Radio Abundance

The following conversation was featured on Radio Abundance, Episode XXII: In the Arena. Michael Tubbs is the former Mayor of Stockton and the Founder of End Poverty in California. He is now running for Lieutenant Governor of California.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Hello, and welcome to Radio Abundance! I'm your host, Steve Boyle, the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America. We are on location in-studio in Los Angeles today with two Radio Abundance Los Angeles co-hosts. I am here with Alex Melendez, a longtime activist with YIMBY Action. He founded YIMBY Latino and was a DNC delegate for the 2024 election.Hey, Alex!Alex Melendrez, LA-Based YIMBY Activist and Former National YIMBY Organizer:Happy to be here!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I am also with Zennon Ulyate-Crow. Zennon is likewise a young activist with YIMBY Los Angeles, the West Side Young Democrats, and now Abundance Network's Abundant Santa Monica. Zennon was the youngest commissioner in Santa Cruz's history.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Board Member for YIMBY LA:Thank you so much. Appreciate it.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Welcome! Welcome to Radio Abundance.And, speaking of young folks, we've got a young folk here!Well, I'm still young. I feel old with these guys. I felt old learning about your age the other day. I knew you were, when you were first elected, one of the youngest elected officials ever in the US at age 22. You've been the Mayor of Stockton. You are now running for the Lieutenant Governor of California.You know, I have, even young politicians, a certain vision in my head that they're a little older. And then we were hanging out the other day, championing SB 79 in Sacramento. You had more to say to champion it than I did. I basically walked in and said, "I'm Steve Boyle with YIMBY Democrats, and I approve." But a friend of mine was there who said you went to college together. And he and I went to High School together. So that bummed me out because of imposter syndrome!Michael Tubbs, thank you for joining us on Radio Abundance!Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Thank you so much for having me. It's fantastic to be here.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Why are you running for Lieutenant Governor?Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Lieutenant Governor in California, in this moment, is a position that requires leadership, right? The job has very particular things you're responsible for.You're on the UC and CSU board, one of the only people in the state on both. And what people don't know, particularly for this conversation, is that both the UC and CSU can build by-right. In the same way they build buildings and departments, they could build housing. They could build more student housing, as you probably know, going to UC Santa Cruz. They could also build more workforce housing.The Lieutenant Governor also sits on the State Lands Commission and is responsible for being a good steward of our environment, but also making sure we're being thoughtful about when it is appropriate to actually build more housing.And then, beyond that, it's just an incredible bully pulpit. It's the second-highest elected official in the fourth-largest economy in the world: an economy that we know isn't working for everyone, an economy that we know isn't building enough housing for everyone.So, it just felt like the right opportunity to make an impact on the issues I care about and to make sure that California remains a beacon of what a multiracial democracy could look like: a society that's moving forward, not looking towards the past for inspiration, but looking at the future, embracing innovation and figuring out, how do you make sure we all do well?It's just an amazing opportunity. So I'm excited to be in the race.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:So you begin with an interesting thread, right? Because we'll of course talk about policies around housing and YIMBYism and Abundance in California and how to make it possible for people to build -- the private market, citizens, community developers, anybody -- to build. And government's included!And speaking of government, you've mentioned that, as Lieutenant Governor, you would have land and permission, which are two of the hardest things to get in order to build. So, if you did become Lieutenant Governor, what would you want to do with that land?Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:I'm going to be the most annoying regent of all time, insofar as I think, (A) we have to leverage the thousands of acres of the UC and CSU system. We know that students need housing, that janitors need housing, that adjunct faculty needs housing, that the people who work at universities need housing, and really making it a priority for that system to build, build, build.It's not a 10-year project, it's not a 20-year project. It's a necessity. Not just because I love housing, but because there's a real need. Throughout our system, from the UC level to the CSU level, even the community college level, the biggest need is housing. It's student housing.You have people taking longer to graduate because they can't find housing. You have people not graduating because they can't find housing. You have people graduating while living in cars or couch surfing because they can't find housing. So that's a manageable problem, a worthy problem, and one that I will use the bully pulpit in the position of trustee to really push and advocate for, because my experience in government has taught me: nothing just happens, and nothing happens easily. Yeah. You always have to push. You always have to get on people's nerves. You always have to be annoying.That's the only way anything, particularly important things, get done.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Board Member for YIMBY LA:I'll put some numbers to that as well. In the UCs, 7% of students are currently experiencing homelessness. In the CSUs, it's about 15%. In the community colleges, it's about 22%.I actually founded the Student Homes Coalition in California, which worked on passing student housing legislation at the state level. We've passed five out of seven bills for the past three years.Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Well, thank you for your work. Amazing.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:You know, something we're very familiar with in the Bay Area is students being seen as pollution. There's just been some good reforms and clarifications to CEQA, but it was quite vague about what was pollution, so people could say that students were pollution, young people were pollution, noise is pollution, parties are pollution – genuinely – to block student housing and to block low-income housing and affordable housing.I talked with Jon Lovett, the former speechwriter for Barack Obama and Host of Pod Save America. We talked in the fall. He said a big radicalizing moment for him was to see, in the East Bay, student housing be thwarted because "students were pollution."This story has even made it across the pond! I was in London two weeks ago, meeting at Parliament and having lunch with a member of Parliament and a sort of a world-crossing academic, and the academic, a guy named Alain Bertaud, as we were telling stories of NIMBYism around the world, he started talking about us not being able to build student housing in California.So, it is legendary, this failure and betrayal, and I'm excited that you might take a stab at fixing it.Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Yes, sir!Alex Melendrez, LA-Based YIMBY Activist and Former National YIMBY Organizer:I hate to say this, but students do breed CO2. Just saying!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Yeah, you've got to watch out for that!Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:I think, also, what's lost in the conversation is, in addition to students, it's also the people who work at the universities who need housing. Our universities are some of the biggest employers in the state. Just like we require or want other big employers to build housing near the job site, the CSU and UC system has to do the same thing, even at the community college level.Alex Melendrez, LA-Based YIMBY Activist and Former National YIMBY Organizer:I actually had a brief stint where I almost became a community college trustee in my home district back in San Mateo County, and I ended up earning the endorsement of the faculty union because of this specific, particular thing.A lot of their part-time professors were facing a lack of housing opportunities and the fact that a lot of them had to drive into this very wealthy district that had an excess of money and land.I will say, that district was the first educational district in the county to build housing. So, they were starting to work on that, but that was also one of their primary issues. And the reason why I earned their endorsement was because I was a strong advocate for wanting to build more housing so that these people can live here and do the work that they were happy to do for students.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:And when we talk about teacher housing and janitor housing-- this is all levels, right? – it's something I've seen even in the suburbs I grew up in. They’ve tried to build affordable teacher housing, and the community can go, "I don't like it. It's too many stories. The homes are too close together. I don't want it." And, suddenly, you're saying students can't live and teachers can't live.And, by the way, this isn't just charity for students and teachers. Universities are the engines of culture and economic development and innovation. The companies of the future, the jobs of the future, the game changing research of

New York City has 3 major pro-housing initiatives on the ballot that NYC New Liberals Political Director Tibita Kaneene thinks might be bigger than City of Yes. As we speak, however, NIMBY elected officials are mobilizing with dirty tricks to protect their own “member deference” vetocracy-of-one, a practice that Congressman Ritchie Torres called “municipal feudalism” on his own episode of Radio Abundance.We’re in the midst of a few high-intensity weeks, so we’re shipping episodes right away and backfilling transcripts later. We wanted to give you the auto-generated transcript, but there’s too much “Chiyose” and “Zellnir Meiri” to be legible. If you’d like to help us clean up and ship transcripts faster, reach out to us at Team@YIMBYDemocrats.org! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

This episode was filmed on Tuesday, September 2nd. With Radio Abundance Host Steve M. Boyle on a flight to DC, Radio Abundance Los Angeles Host and newly-christened Executive Director of People First California Zennon Ulyate-Crow pinch hits to lead a special conversation with Jon Lovett, the co-host of Pod Save America, host of Lovett or Leave It, Cofounder of Crooked Media, and former speechwriter for President Barack Obama.Pod Save America were gracious enough to welcome us into their studio for this special episode of Radio Abundance, where Zennon got to ask the question that’s been on everyone’s mind: Jon, how did your brain not break listening to that? And how much longer can we have a Democratic party if our “Progressive champions” are intent on minimizing affordable housing and flipping the House and the Electoral College to MAGA for a generation?Get the answers to these questions and more on this episode of Radio Abundance!Thank you, Pod Save America, for letting us film this special episode of Radio Abundance at your studios!We’re shipping this timely video right before we leap into the Abundance 2025 Conference in Washington DC. We will backfill the transcript in the coming weeks! Enjoy the discussion, and make sure to catch the original! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

The following conversation was featured on Radio Abundance, Episode XXI: LA All-Stars.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Hey, everybody! Welcome to Radio Abundance!I'm your host, Steve Boyle, here on location in downtown Los Angeles with three amazing Angelenos. YIMBYs. Abundance-minded Democrats.I'm with Azeen Khanmalek, Alex Melendrez, and Dulce Vazquez.Dulce, Alex, Azeen – thanks for hanging out with me today, and thanks for welcoming me to Los Angeles.Dulce Vasquez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:Thanks for having us!Azeen Khanmalek, Executive Director of Abundant Housing LA:Thanks for having us!Alex Melendrez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:Happy to be here!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Why don't we go around? If everyone can maybe share, for a second, who you are and what's your background in the YIMBY movement? How'd you come to this? What are you most passionate about here? And what's on your mind today?Azeen Khanmalek, Executive Director of Abundant Housing LA:Sure, I'll start. I'm Azeen Khanmalek. Thanks so much for having me today. I am the Executive Director of Abundant Housing LA. For the past 10 years or so, we have been LA County's YIMBY organization. We're a nonprofit advocacy organization. We advocate for more housing at all levels of affordability throughout LA County.I am an urban planner by education and training, and that's how I first came into this work. I worked at the City of Los Angeles for many years for the Planning Department and for several years at the Mayor's Office focusing on housing policy, housing finance, and land use, all in the service of building more housing.In my journey in the public sector and as a policy expert in the housing space, I think what became clear to me over about a decade or so – and I really started my planning career right as the YIMBY movement was also dawning and in its infancy – I came to the realization that, although I loved being a planner and I love working for government, the solutions that we need to solve our housing crisis go beyond what any one city can do.Local advocacy and local organizing is extremely important to this movement, and it is, in fact, what Abundant Housing LA mostly focuses on, but this is not just a policy effort that we're involved in, right? This is a social effort to change hearts and minds. And it's also a political effort, to get the kinds of leaders elected that will actually pass the policies we all know we need to get out of our housing crisis. So that's why I'm here today.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Speaking of a multi-pronged movement, Dulce, how about you?Dulce Vasquez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:Yeah, absolutely. Dulce Vasquez, longtime Los Angeles resident, former candidate for Los Angeles City Council and the California State Assembly. I've been in the YIMBY movement for a long time, and, I feel like, as a candidate, I was kind of in the first wave of those who were really honing in and centering pro-housing and Abundance in my platform.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:And what year was that?Dulce Vasquez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:2022. 2020 to 2022 was the campaign, and I got a lot of pushback for it, particularly in where I was running, where there were bountiful anti-gentrification efforts.Azeen talks about sort of the social aspect of it and changing of hearts and minds. I was swimming in this very big ocean, but I've continued on in the movement. I'm a former Board Member of Abundant Housing. I continue to be involved with organizations like California YIMBY, YIMBY Action, launching YIMBY Latino with Alex, and I'm just happy to be here and continuing to spread the message.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:How about you, Alex?Alex Melendrez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:Well, Alex Melendres. I have been in some combination of Democratic Party advocacy and YIMBY advocacy for the last 10 years. I started as a volunteer and basically worked my way up in a variety of capacities.I'm a former Organizing Manager with maybe four different former titles at YIMBY Action, from LA Organizing Manager to Regional Bay Area Manager to National Chapter Manager. And I, for a while, was the Equity Officer at YIMBY Action, where I really focused on building equity-based coalitions trying to work with affinity groups and diversify the movement. Which is something I had been doing for a while, but I was given more of an official role with that.In the Democratic Party, I pretty much started as any basic Democratic volunteer and worked my way up to be a DNC attendee. I got elected to my local Democratic Central Committee, which are the local governing boards for the Democratic Party.I should say most of this was in the Bay Area. I just moved here, roughly a year ago.I've been neck deep in the state Democratic Party, and I like to joke that one of my biggest side missions in the California Democratic Party for a number of years has been to make it more pro-housing and more pro-Abundance. And that's taken a lot of work.But, given the last election cycle in 2024, we saw a big shift with then-Vice President Kamala Harris actually adopting a lot of the housing shortage language and a lot of the messaging that was really important to what YIMBY Democrats for America is really pushing for. It speaks to the origins of YIMBY Democrats and the YIMBYs for Harris movement.I've been doing that for a number of years, and my approach has always been to come from a grassroots building-power approach. There's enough policy people out there, but I've always been somebody to focus on building power in people because that's really what it takes. The old joke I used to say is: you can be right or you can learn how to win. We know we're right, and we have to work on winning.So, that's where a lot of my work and background has been spent.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Nice! And Alex and Dulce, can you tell us a little bit about YIMBY Latino?Dulce Vasquez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:I think this is Alex's baby.Alex Melendrez, Los Angeles-based YIMBY Activist:One of the things that I started to notice around 2018 and 2019 is – I'm just gonna speak kind of candidly – very oftentimes, I was the only person of color in the room, as both my co-guests are probably familiar with!But, over time, I did notice the movement start to grow more diverse. There was a variety of online discourse and in-person discourse, not just in the Bay Area, but in the state of California, about YIMBYs and Latinos at odds. But, there were a lot of people in the Abundance and YIMBY movement at the time who were Latino and who saw the connection of how their neighborhoods and displacement efforts were actually being affected by the housing shortage.One of the reasons why I started that was because I saw a real untapped audience there. There was an untapped group of people who felt like they didn't have a space to be both their, affinity-based self and pro-housing at the same time. There were a couple activists in San Francisco that were actually really mad that I started this!One of my very first events was a walking tour of a freeway removal in San Francisco at the time. It was to remove the Central Freeway and replace it with a park and housing, and some Latino activists in San Francisco were really upset by that.But, when I started building this audience, I noticed that there were a lot of people that were happy that they had a space. There were other Latino YIMBYs out there who were really willing to hold their values and hold their representation forward.Since then, we’ve held a couple of events. I held a panel at the last YIMBYTown on how to make the YIMBY movement more diverse. There was also a secondary panel by one of my good friends at California YIMBY, his name is Jordan, on Latinos in YIMBY. And, since then, it's become just a more common thing to see.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Well, thinking of all of your cultural backgrounds, I'm curious about your experience growing up of housing in your community? I don't think you speak for your entire demographic! But everyone has a community, right?Think of your community's experience of housing: did you come to feel like you developed a heterodox take on that?I mean, I think this is one of the most pivotal questions right now in the YIMBY movement and the Abundance movement is. One of the reasons I'm animated about this is because when you have scarcity – when you have a world where there aren't enough homes and it becomes an auction just for a roof over your head – the first people to lose and suffer are going to be marginalized people. They’re going to be vulnerable people, whether they're low income or whether they have historically not had access to certain communities or neighborhoods or levels of wealth.And it feels like there is a tension, of course, when you have communities that are cultural communities, that are vital, that we want to keep and sustain and thrive and protect, that are at risk from gentrification, that are terrified of being displaced or eradicated by new luxury towers, and so, therefore, you end up fearing the idea of new housing. And then, when you don't create new housing, then you get the opposite effect and the scarcity and hollowing out, not just of those neighborhoods, but of entire cities becoming inaccessible to people. But it's very challenging to talk about!It's very challenging to think, how do we protect people in a world where we're dealing with 50 years of a built up housing crisis? And so, even the solutions have, in their release valve, challenges and transitions and transformations.So, big question, because it is a big question: I’m curious for your personal experience and how you think about these wider questions?Dulc

The following conversation took place on Tuesday, August 5th, 2025’s episode of Radio Abundance, Founding the Build America Caucus, with United States Congressman Josh Harder, the Founder and Chair of the Congressional Build America Caucus. Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Congressman Harder, thank you so much for joining us on Radio Abundance! We are so excited to talk to you today for many reasons, but perhaps none more so than the fact that you are the new Founder and Chair of the all-new bipartisan Congressional Build America Caucus. We are extremely geeked out about this, not least of which because, just a few weeks before you announced, we announced our ourselves as YIMBY Democrats for America with two missions: to Build America and Defeat Fascism. And now, thanks to you, there is a Build America Caucus.There's going to be folks who listen to this podcast who have been probably following the Build America Caucus so intensely that perhaps they know more about it than you do, but there's also going to be more still every week that are tuning in to join the movement and learn about it for the very first time. So. maybe this is the first time they're hearing about the Build America Caucus — or maybe this is the first time they're hearing about a Caucus!Congressman Harder, can you tell us, 'What is the Build America Caucus?'Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:Thanks for having me, and thank you for all of the incredible work you're doing! The Build America Caucus is, pretty simply, the Federal hub for passing pro-growth policies that cut red tape and get America back to building the housing, the energy, and the infrastructure that we so desperately need.This is a bipartisan group of about 30 members of Congress, stretching across the entire political spectrum. We've got, you know, folks on the Left of the Democratic Party, on the Right and the Middle, and a whole bunch of Republicans across the Republican party as well that are really just united by one thing: that it has become way too difficult to get important projects done, and it's past time we fixed it.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:We'll talk in a little bit about how you came to these ideas, how you started the caucus, and what you're working on now. As a point of clarification: listeners of this podcast will know that we are huge fans of Congressman Robert Garcia. Earlier this year, he founded his own Caucus, the brand-new bipartisan Congressional YIMBY Caucus. He joined us at our first YIMBYs for Harris event, and he broke the news about when the YIMBY Caucus would launch during our phone-banking events. He joined us as one of our first guests on Radio Abundance, and Congressman Scott Peters, who is in the Build America Caucus as well, even told us that our efforts in the fall with YIMBYs for Harris were part of why the YIMBY Caucus happened: that, in identifying and recruiting and promoting so many, YIMBYs and Democrats in Congress, we sent the signal of how many there were and that there was a mobilized and energized constituency ready to back them, and that folks even used our Green Room as a recruiting station. I am curious: you're also a Founding Member of the YIMBY Caucus. A lot of our favorite guests, from Congressman Auchincloss and Congresswoman Laura Friedman to Congressman Scott Peters -- are in both Caucuses. So, where does one Caucus begin and the other end? What's the overlap? What's each's unique area? How do you think they'll work together?Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:We want to work with anybody. We share a lot of common ground with other Caucuses. I think the big difference is we're just not focused on only housing: the same thing that's holding us back from building the housing that we need -- which I'd argue is an obsession with process and paperwork over the end outcome -- that is also the same thing holding us back from building new nuclear plants or wind turbines or high-speed rail. So, this is really an 'umbrella group' to address all of the common bottlenecks we have put in front of building good things. One of the reasons why that's important is the federal government has some jurisdiction over housing -- and we're excited about some of the housing bills that we're launching, although so much of that is in State and Local hands -- but when it comes to energy policy or infrastructure policy or healthcare policy, that's really in the Federal Government's court. So, we need a group that is going to be focused on what is holding us back from getting good things done across all of these different areas, and especially focused on the areas where the Federal Government is really 'the elephant in the room' and writing the lion's share of the policy that's relevant for folks across the country.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Can you give me an example of some of those? An area of specific policy or specific regulation where you feel like the Federal Government has been holding us back and that you feel like the Build America Caucus can step up and fix?Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:Yeah, I mean, I think about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill that I voted for now four years ago, during the beginning of the Biden Administration. I was incredibly optimistic when I cast that vote about what those bills would be able to do in my community. We had one bridge in our area that I drove over as a kid that was literally falling apart, and I was incredibly excited by the fact that we were going to put infrastructure dollars into local communities to build the highways and the bridges and the mass transit that we need.Fast forward to four years later: that bridge is still just as broken as ever. School buses are even banned from driving across it; i's so dangerous. And it could take another 15 years to actually put a shovel in the dirt to get that bridge fixed.Look at all the wind and solar that we have tried to finance, with the vast majority of it either not getting built at all or not getting built fast enough or being built in the Red States that have actually had a lot of the permanent reforms that the Federal Government should be taking on.So, this has been a really radicalizing experience for me. To just see how slow good projects have been getting going. And so, what do we need? We need a Federal Government that has a sense of urgency and that has a sense of real outcomes and getting good projects out the door and not letting the process govern everything, as opposed to the real needs that people have.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I love that you used the word “radicalizing” because it anticipates my very next question, which is: “What radicalized you, and how did you come to these ideas?”You know, as you talk about the Infrastructure Bill and then shovels not hitting the dirt, I think that's a journey that a lot of us have been on: to fight for decades, to get people to pay attention to climate change and fund the solutions, and then to turn around and go, “wait, are we, The Democratic Party, holding ourselves up? And are we, in California, building less than Texas?”You know, I've spent most of the last couple decades in San Francisco. You're from the Manteca, Modesto, Tracy, Stockton area. It seems like I've been sending people from me to you to jack rents up where you're from and where you represent. So, I'm curious how you came to these ideas in the first place? How were you radicalized?Josh Harder, United States Congressman from California:Look, I think it's hard to not be a 30-something in America and not be radicalized. Or a 20-something. Or a teenager, right? I mean, young people across the country are fired up because we see that we're not going to have the same future that our parents and grandparents had, right?I mean, the fact that 56 is the average age of buying a new home today versus 31 when I was born — 56 is the average age of buying a new home versus 31 just a couple of decades ago! -- tells you how far it has gotten to actually achieve the American Dream for most young people.I think a lot about the famous story of Boris Yeltsin visiting an American grocery store before the fall of the Soviet Union. You've probably heard it. Yeltsin meets with Bush and with Reagan, but nothing had a bigger impression on him than seeing American prosperity and American growth represented in an American supermarket: a huge contrast to the shortages in the Soviet Union at the time.I still think American supermarkets are the eighth Wonder of the World. I think today, if you were to airdrop somebody from Russia or from China -- which we consider one of our global rivals, if not our main global rival -- I think they'd be pretty underwhelmed. We still have good supermarkets, but we have a homelessness crisis in San Francisco and across California that's exacerbated by our housing shortage. We pay sky-high rates for electricity because we've made it difficult to build new energy projects. We've waited 30 years for high speed rail without any passengers going. What Build America is all about is achieving that same sense of awe about American prosperity and American growth compared to our rivals that we had when Boris Yeltsin visited that supermarket in the '80s.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:So, you go on this process of radicalization. You come to see this as the solution. At a certain point, you had to go, “Oh, okay, I think a huge next step for this could be a Caucus. And I, Josh Harder, I'm the man to build it.” And now, you've got to go recruit, and you've got to figure out who should be a member, and you've got to bring folks to the table.What is the actual process, first of deciding to try to start a Caucus? Why a caucus? Why you? How are you going to get this done? And then,

This month, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed a new Executive Order to increase housing production and affordability in Maryland. Secretary of Housing & Community Development Jake Day joined Radio Abundance in Washington DC to answer your questions about the new Executive Order, from what it entails to how they plan to enforce it to what we can expect to see as results.Secretary Day joined us on the same day that we interviewed both him and Congressman Jake Auchincloss at the DNC in Washington DC — two of three guests from our premiere episode double-header. With only Governor Wes Moore missing from a reunion special, Secretary Day brought a special message from Maryland Governor Wes Moore for all YIMBY Democrats across America:“Hey, Jake, please give my best to the YIMBY Democrats! It’s crazy to think it’s been just 5 months since that first episode we did together. How funny that you’re getting the band back together with my man Jake Day and Congressman Auchincloss. I’d be there with you if I wasn’t literally launching my re-election bid today! You’re in great hands though, and together with Secretary Day, we’re making sure that Maryland leads in addressing our housing crisis, Building America, and championing Progressive Abundance. We got this.”Here’s that clip:The “Housing Starts Here” executive order:* Directs the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and the Maryland Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the Maryland Department of General Services, to identify specific state-owned properties for transit-oriented development, paving the way for more homes for Maryland families to be built through improving the use of state-owned land.* Promotes government efficiency by reducing state permitting timelines, bringing more homes to market faster while improving the transparency of jurisdictional housing production.* Creates a new state housing ombudsman to act as a liaison between the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and other state agencies, local governments, developers, local communities, and other stakeholders to assist in the permitting process—ensuring development projects continue without delay.* Directs the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development to work with local jurisdictions to create housing production targets for the state, each county, and each municipality with planning/zoning authority. The production targets are to be published in January 2026 and updated every five years.* Establishes annual Maryland Housing Leadership Awards to recognize jurisdictions that make progress on their housing development goals. The awards give jurisdictions bonus points that increase their competitiveness when applying for funding programs through the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

This interview is our most harrowing and disturbing interview on Radio Abundance yet. It was chilling to edit. Two days before Charlie Kirk was assassination in broad daylight and President Trump announced that anyone who had ever called him a Fascist was “directly responsible for terrorism,” Congresswoman Laura Friedman sat down with Radio Abundance host Steve Boyle to lay out the case for why Trump was pursuing a march to Fascism and how she faced the ever-present threat of political violence. This interview from September 8th, 2025, serves as an important historical artifact of the mood and stakes in this nation even before Kirk’s murder, untainted by the ferocious and dangerous discourse that has followed. It is worth your time. Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

This July, Radio Abundance host Steve M. Boyle returned to London to commemorate the 20th anniversary of surviving Al Qaeda’s 7/7 London Underground Attacks by visiting Parliament at the invitation of Chris Curtis MP and Labour YIMBY organizers.On July 10th, Chris Curtis sat down with Radio Abundance to tell our American audience how he and the UK’s Labour Party are pursuing Abundance across the pond. Take a listen! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Hey, everybody. Welcome to Radio Abundance. My name is Steve Boyle. I'm the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America, and we are live on location in London today with Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North. Chris, thanks for joining us on Radio Abundance!Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:Thank you very much for having me! It's great to be here. Well, it's great for you to be here, I suppose, is probably the better way of putting it? Thank you for coming to this great city and chatting to us!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I mean, it is a tremendous honor. As I mentioned the other day at the Labour YIMBY Summer Party, it genuinely is the honor of a lifetime, no matter what happens from here on out, because I'm not in London to hang out with you — that's very fortunate for me — I'm here because, 20 years ago, I survived the July 7th terrorist attacks, and it felt very important for reasons I could hardly begin to explain to be back here for the anniversary. And it turns out to have been because, a couple days before coming, the Labour YIMBY folks reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to do a podcast with them. I said, "You're never gonna believe it: I'm coming to London!" They said, "You're never gonna believe it. We have, like, 10 things booked that week. Do you want to do all of them?" And so we have gotten to meet each other, and here we are sitting down together.Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:Yeah, it's very good to have met you, and very good to form these Trans-Atlantic partnerships to beat the scourge of NIMBYism and hopefully get both of our great countries building again, because it's the only way we can start to solve the problems that both our nations face.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I mean, it is incredibly exciting, right? Our nations are family members. And, you know, families bicker from time to time. But that's a family, right? You have a kid. You raise the kid. The kid gets older and says, "I want more agency." You say, "I don't think so." Kid says, "I think so."Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:Who's the kid in this?Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:We're the kid! You're the parents. And, eventually, we've got to leave the nest. And then, after a little time of tension, we become quite close again. And have been ever since.Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:Yeah, I mean, if you follow the analogy to its end, eventually you are going to be caring for us. I'm not sure how I feel about that!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I think we've done a lot together as nations, from supporting each other in democracy to defeating fascism, and if we can help each other to build, that's fantastic.And what I mean by help each other really is to learn from each other. Because I think the best way to go about this — the best way to help each other — is to share information and also case studies. So, I'm excited that we get to do that today, because even for our very wonkish and worldly audience, there's things you know about the UK and there's things you don't.I think most people will be able to name your Prime Minister and the last few as well. They will have knowledge of certain UK scandals and historical developments. I'd be surprised, though, if a lot of people know what Milton Keynes North is. Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:A massive shame that is.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Well, tell us about it!Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:So, Milton Keynes is probably one of the places in the UK that would feel most familiar and at home to an American visiting.We have these things that are incredibly rare in the UK, actually, which is roads that run straight. We have a grid system like you have in DC and lots of other places. And that is basically because it is a New Town. A New City.I'm the first Member of Parliament -- it's the same age as my mum -- I'm the first Member of Parliament that was born and grew up in the New Town, now City, of Milton Keynes. It's got a population of about 300,000. It was built and designed by the 1960s Labour government, who saw the massive housing shortage that the country faced and realized, particularly here in London, that we needed to start building new places and new settlements to live in.AMilton Keynes was the biggest and most successful of those places and has consistently grown ever since. Over the past decade, we've been building between 2,000 and 3,000 homes every single year. We are on a trajectory to become a city of about 500,000 over the next 15 or 20 years.I think what's most exciting is: we built this new settlement, now this new city, where so many people have made their home, but we've also built a massive economic success story.It's halfway between London and Birmingham, two of our biggest cities here. It's also halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, which are big university cities which I'm sure many of your audience have heard of. It's slap bang in the middle of all four of those. So, it's got really good connections to all of those places. And, partly because of that, it's got a real thriving economy.We've got a massive growing tech sector. Robotics. Loads of other exciting stuff going on. More startups than almost anywhere else in the country. So, anyone that's coming over or looking to invest in the UK, please do consider it, because it is a really exciting, vibrant place and somewhere that I'm determined to continue building and ensuring that kids growing up there today can have the same fantastic start in life that I had growing up there a few decades ago.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Let's just double stamp something you said. Before we even get to your role in Parliament, how UK housing law works, and how you're trying to change that: you mentioned that Milton Keynes is a New Town. Which is to say, in the thousand year history of your nation — you can correct that; I know there's several pieces to the United Kingdom and maybe you have different ideas of where they begin. I'm going Battle of Hastings; we can refine that — Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:We're getting the Bayeux Tapestry coming over! That was announced this week.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Ooh.Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:We've already gone off on a tangent! The French are sending us over the Bayeux Tapestry for a little bit next year. Come back and see it!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:It's a dangerous precedent for you if we're starting to return artifacts to different places…Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:I refuse to comment!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:But in this long history, not so long ago, your people in government said, "Hey, you know this place where there is nothing? There should be a town here. We will build it." And you're not the only one!So, I'm very curious: you started to allude to this, but, man, I think an American audience would be interested in why that decision was made in and how it was executed, right? Was it just the government building things? Was it a public private partnership? How did this work?Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North:It was a big government decision, and it was far more government-led and executed. It was a Development Corporation, as we call them, that was set up, which is a publicly-owned organization. It had compulsory purchase powers.My great, great grandparents were farmers on the land. They had their farm compulsorily purchased off them by the government in order to build it. So, it was a level of forcefulness and government control. A lot of it was private money still. There was a lot of private capital that was invested in it, but it was a lot more government-centered and government-focused than you would necessarily do today.It was just because there was such a determination at the time to break through the housing crisis that the country faced. I think what was also interesting about it — obviously, kind of having a quite well planned city was quite interesting, and you talk about the grid system and everything else — but it was also being able to start from scratch. Picking what was effectively a lot of farms and going, "Let's build something here" really allowed for innovation.So, they built entire housing estates to look at how, if you build in slightly different ways, it can lead to homes that use less energy, because there was a fuel crisis at the time. Thinking about how to build far more efficiently, so that you can get more bang for your buck with building.We learned so much through the process of building as well. Actually, we — the government in the UK — is now thinking about repeating this process with a series of more modern New Towns. And what's interesting as part of that process that we're going through is looking back to the New Towns of the past, particularly Milton Keynes, and thinking, "What did we get right? What did we get wrong? What can we learn from them to ensure that the places that we build in the future can be even better?"And that's quite exciting.!Like, actually, we talk about building and development and the things that it achieves in new homes, whatever. But actually, this idea of building somewhere new — and the innovation and what you can learn from it — I think is also really exciting.Stay tuned for the next chapter of our Radio Abundance interview with Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North in the United Kingdom,

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Hello! My name is Zennon Ulyate-Crow. I'm here with Radio Abundance, live in Los Angeles. Sitting right next to me is Jon Rawlings, running for Council District 3 in Los Angeles.Jon, want to tell me a little bit more about why you're here today?Jon Rawlings, Los Angeles City Council Candidate:Yeah, so we're here at the Sepulveda Stop of the Orange Line. We're reacting to City Council yesterday voting to oppose SB 79 to build more housing near transit. We thought this would be the perfect place to do it because behind us we've got what I think is a Chevron gas refinery and an empty parking lot on the other side. And this seems like the perfect place that we should be building housing.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Can you tell me your first reactions to the Council opposing SB 79 and what you would want to do as a Council Member to support building more housing near transit?Jon Rawlings, Los Angeles City Council Candidate:Yeah, I mean, my first reaction is obviously disappointment. We certainly need bills like SB 79 to build more housing around transit.But my second reaction was: I expected it. This is a City Council that has traditionally always said "no" to more housing, no matter what that looked like, whether it's a state bill or something on the local level.So, as a City Council Member, I want to get to a City Council that says "yes" to more housing, especially around transit. That feels like probably the most obvious place we should start with building housing.This station right here is actually the site of where they're planning to build the new Sepulveda Pass transit corridor, which is a train line that's going to connect the Valley to the West Side. You're going to be able to get from here to UCLA in 9 minutes.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Why is the LA City Council opposing building more housing in places like this?Jon Rawlings, Los Angeles City Council Candidate:Well, we've seen City Council tends to listen to the loudest voices, even though that might not be indicative of the population of their districts. And those tend to be the NIMBY, wealthy, single family homeowners. And you'll hear standard terms like, "oh, we want to maintain control of our city and the way that we do things, and we also don't want to change the character of our neighborhood."But, for those of us in this space, we know that that's just BS and that just means they don't want to do anything. They want to maintain their control, and that means not building anything.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: As a Council Member in CD 3, what would you do differently for your district and for the City of Los Angeles as a whole when it comes to housing and transportation policy?Jon Rawlings, Los Angeles City Council Candidate:Yeah, for me and my district in CD 3, we definitely could use some more building around transit and commercial corridors as well. There's definitely some opportunities along the Orange line and even along Ventura Boulevard to build more housing, bring in more density, and create more walkable cities.In terms of transit, I would very much be an advocate for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor and building heavy rail down there, as well as other, you know, bus lanes and bike lanes and other transit-oriented development and just transit means of getting around the city.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: If there's any way that people can help out with your campaign, what could they do the most to help?Jon Rawlings, Los Angeles City Council Candidate:Right now, it's getting the word out. So, follow the socials for sure. Just look up Jon Rawlings (J-O-N & Rawlings like the baseball company) to follow me on social media.If you're interested in volunteering, you can go to the website JonRawlings.com to reach out. Or even DM me on Instagram!I'm available, and we're looking for volunteers and people that want to get the word out about good candidates that support transit and housing! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

The following conversation was featured on Radio Abundance, Episode XXIV: The Cut Red Tape for Housing Act. Laura Friedman is a United States Congresswoman from California and a member of both the Build America Caucus and the YIMBY Caucus.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Congresswoman Friedman, welcome to Radio Abundance! You’ve been on Radio Abundance before, but this is our first-ever live episode!We got an early scoop that this bill might be coming and chatted about doing an emergency podcast today to be timely, and we thought, "hey, as long as we're going to talk to you anyways, let's do it live and try a new format and see who shows up!” I mean, we're going to have the same conversation either way!So, this is a lot of fun. We're extremely excited to talk to you again, and we’re also extremely excited about the new bill. And always extremely excited to try a new, fun, live format.United States Congresswoman Laura Friedman:Yeah, it's exciting! It's kind of edgy. I like it.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Super edgy…United States Congresswoman Laura Friedman:Dangerous!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:As is this bill, maybe? A little bit? Dangerously helpful?I'm going to ask you about it in a second, but I want to set this up both for the audience and for you. First of all, you have been on Radio Abundance before, so for anybody that wants to know your origin story, how you got here, or how you think about this: go there! Today, we're going to talk about the bipartisan Cut Red Tape for Housing Act.And what I want to say to you is: you know, we have folks in our listener community who are maybe the foremost experts in their field in this sort of thing, and also folks who are coming to this movement for the first time and trying it out and seeing if they like it.So, I bring that up (and talk so much off the bat) only to set up that, in a moment, I'm going to ask you, "What is the Cut Red Tape for Housing Act?" But, I actually want you to tell me twice. First, I want you to tell me for somebody who is joining this movement and curious and inclined to it. The layman's big picture. High level.And then, I want to both liberate and encourage you to get real deep in the wonky details here. Because, I promise you, this is the space where you're going to be rewarded for that level of nuance and statistical precision.So, with that intro done…Congresswoman Friedman, what is the Cut Red tape for Housing Act?United States Congresswoman Laura Friedman:What this bill does is: it makes all infill housing categorically exempt from having to do a NEPA review (a review from the National Environmental Quality Act). That would mean that, if you're building housing that has federal money in it—(Because housing that doesn't have federal money generally does not go through a NEPA review unless there's certain things happening in terms of its location or its impact on an environmental resource. Generally, your infill housing in an existing city like Los Angeles or Boston or Memphis wouldn't have to go through NEPA unless it was receiving some federal funding.)Generally, those projects are Affordable Housing that have pass-throughs from the federal government, often through the state, which trigger the NEPA review. That's a review that can take 12 months. It can take 15 months. Generally, they're approved. However, they take time, and they cost money: usually a couple hundred thousand dollars for Affordable Housing projects that already exist on a financial knife’s edge in terms of making projects pencil.So, we want to get rid of that amount of time that these projects are being stalled. We've heard stories from developers about losing financing or potentially losing financing because of delays with NEPA reviews. Certainly, $200,000 could go back into creating more units, a better building, and lots of other things rather than doing a duplicative environmental review that's generally going to be approved anyway.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:This does remind me a little bit of some of the action in California. We just had Michael Tubbs on the podcast. He's running for Lieutenant Governor. As he spoke a little bit about CEQA reform, he mentioned, "if you've done a report before and the squirrels were fine, they're probably going to be fine even though you've changed the project a little bit."That principle of “we've actually already checked, and we don't necessarily need to rerun the whole process” -- I think it's interesting.United States Congresswoman Laura Friedman:And, let's be clear: this bill only impacts infill housing. It has to be a site that's already been developed. We're not talking about going into a city and taking a park or a community garden and then, without doing any looking at environmental impact, building a building.We're talking about taking a parking lot or an old donut shop or a strip mall and redeveloping it as housing. That should be, generally, an environmental positive, not an environmental negative! Because, of course, if you don't build the housing near jobs and schools and businesses, you end up building housing oftentimes in actual green spaces out in areas that haven't been developed before.So, there should be a net positive to the environment from these projects. There's no reason for them to have to go through NEPA, especially since they're going through other environmental reviews. We also exempted projects that would require the demolition of a historic structure. And, as I said, these are previously developed lots that are in urban areas.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I do think this is such an important point for the movement as a whole to keep coming back to, right? Which is: if you love your suburbs — and even more so if you love your rural area — the best way to protect both is to let dense areas be dense! Right? The densification of the suburbs and rural areas, perhaps some of that is population growth (for however much longer that lasts), but quite a lot of that is people being exiled from cities that are not pulling their weight.So, this kind of infill housing, where you've already got places that are developed and that are fairly dense and that are a very natural place to build more housing — it seems ridiculous to stop that, and thank you for taking away some of those ridiculous barriers!Let's define infill for a second. I am looking at the fact sheet, and it says, “either 75% of the site's perimeter adjoins parcels developed with an urban use, or 75% of land within a quarter mile radius of the site is developed within urban use.” So, that's how we're defining the proximity to a relatively dense urban environment. Then, I'm seeing “no larger than 20 acres, located on vacant or underutilized land that was previously developed for an urban use.” So, that is how we are defining infill. And you mentioned the demolition carve outs?United States Congresswoman Laura Friedman:Yeah. We wanted to make sure that we addressed any concerns that people might have going in as we introduce this bill. We want to not miss something that might lead to objections. We want to make sure it's a net positive for communities.And so, we use a lot of the definitions that are in the new California law for CEQA exemptions for infill housing as a viewpoint and as a guide because they went through a year-long process of being in discussion with environmental groups and with cities. I'm never one to miss taking material from people that have done their homework! And it seemed like a perfect time to introduce NEPA reform.I've worked on these issues for my time in the California legislature where I served for eight years. I have worked on and done my own bills to reform CEQA (which is the California equivalent of NEPA), particularly with an eye towards housing.So, I've worked in this space, and when I ran for Congress, a lot of what I talked about was bringing that same work to the federal space and looking for the opportunities to do streamlining and make our processes make sense and not be barriers to the things that we need.We know what we need to do, and we need to do it quickly. That's what this bill is about.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:It seems like — and it's shining through this conversation — you've both written a bill that is designed to have an extremely positive impact, but also a bill that you think can pass. That's ringing through how you've learned from California and learned from what I might call handling objections ahead of time. I am curious how you see the politics and future and timeline of this? IThis is a bipartisan bill, so I'm curious about Representative Edwards: his interests and your relationship. I'm curious, especially for folks who maybe aren't deep Congress watchers, what are the chances of passage? What is the process? How long might that take? I'm curious how you would game out the road from here.United States Congresswoman Laura Friedman:Well, I only got elected in November and got sworn in in January, so I'm still learning a lot about this process! But I'm very encouraged by having bipartisan support. I'm part of a new caucus called the Build America Caucus, and so is Representative Edwards, so he seemed like he was a natural person for me to approach. He had questions about the legislation, and I'm really very honored that he chose to join us and co-lead this. It's great to be able to have support from across the aisle already because, if you don't have that in this particular Congress, it's very hard to get legislation passed!That gives me a lot of hope that we can get this through. Now, I know that, in Congress, they are looking at doing permit reform across the board. But, I also wanted to make sure that we did something that was specific to housing and that did address legitimate

The following conversation was featured on Radio Abundance, Episode XXIII: Abundance Energized! Alex Trembath is the Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Hello, and welcome to Radio Abundance! We are here with Alex Trembath. He's the Deputy Director of the Breakthrough Institute, and this is his second appearance on Radio Abundance. Hey Alex, welcome to the program!Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute:Thanks for having me back, Steve.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Hey, we are thrilled that you are back. We had an amazing conversation about two months ago. You know, the Breakthrough Institute was very early to the world of Abundance, long before Abundance had a name, with fingers in a lot of areas, but especially energy and the environment, sending out a call to the world that our approach to the environment was neither helping the environment nor ourselves and proposing a better route through what you call "eco-modernism" in terms of how we can build a greener world and a more energy-efficient world while also lowering the cost of energy and making it easier for people to live where they want to live and live near where they work — building a world with more energy, more food, and a better environment for all of us and every creature on earth. Is that a reasonably accurate description?Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute:That was great.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Amazing. So in that last conversation, which I will link to because it was phenomenal, we talked about the origins of The Breakthrough Institute. We talked about your work in energy. And we talked quite a lot about nuclear energy and safety. We went through different nuclear accidents and talked about why it was safe and really analyzed them. So it's a really phenomenal conversation, and one of my favorites. We're not going to retread old ground, but I highly recommend that. So, we are really excited to talk more because there's so much to this area. You also work on things like agriculture and food. We're really excited to talk about Abundance when it comes to food. You are also doing events! In fact, our audience may have heard of or may also be about to attend the Abundance Conference in DC. You are one of the biggest if not the biggest and certainly one of the key organizers and producers of that. So, I figured we'd start there. Let's start with just what it is, right? To anybody who is not already initiated or who does not already have their ticket, what's the Abundance Conference?Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute:Yeah, we're really excited about it. It's two weeks from today, as we're recording. It's September 4th and 5th in Washington DC.This is really the national gathering of the broad Abundance movement that we all and that all your listeners know and love. At this point, there's 15 think-tank and activist co-hosts and a number of sponsors as well. We're going to have over 500 people there, from every walk of life.We're going to have thinktankers and journalists and philanthropists and advocates and activists and investors and technologists and elected officials at the state, national, and local level. Our hope is that this becomes the annual convening of the Abundance Movement.This is the second time that we're doing this event. We launched a pilot Abundance Conference in DC last year that we all really loved, and we wanted to do it again and make it bigger and make it better. You know, I've been doing events for over 10 years. I won't say it's not hard! It is hard work! Logistically. Substantively. But it wasn't hard to build interest for this event. Let me say that we sold out six weeks in advance. We have a waiting list of over 200 people at this point!My hope is that we can accommodate more people and ideas in the future. We're really excited. We're going to cover housing (obviously), energy, infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, healthcare, immigration, families, state capacity, governance, and on and on and on — the wide swath of the Abundance Agenda.We’ve got some pretty incredible speakers lined up. I'm just really excited!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:You’ve got incredible speakers! You've got some amazing speakers, some amazing partners. Give us some razzamatazz for a second? Let's name-drop a little bit! Who's coming?Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute:Yeah, so obviously 2025 is the year of the publication of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.You know, Derek Thompson, who really coined the term "the Abundance Agenda" in 2021 — which was kind of a Rubicon for a bunch of us, right? We talked in our last conversation, Steve, about how a bunch of us within Abundance, including Breakthrough and the YIMBY movement and organizations like Niskanen had been doing Abundance-y stuff for years or more. The Federation of American Scientists is a co-host on this event, and they've been operating for over half a century at this point on a whole bunch of stuff related to nuclear and science and technology. But, it really was just over the last few years that we all found each other in this new context under this new tent called Abundance.So, we're thrilled that David Brooks from The New York Times is going to be interviewing Ezra and Derek about their book and the reaction to it over the last six months or so. We're also thrilled to have dozens of elected officials from around the country, including a number of Members of Congress who will be on stage, as well as Representatives from State legislatures and Mayors and local Representatives from City Councils and local government.We're also thrilled to have the Governor of Utah. Spencer Cox is going to come talk about what Abundance looks like in his home state of Utah. Those are a few of the big keynotes that we're excited to have planned for this year's conference. And then, beyond that, like I said, we've got 15 co-hosts and a bunch of philanthropic and other sponsors focused on a range of issues that I could never hope to program in my many years of planning and executing climate-and-environment-focused conferences.We've got The Institute for Progress helping us figure out a panel on Immigration and The Federation of American Scientists spearheading a panel on the next Golden Age of American Science and Science Investment. We've got The Niskanen Center helping us with a panel on families.We've got the whole YIMBY movement — Welcoming Neighbors Network, Metropolitan Abundance Project, The Abundance Network, YIMBY action — collaborating on a session, sharing lessons from what worked for communications and organizing in the housing sector to what might work in other Abundance sectors, like energy or infrastructure.I'm really just scratching the surface here! It's a lot of partners. A lot of sweat equity. A lot of ideas. A lot to be excited about.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:You mentioned you've been throwing events before. This is something we share and love, and we'll talk about the importance of events in a second.But you mentioned you've had a decade of experience throwing events in the world of energy and climate and the environment. So, going back to last year — so, pre-Rubicon, we're back in Gaul — how did this come together in the first place? Because 15 partners and co-producers or however you want to call it, that's a big number to come out of the gate with that! So, going back to last year, what was the origin story of kicking this off?Alex Trembath, Deputy Director of The Breakthrough Institute:You know, it was a few years ago that I ended up in conversations with folks from some of these co-hosts, just talking about what it would look like and what the purpose and strategy of an Abundance gathering in our nation's capital would look like. Like, “what should we and why would we convene to co-host an Abundance conference in DC?” And I was talking with folks again, from like The Institute for Progress and The Foundation for American Innovation and The Niskanen Center, about this realization that we are all marching to the same tune.We are — with significant kind of substantive and even ideological differences between us — all part of this Abundance coalition, this Abundance movement. And last year, really, I and Derek Kaufman, who founded Inclusive Abundance in 2024, spearheaded the first Abundance Conference in DC along with four other co-hosts: The Federation of American Scientists, Institute for Progress, The Niskanen Center, and The Foundation for American Innovation.And that went really well. It was six co-hosts and a bunch of sessions and panels. We had folks who were at the time working in the Biden Administration. We had Jerusalem Demsas, who this week launched a new magazine, interviewing Patrick Collison, one of the benefactors but also one of the visionaries behind the Progress and Abundance movements. And it just really felt in that event like momentum was building, and a bunch of us wanted to do it again, expand the tent, and democratize the effort.So, going into this year, we went from 6 to 15 co-hosts. I think last year's headcount was something like 250 people. This year, we've got almost 600 people. And, like I said, there's honestly 100s more people who want to come. So, I don't know exactly where this thing is going, but it really does feel like a significant groundswell of folks who want to show up in person — like you were saying, Steve — who want to gather and see each other and meet each other and celebrate Abundance victories. And also, I think, hash out our differences and tensions across the ideological and political spectrum that spans Abundance. That's really my substantive interest in this event: putting like-minded and civically-

Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Hello, my name is Zennon Ulyate-Crow. I'm here with Radio Abundance, live from Los Angeles, California!I'm here with Jonathan Hale. Jonathan, want to introduce yourself and what you did for our community?Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:Yeah! Hey, how's it going? My name's Jonathan, and what I did was I organized a group of neighbors. We painted a set of crosswalks here at Stoner Park, and we got the city to remove them. Then, the city repainted them. We took advantage of the backlash from them getting removed to force the city to repaint the crosswalks and make other improvements around the park, which we're really excited about.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Can you tell me more about how these crosswalks came to be?Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:Yeah! So, when we started out, I got together a group of my friends and neighbors, and we painted crosswalks at the corner of Stoner Park. We figured that crosswalks near a park and near schools and near daycare should be the default, especially with Summer Camp right around the corner. This was at the start of the summer when we painted these.So, we decided we were going to paint crosswalks. We knew that there was no, quote unquote, 'right' way to do it. So, we did our best, and I don't think a lot of people noticed at first. But then The West Side Current, a local paper, published a story about the crosswalks, and then that led to the city removing them.We took advantage of the fact that the city removed them and the backlash that they've generated to call for the city to repaint the crosswalks and make improvements to the park, which they did.So, you can see the new city-painted official crosswalks are behind me.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Tell me more about why this crosswalk was so important for the community?Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:Yeah, I think it's important, well, because it's a park, and I go here a lot. I know there's always a lot of kids here, but, more importantly than that, I think this represents the city saying, "okay, it's time to stop 'letting the perfect be the enemy of the good' and actually get stuff done," which they did! The city replaced this crosswalk within a week of it getting removed And that was because of the backlash and because our neighbors reached out and pressed the city to get this done.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: Why do you think it took the city so long to install a crosswalk right next to a park where kids play every single day?Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:I think the city's worried about the liability risk, and, frankly, I don't think there's a lot of willpower to get basic quality of life improvements done. Too often, I think we say, "it is what it is," or "that's just the way things are," and we say that as if it were the solution and not the problem itself. And, I think, hopefully this sheds some light on the fact that this is the problem and we need to change the status quo.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: You mentioned that there's one other thing nearby that is another example of the failure of LA city governance to get things done. You want to talk about that a little bit more?Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:Yeah, for sure. Well, we're actually a couple houses down from 1747 Stoner, which is the site of an ED-1 project that's 100% Affordable Housing and that gets around parking requirements because it's affordable. It's non-subsidized Affordable Housing. And there's so much community resistance to this Affordable Housing and round after round of community input and meetings that we don't need because people's lives are at stake.Just like here with the crosswalks, people's lives are at stake if we don't make these improvements. Somebody will get hurt. With housing, people's lives are at stake because, if we don't build housing, people will become homeless and people will struggle to pay their rent.And so, I think this is just an example of how we need to get things done across the board because the stakes are high and we need to stop waffling about this stuff.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Host of Radio Abundance LA: What's next for the crosswalk movement?Jonathan Hale, Street Safety Advocate:Yeah, for sure. Well, I guess, for starters, I'm not really affiliated with an organization. I get help from The Crosswalk Collective. They're an amazing group that does work mostly in Hollywood and Mid-City. But, I think the point of this is that we need to cultivate this culture of civic engagement and community-building, and we need to stop pretending like this is somebody else's problem. It's our problem. It's all of our problem.So, the thing that's next is, this Sunday, we're going to be painting crosswalks in Venice and then going to CicLAvia, and, the city has agreed to a meeting where we're going to talk about infrastructure improvements and practical things that we can do to speed up our bureaucratic processes and get stuff done. Which I'm excited about.But, in the meantime, we'll keep painting crosswalks. We'll keep doing guerilla urbanism until the city actually demonstrates it's serious about getting stuff done. Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

The following conversation was featured on Radio Abundance, Episode XXII: In the Arena. Michael Tubbs is the former Mayor of Stockton and the Founder of End Poverty in California. He is now running for Lieutenant Governor of California. Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Hello, and welcome to Radio Abundance! I'm your host, Steve Boyle, the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America. We are on location in-studio in Los Angeles today with two Radio Abundance Los Angeles co-hosts. I am here with Alex Melendez, a longtime activist with YIMBY Action. He founded YIMBY Latino and was a DNC delegate for the 2024 election.Hey, Alex!Alex Melendrez, LA-Based YIMBY Activist and Former National YIMBY Organizer:Happy to be here!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:I am also with Zennon Ulyate-Crow. Zennon is likewise a young activist with YIMBY Los Angeles, the West Side Young Democrats, and now Abundance Network's Abundant Santa Monica. Zennon was the youngest commissioner in Santa Cruz's history.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Board Member for YIMBY LA:Thank you so much. Appreciate it.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Welcome! Welcome to Radio Abundance.And, speaking of young folks, we've got a young folk here!Well, I'm still young. I feel old with these guys. I felt old learning about your age the other day. I knew you were, when you were first elected, one of the youngest elected officials ever in the US at age 22. You've been the Mayor of Stockton. You are now running for the Lieutenant Governor of California.You know, I have, even young politicians, a certain vision in my head that they're a little older. And then we were hanging out the other day, championing SB 79 in Sacramento. You had more to say to champion it than I did. I basically walked in and said, "I'm Steve Boyle with YIMBY Democrats, and I approve." But a friend of mine was there who said you went to college together. And he and I went to High School together. So that bummed me out because of imposter syndrome!Michael Tubbs, thank you for joining us on Radio Abundance!Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Thank you so much for having me. It's fantastic to be here.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Why are you running for Lieutenant Governor?Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Lieutenant Governor in California, in this moment, is a position that requires leadership, right? The job has very particular things you're responsible for.You're on the UC and CSU board, one of the only people in the state on both. And what people don't know, particularly for this conversation, is that both the UC and CSU can build by-right. In the same way they build buildings and departments, they could build housing. They could build more student housing, as you probably know, going to UC Santa Cruz. They could also build more workforce housing.The Lieutenant Governor also sits on the State Lands Commission and is responsible for being a good steward of our environment, but also making sure we're being thoughtful about when it is appropriate to actually build more housing.And then, beyond that, it's just an incredible bully pulpit. It's the second-highest elected official in the fourth-largest economy in the world: an economy that we know isn't working for everyone, an economy that we know isn't building enough housing for everyone.So, it just felt like the right opportunity to make an impact on the issues I care about and to make sure that California remains a beacon of what a multiracial democracy could look like: a society that's moving forward, not looking towards the past for inspiration, but looking at the future, embracing innovation and figuring out, how do you make sure we all do well?It's just an amazing opportunity. So I'm excited to be in the race.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:So you begin with an interesting thread, right? Because we'll of course talk about policies around housing and YIMBYism and Abundance in California and how to make it possible for people to build -- the private market, citizens, community developers, anybody -- to build. And government's included!And speaking of government, you've mentioned that, as Lieutenant Governor, you would have land and permission, which are two of the hardest things to get in order to build. So, if you did become Lieutenant Governor, what would you want to do with that land?Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:I'm going to be the most annoying regent of all time, insofar as I think, (A) we have to leverage the thousands of acres of the UC and CSU system. We know that students need housing, that janitors need housing, that adjunct faculty needs housing, that the people who work at universities need housing, and really making it a priority for that system to build, build, build.It's not a 10-year project, it's not a 20-year project. It's a necessity. Not just because I love housing, but because there's a real need. Throughout our system, from the UC level to the CSU level, even the community college level, the biggest need is housing. It's student housing.You have people taking longer to graduate because they can't find housing. You have people not graduating because they can't find housing. You have people graduating while living in cars or couch surfing because they can't find housing. So that's a manageable problem, a worthy problem, and one that I will use the bully pulpit in the position of trustee to really push and advocate for, because my experience in government has taught me: nothing just happens, and nothing happens easily. Yeah. You always have to push. You always have to get on people's nerves. You always have to be annoying.That's the only way anything, particularly important things, get done.Zennon Ulyate-Crow, Board Member for YIMBY LA:I'll put some numbers to that as well. In the UCs, 7% of students are currently experiencing homelessness. In the CSUs, it's about 15%. In the community colleges, it's about 22%.I actually founded the Student Homes Coalition in California, which worked on passing student housing legislation at the state level. We've passed five out of seven bills for the past three years.Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Well, thank you for your work. Amazing.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:You know, something we're very familiar with in the Bay Area is students being seen as pollution. There's just been some good reforms and clarifications to CEQA, but it was quite vague about what was pollution, so people could say that students were pollution, young people were pollution, noise is pollution, parties are pollution – genuinely – to block student housing and to block low-income housing and affordable housing.I talked with Jon Lovett, the former speechwriter for Barack Obama and Host of Pod Save America. We talked in the fall. He said a big radicalizing moment for him was to see, in the East Bay, student housing be thwarted because "students were pollution."This story has even made it across the pond! I was in London two weeks ago, meeting at Parliament and having lunch with a member of Parliament and a sort of a world-crossing academic, and the academic, a guy named Alain Bertaud, as we were telling stories of NIMBYism around the world, he started talking about us not being able to build student housing in California.So, it is legendary, this failure and betrayal, and I'm excited that you might take a stab at fixing it.Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:Yes, sir!Alex Melendrez, LA-Based YIMBY Activist and Former National YIMBY Organizer:I hate to say this, but students do breed CO2. Just saying!Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:Yeah, you've got to watch out for that!Michael Tubbs, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California:I think, also, what's lost in the conversation is, in addition to students, it's also the people who work at the universities who need housing. Our universities are some of the biggest employers in the state. Just like we require or want other big employers to build housing near the job site, the CSU and UC system has to do the same thing, even at the community college level.Alex Melendrez, LA-Based YIMBY Activist and Former National YIMBY Organizer:I actually had a brief stint where I almost became a community college trustee in my home district back in San Mateo County, and I ended up earning the endorsement of the faculty union because of this specific, particular thing.A lot of their part-time professors were facing a lack of housing opportunities and the fact that a lot of them had to drive into this very wealthy district that had an excess of money and land.I will say, that district was the first educational district in the county to build housing. So, they were starting to work on that, but that was also one of their primary issues. And the reason why I earned their endorsement was because I was a strong advocate for wanting to build more housing so that these people can live here and do the work that they were happy to do for students.Steve M. Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America:And when we talk about teacher housing and janitor housing-- this is all levels, right? – it's something I've seen even in the suburbs I grew up in. They’ve tried to build affordable teacher housing, and the community can go, "I don't like it. It's too many stories. The homes are too close together. I don't want it." And, suddenly, you're saying students can't live and teachers can't live.And, by the way, this isn't just charity for students and teachers. Universities are the engines of culture and economic development and innovation. The companies of the future, the jobs of the future, the game changing research of

Catherine Vaughan & Ryder Kessler of Abundance New York join Radio Abundance to analyze the New York City Primary Election results! How should Abundance advocates think of Zohran Mamdani? Is Eric Adams any better? What happened downballot? You'll find answers to all of these questions and more on this episode of Radio Abundance! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

Alex Trembath of The Breakthrough Institute joins Radio Abundance to share their origin story and tales from two decades of fighting for Abundance, green energy, a sustainable climate, and the environment. We dive into why building and creating is the key to saving the planet and why thwarting action only exacerbates the climate change emergency. Alex shares why nuclear energy is safe, green, and affordable, and we dive deep into accidents at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima to understand why nuclear power really is truly safe. Plus, Alex previews the Abundance 2025 Conference, coming up in September in Washington DC! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

Micah Erfan from The Micah Erfan Show and The Texas Democratic Party swings by Radio Abundance to chat about how Democrats can win on social media, what it looks like to broaden our reach our message, how to appeal to young men (and everybody), the impact of the pandemic and social media on American politics, and what it looks like for Democrats to tell a better story and find a bigger audience.Then, Catherine Vaughan and Ryder Kessler of Abundance New York join us for Radio Abundance NYC update. They dive into a major rezoning of Midtown South, stagnating progress at the state level, and Brad Lander's moment as the current NYC comptroller and Mayoral candidate was quasi-endorsed by The New York Times, arrested by ICE, supported by mass protests and Democrats across the state, and full-throatedly endorsed by Ezra Klein in a matter of days. Check it out on Radio Abundance! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

Tibita Kaneene, Political Director for the New York City New Liberals (part of the Center for New Liberalism), joins Radio Abundance to break down the New York City Mayoral Race. Is Zohran Mamdani serious about exploring Abundance and market rate housing? Or is he playing us for suckers? What can New Yorkers expect from Andrew Cuomo? Which candidates are the best on Abundance and housing? Even the YIMBY candidates often favor short-term rent freezes; is this always a poison pill? How do we think about Eric Adams? And if the race does come down to Cuomo and Mamdani, who should Abundance Liberals choose? Find out on Radio Abundance! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

Congressman Ritchie Torres joins us to talk about his new reforms to the dreaded Jones Act, how protectionism drives up costs and holds us back, the injustice of Puerto Rico's taxation without representation, how endless processes stop us from fighting the emergency of climate change, why Abundance is a revolution, how to revive the Hamilton Progressivism that inspired The New Deal, being a founding member of the new Build America Caucus, Donald Trump's fascistic disposition, and how the Trump Administration is planting the seeds of superpower decline. Enjoy! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe

We chat with Paulina Mangubat, the Digital Content & Creative Director for the DNC who revolutionized the Democratic Party's social media strategy. Gone are the days of safe posts. Now, we have "ugly ass truck," calling Elon Musk a loser, sharing Pete Hegseth's blurry alcoholic iPhone screen, and even tagging Stephen Miller in a "cuck chair." Sassy!Then, we feature an all-new segment: our New York City News Bulletin with Radio Abundance NYC correspondents Catherine Vaughan and Ryder Kessler from Abundance New York! You'll hear all about the mayoral race and what's going on with YIMBY and Abundance policies right now at CityHall. Make sure to check out their voter guide at NYC2025.com! Get full access to Radio Abundance by YIMBY Democrats for America at radioabundance.substack.com/subscribe