becerra has a ways to go before joining their ranks, his lack of expertise does not disqualify him from the governorship — the important thing, they said, is that the governor listens to the right people.

Much of the debate — excuse us, forum — centered on how the state should hold municipal governments accountable for when they don’t produce enough new homes. Becerra came in tough, flexing his bona fides as a former state attorney general unafraid to sue city governments into compliance. He name-checked Huntington Beach and San Mateo as examples. 

Others thought litigation wasn’t the best tool to get more projects off the ground. Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, said the threat of the builder’s remedy was an important accountability tool against bad actors, but should only be used as a last resort. 

“I think the next governor cannot bring a lawyer mindset to this problem,” Mahan said. 

Steyer, who wore a suit and white Nike sneakers, favored the carrot over the stick, saying he would generate $20 billion each year for housing (along with healthcare, education, and infrastructure) by closing a “corporate tax loophole.” He would use the money to reward cities that built enough housing instead of suing noncompliant ones into submission.

“Lawsuits don’t get things done, money will,” Steyer said. “If you can build housing now, you get money. If you can’t, you don’t.” 

Abraham Lincoln purportedly lived in boarding houses throughout his young adulthood. The government built large-scale housing after World War II and the G.I. Bill helped mint a generation of first-time home owners. 

All night, the candidates waxed nostalgic about past eras when interim housing was widely embraced in America and the federal government played an active role in investing in public welfare. 

They all agreed that money should flow to those most in need — namely, the poor and developers. 

Porter said that the most effective way to keep people from falling into homelessness would be to just give them cash. Oftentimes, she said, households need only a “handful of money” to bridge the gap between paying rent and buying food. 

Mahan bragged that San Jose’s temporary housing sites and no encampment zones, while controversial (opens in new tab), are helping to reduce homelessness in the city. He also said the state should be buying and preserving older affordable housing stock.

The last time former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa held elected office was in 2013. Since then, an entire Golden State Warriors dynasty has risen and fallen. But at least he’s staying up-to-date on his reading.

Villaraigosa referenced Klein and Derek Thompson’s book “Abundance” on stage three separate times. It got to the point where Klein had to tell him to calm down, eliciting chuckles from the crowd. 

The candidate’s resume has been on the shelf so long it’s started to yellow, and there’s only so much hay you make out of Obama-era political achievements. (Villaraigosa claimed to have personally told Obama that the federal government should give cities low-cost loans to build housing near transit.)

Where he did stand out was in being able to openly criticize the Democratic establishment. He said that while liberals blame Ronald Reagan for shutting down the state’s mental hospitals, the Blue supermajority has done nothing to bring them back. 

Villaraigosa also stumbled on the proverbial third rail of California politics, Prop. 13, which, in a scattered answer, he said he’s long opposed, still supports, but wants to reform on the margins. Well played, old-timer.