Transcripts For CSPAN Governors 20240704 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN Governors July 4, 2024

There are also oupieces directly under our purview about what we can do to reduce the cost of housing in our state in fact its so much on our minds that when governors get together no matter what the scheduled topic is it seems like we end up talking about housing. It is a roman empire. As i travel around the state it is a top issue. Our states, we do such a great job making sure they are a great place to live and when we successful it almost makes it hard to afford to live so we all know the stories in our states, parents who is 27yearold still lives in the basement with no prospects of moving out, those who want to take a good job but would have to commute an hour each way, people who are the backbone of our community, law enforcement, to afford to live in the cities they serve businesses that cannot recruit the tower they need to power their growth. We are focused on making progress in colorado last year i signed a bill that banned growth caps in several municipalities. We are moving forward aggressively to increase the supply of housing with more housing now looking at additional Family Housing and transit oriented communities , excessive three dwelling units by right were tackling liability for easing multifamily condo construction easing government mandates like , parking requirements and im very excited to hear what other governors are doing because this is a challenge that we all face. We have a National Expert on this with us who is deeply involved in the fight from a policy perspective and working with ngos in this space across the country who will help give an overview of National Housing trends. Charlie anderson is the executive Vice President for infrastructure at Arnold Ventures. Before he joined Arnold Ventures, which has been a great partner to us and i know so many other governors, he served as a special assistant to the president for Economic Policy at the white house economic council. He led their work on permitting an environmental review, which is a great backdrop for the current role because a lot of what were talking about here is reducing red tape au cost in time and treasure to be , able to build the housing atkn now he is focused on solutions to help america build faster bet ater,can all celebrate and with that i welcome Charlie Anderson to join me on this stage. [applause] charlie, thank you for joining us. When you said you want to build things faster, on the Infrastructure Team we find to build faster, better, lower cost. It means transportation infrastructure and housing. Its a really important moment and you can see that people are hearing about this all of the country so i really appreciate the bipartisan support for the issue from governors everywhere. A decade ago acute housing costs were really concentrated in sort of those coastal land constrained cities, places like San Francisco and new york city but it spread and Housing Affordability is an issue all around the country for people at most income levels. Also workforce and seniors everyone is struggling in some way with Affordable Housing on the evidence is really strong. More restrictive zoning and regulations leads to fewer homes that housing shortage leads to higher prices and now were millions of homes short of where we need to be based on population growth to keep up after decades of underbuilding. And that underbuilding means that half of renters right now pay more than 30 of their income on the rent each month. Thats 22 million households and even worse you have 12 million of those households who pay half their income on the rent each[ analyzes of what is available, what needs to be built if we dont know where were going were not going to solve the problem. And one of the things i did last year under another emergency order was establish a Housing Production advisory council, similar to, i think, what you were doing in montana, 20 plus individuals. Housing producers, engineers. Local government leaders. Folks who . People who finance housing. All coming down and being like, what do we need to do . Well, they gave me a report, a 59 recommendations. Were still going through those. But its everywhere from financing to construction in workforce to model codes and permitting and land use, supply. All the things that we kar in our state and probably in yours as well. So with some of those recommendations, i have one bill on our current legislative session. Its our Housing Production bill. Ive asked for 500 million in one time dollars to do a number of things. The two biggest ticket items that were negotiating right now is money for infrastructure. If youre going to build housing, were hearing you dont have water, you dont have sewer. Were all dealing with that. So we have to put some money in there. We6 also need more financial incentives for Workforce Housing. Its the role, i think, of the state to really be involved. And we have been in deeply subsidized housing but we are hearing from our private developers that they just need extra help to get more Workforce Housing put in into the pipeline. Were establishing for the first time a housing accountability and Production Office at the state level that will provide Technical Assistance to our communities in terms of grants and to it will provide model codes and other things to simplify at the local level where we know most of this takes place to get more production in the pipeline. And were dealing with land supply. For those of you who know oregon, we have a 50 years of a fabulous land use system that has gotten a little creaky when it comes to housing. So we have said some cities, if you can show a need for lanin affordability, you should have a one time expansion tool in your urban growth boundary to build more housing. And 30 of that new development would have to be affordable. So my hope is the Legislature Passes that and we really have a jumpstart on what we need to do. The bottom line for me is when people say, what do you have to do . You have to do all of it. All ofti p our state, where your social add on supply, were going to have to really push hard. And so i look forward to working with my legislators to get that done. So i haventsk it would not be a great meeting if we didnt actually challenge ourselves to do something. Theres a tax bill in front of congress right now that would be helpful. And i want to thank the western Governors Association for talking about some of the issues that are in the tax bill today. Greater flexibility for public activity, bonds in our states. Weve maxed out our threshold on public activity bonds because weve been almost putting exclude civilly all of that ability into our Affordable Housing. So we need more ability there. And we all know low tech, the low Income Housing tax credit is really important for penciling out affordable and and Workforce Housing. We need more unlike. So right now the tax relief for American Workers and families act. I know who wrote that one. The tax relief bill thats in coress deastrengthening inland tech gives us more thresholds in private activity. Bonds. Like i said, wga has also said is what we need to be doing right now. It passed the house 357 to 70. There might be some things in there. Ths causing a little drama, but i can tell you if we could get that tax bill passed, those things are going to be really huge for all of our states. So if you havent talked to your folks, talk to your senators. We need to pass that tax relief bill so we can get low tech increase, as well as getting more on public activity bonds. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, governor kotek. And i think in terms of our advocacy here role, i think anything that reduces financing costs, which is one of the key drivers of cost, would be good and that would include you know, fiscal responsibility. It would include monetary policy, it would include tax credits. As governor kotek mentioned. But these kinds of policies federally that would create an environment with or specifically targeted lower financing costs around housing would be helpful. Governor cox. Thank you. Go polis and and thank you so much, charlie, for for taking time to be here with us. I want to thank my fellow governors for inspiring me as well. Greg montana, thank you. Weve weve copied a lot of what youre doing. This is the the benefit, i think, of the national Governors Association. We should be stealing ideas from each other and things that work. And so im going to change my remarks just a little bit because im going to take a little bit different approach, if i could. And and share something with you that you probably havent heard yet. And i really hope it passes my Legislature Next week or im going to be very embarrassed. So well see what happens here. But i so i had an epiphany a few months ago that is very different. We have been doing a lot of the things that everybody else is doing and some of its working for sure. What would happen, though, is we would take all these ideas to the legislature, and by the time i got something through and we did, we got things through. They were always a little bit watered down. Our league of cities and towns none of us have ever experienced doesnt happen there. But my my local municipal parties were really good at kind of watering some of these things down. And i get it. Im a former mayor. State coming in and telling us what to do. So we it was a struggle and weve taken a shotgun approach. We have to do everything right. You just said that governor kotek. So the epiphany was this i needed to change my messaging. I, i needed something that the people to cut through the nimbyism. I needed something that would resonate with the people. I needed to get to the simplicity on the far side of complexity. And what i realized was this were doing all of those things. Were doing density were building more Apartment Buildings, were doing were doing all of this stuff. But the one thing that we were not building any more, we stopped building about 15 years ago in almost all of our states are single family, detached owne occupied starter homes. Im talking about homes that are 1000 square feet to 1400 square feet. Right. How many of you grew up in a home like that or started your families in a home like that . Almost all of us. Okay. So we just are building those in utah and i think in most places in the country and what i found was the starter home, that idea of a starter home, the american dream, Home Ownership was something that resonated with everyone and cut through the clutter and could get us past the nimbyism. Now, most people didnt want a big Apartment Building in their backyard, but their heart went out to this idea that someone could own a home for the first time. Our schoolteachers, our firefighters. So, so. So we economists and they came back and said, we need to build 35,000 starter homes in utah. We need all the other stuff, too. So im not saying we dont need that. We need 35,000 starter homes in utah in the next five years. And that became my message, my mandate. That is all i talk about. We callst homes that resonates with people. Its something they can believe in and buy in. So then i go to the legislature and i have all these ideas, and it turns out we dont have the budget we thought we were going to have this year. We still have a surplus in utah, but not nearly as much as we thought we were going to have to be able to do this. So we started diving in with all of the builders and developers in our state, finding out why are you not building these homes anymore . And there were lots of different reasons, but if you look at your states right now, and i was surprised to see this, our building starts are going down right now. Part of that is because of Interest Rates fore other reasons. And what we found out there were a couple of things. One, again, because municipalities werent offering smaller lots, the incentive is every time. Right. So we have to change that. But the other thing that i did not see coming is because of the Bank Failures that happened a year ago or however long ago that was almost exactly a year ago. The the fdic pulled back and is limiting the amount of money thatend. And so many banks, many of our developed others have projects on the books but could not get construction they could get Construction Loans, they were getting them at Interest Rates that were so high, 10 to 15 that it just they struggle to pencil it out. And if youre getting loans at that height, youre not going to build starter homes, inexpensive homes, by the way. Median home price in utah now is apchu have to make 170,000 to to buy a median home in utah right now, 75 of utahns could, if they didnt own a home, now could not afford to own a home right now. Thats unsustainable. So so heres what we did, and ill try to get through this reallyuickly. This is the idea that just came out that i dont think anybody else is doing. I need a lot of money. Right. And so we have treasures fund our public treasures. We call the pta fund. This is where do you invest all of the money in in your state until it gets savings account for your your state, your municipalities may participate in that as well. Right now, for us, it gets invested in short term, you know, like commercial paper, mutual funds, those types of things. Securities, really securities. A 5 return on that every year. And its kind of a liquid fund. So wait a minute. Were investing in china, were investing in new york, were investing in california. That money, our savings account. But its not being invested in utah. What if we took some of that . What have we took . Right now, were looking at 350 million, but we could go up to maybe 1,000,000,000 of that and started investing it. In short term Construction Loans for our developers to build starter homes. All right. So thats so the bill has 350 million in it with the 3. 5 return that will be mixed with it has to be mixed with the financialks will lend this out. Theyll mix our money with their money. They lend it out, you know, for a year for the construction loan at 3. 5 , the developers, they have to build 60 of the project has to be homes under 350,starter homes, small lots. Now youre wondering the cities will never go for this, right . Well, the cities will go for it. And herehy. Were creating a new zone. A first home, a starter home zone in utah. They have to they have to provide smaller lots. Thats part of it. They have to do that. But what they get in return that theyre very excited about, they get access to some infrastructure funding that were giving them. They these are deed restricted lots which means that there are no secondary rentals. They have to be single occupied. So that means the the big Institutional Investors cant buy them up and rent them out. They cant be used as secondary rentals on the market. Our cities are really excited about that. And again, it gives them a place for their firefighters and their theyre their police to live. And for our kids and grandkids. So we we will have an opportunity to really juice the supply side of this. And we have builders lined up. They said, look, if you can get us money at three and a half percent at three and a half percent, we will go build all of the starter homes. You want right now. So i really hope this is going to work. I think its going to work. I think its going to work in a big way. And were were were excited to share more details of that with you. Were going to watch that. Spencer. And let me let me throw one more because were all and as kotek mentioned financing as well. And i think were all generally frustrated around financing because its not directly in our purview. But thats a great approach. One more to throw out you might be familiar with pays property, assess clean energy, a form of sort of increment financing on the property were also looking at that for accessory dwelling unit construction. So basically you take it out as a senior, lean on the Property Assessment at a much lower Interest Rate than a commercial mortgage would be. It goes with the property. Obviously, if you sell itthe future. But at the micro level, were hoping that we could implement that as a lower cost financing. Theres a phil understands this stuff inside now. You can explain it all to us. Phil, i want to go to governor green, but let me go to charlie first to kind of comment on on what hes hearing. And i think theres a Great Exchange of ideas. I mean, my basic takeaway is isnt this exciting . Right . I mean, theres just so many of you taking this venue. As i said, and catering it to your states in different ways that meet the needs of each of your people. I mean, this is, you know, sometimes its hard to be hopeful about where our country is going right now. But this is like by partizan work to solve a problem that is profound in peoples lives in so many ways. I mean, this is this is stuff that we will all be proud o now. So thank you for that. I just to pick up on a few themes as governor cox said, its always hard. The first time you go in and you push on this and people scream and they have all kinds of reasons, but i think what we see is that over time you elevate the issue people, it resonates with people. Everybodys feeling it and you go back at it in a different ways. You pick up pieces and you and you try and even governor gianforte, who had such success last year, is going back at it again because theres no silver bullets here. Youre not going to solve it in one fell swoop. So thats thats exciting. I think as governor kotek said, you need the financing tools. You need the affordability tools alongside the supply, but you cant do one or the other. Youve got to do both. And if you dont deal with the supply is

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