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