June 5, 2025 • 39 mins
To some extent, at least in big cities, it feels as though the cost of housing is enveloping almost everything else in terms of politics right now. Booming areas that drive GDP have gotten incredibly expensive in large part thanks to rent, and even the well paid residents are forced to turn over a significant share of their income over to their landlord. So can anything be done about it? Can rent come down by liberalizing supply and making it easier to build? And can that scale? And what about developers that only want to build luxury-rate housing? On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Steven Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, which sits directly across the river from NYC. Fulop is a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for governor and he says his time in office in Jersey City proves cities can turn the dial on housing supply. We talk about why Jersey City has added so much to its housing stock, what can be attributed to his policies, and what he thinks can be accomplished at the state level both in terms of housing and improving public infrastructure.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I'm Jill Whysenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Been covering little local politics these days. Tracey, it's not
our normal beat, but sometimes there's a little intersection.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
We're going local, not macro micro.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
We're going micro. So it's interesting because we did a
recent episode. Listeners may remember it was one of the
candidates for the mayorship here in New York City's are
on Mom Donnie and he sort of talked about his
vision for affordability. Actually backing up for a second, it
feels like housing affordability is suddenly swamping everything is the
(00:53):
issue almost regardless of your perspective, that is like on
top of many people's minds these days.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Well also, so we've talked about this before, but also
seems like a bipartisan issue, right and like you don't
get a lot of bipartisan things nowadays. I'll just put
it that way.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
No, but it's interesting, like you know, at one point
there is like healthcare and sometimes climate other time. Right now,
it just feels like there is such a so much
anxiety about housing affordability and all this stuff, and it
feels like it's a nationwide thing. Within the Democratic Party,
there are different wings of how people talk about it,
so we obviously talked to the socialist candidate for mayor.
(01:30):
There's also what people would call like this sort of
like more liberal abundance view that you know, the answer
is just we just need more and use whatever levers
to pull to like get more in some way. So,
you know, even within one party though, although everyone sort
of agrees on rent and affordability, not a lot of
consensus on the path there.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, so the overall goal is very clear, but I
guess like the levers that you're going to pull to
get there are very complicated, And I have to say
that's one thing that I kind of struggle with in
those topics. It seems like there are so many different
things that you could do, and all of them seem
very like bureaucratic, very technical tax abatements, all these incentives
(02:10):
rent control, and it's interesting to me how you choose
between them about what's going to be most effective.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Can I just say, by the way, you know, I
think a lot of these debates are very part of
the reason they exist because the media is very heavily
represented in New York and San Francisco. I mean, I
don't think that there's a no affordability crisis in like Devenport,
Iowa to the same degree, and I think that's important
to acknowledge. I also think like New York and you know,
San francisc are some of the best places in the world,
so I get why people pay a lot of money
(02:37):
for them. Anyway, it turns out one of the best
cities over the last several years in the entire country
for housing production is our neighbor, Jersey City, right across
the water. I really like Jersey City. I've spent a
little bit of time there, and their mayor, Stephen Phillip,
is running for governor in the Democratic primary right now,
so we have the perfect guest to talk about Jersey
City housing production.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Stephen Phllip.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Thank you, Thank you so much for coming on odd Laws.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
For those people who don't know, you've been in the
mayor of Jersey City for how long I think I
saw it was like in the last ten years, housing
stock has increased like twenty five percent something like that.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
Yeah, I mean, we used to be maybe two percent
of the state's building permits. We're upwards of ten percent now.
I mean, we've been the backbone economically the state of
New Jersey. I've been the mayor there for twelve years.
I've been unapologetically very very pro growth. You could see
the skyline change across the river. So it's been a
good story and we're growing and I'm very proud of
the changes that have happened.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
What's the biggest choke point or hurdle when it comes
to building more affordable housing? Because everyone seems to have
a different answer to this and different things that they
would put emphasis on. But in your view, what's number one?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
What do other people say? Out of curiosity?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
The people say like zoning and things like that, incentivizing
the developers to build something other than luxury high rises,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I'd point to a couple of things.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
I mean, in New Jersey, we have definitely have an
incentive program that is complicated. We have obviously zoning with
home rules, so you have a lot of municipalities five
hundred and sixty four municipalities, which is problematic and home rule,
So how do you overcome that, which I think we
have some solutions for and I think that generally speaking,
across the country you have kind of the Nimby sentiment
(04:18):
monopolizing the conversation. And how do you wrestle that away
from them is different in each city or state, But
in New Jersey, I think we've done a pretty good
job of kind of creating a dynamic where the people
that are pro growth.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Can also have a voice there.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
You've been pretty unapologetic in your view that market rate
housing benefits everyone, that there's supply and demand, you expand supply,
it filters down, et cetera. You talk about quote affordable
housing unquote, but give us your general philosophy of housing
(04:52):
and make it more affordable and why you believe that
a lot of the solution is essentially liberalizing and supply
and demand.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Yeah, I think people build what they want with there. Yes,
I think that when you put more restrictions around housing
growth so you know, rent control sounds like a good buzzwords,
But when you're too restrictive around that stuff, you're going
to create a situation where you're not seeing supply being increased.
We've seen in Jersey City pressure when New York City
isn't growing on our housing prices, and when we've grown
(05:21):
a lot, you've seen the demand still high, but the
rent increase is subside.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So it leads you to the.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
Conclusion that the market rate component of housing is as
important to the conversation as the affordable conversation. And you know, look,
a lot of people push back for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes it's rooted in racism. I mean, people have a
different reaction if you use the word affordable housing versus
housing that's affordable. They have a different kind of thought
process around that. But the reality of the situation is
(05:50):
that market rate housing helps you build more affordable housing
or housing that's affordable, and they have to work together
to be successful. And that's how we've approached it in
Jersey City and it's really been successful.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So one of the criticisms of market rate is that
you end up with those developers just building the luxury
apartments because they can ring more money out of those.
How do you address I guess the balance between luxury
housing versus I don't know, housing for the middle class
or housing that's further down the spectrum.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
Yeah, so in Jersey City, we do have kind of
set asides or inclusionary zoning ordinances and those are important.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
We've gone back and forth with the.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Advocacy groups on what's actually achievable, and we've actually come
to a place that's pretty successful. And we generally target
about twenty percent of a housing development to be a
blended affordable component. So that could be workforce housing, that
could be low income housing, which is obviously more stressful
on the overall project. So you got to factor some
of that stuff in. But we do have, you know,
(06:50):
a specific minimum requirement when they do get a specific
incentive like a tax abatement from the city.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Well specific lever.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So, Okay, you've been the main of Jersey City for
twelve years. Is objectively true that the skyline has changed
a lot, Is objectively true that the housing stock has grown.
I'm sure it's benefited just from the fact that, you know,
Manhattan and New York City has been fairly dismal about
expanding housing supply, and so people look elsewhere. But versus
before you came into office, Now, what are the specific
(07:19):
levers that you've pulled to expand production and how can
you like attribute you know, when you do an attribution
of the housing stock, what can you say to what
you've done.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
So.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
When I came into office, the tax abatement or incentive
program was very political in nature, and it seemed to
be by right for the developers that were pursuing it.
And there were two problems with that. The politics of
it created kind of uncertainty and apprehension about people investing
in a market if they weren't familiar with the politics
(07:48):
about it. And the uncertainty of how the process worked
was problematic as well. So we came in and we
changed the policy entirely, and people said it we wouldn't
see the mount of growth. But I viewed it at
the time that it was such a given that you
would get these tax abatements that it didn't necessarily incentivize
more growth. It was already factored into the seller's price
(08:08):
and the buyer's price and the private transaction. So we
had to recalibrate that market a little bit. And so
what I did was we changed the tax abatement process
where we mapped it to census. Tracts based on poor
census were automatically entitled to a steeper incentive. And what
you've gradually saw was people moving away from the waterfront
and investing money because it seemed more certain the process,
(08:31):
and it seemed to have a clear advantage if you
were moving to certain areas. And we mapped it to
the census track, which seemed like a reasonable way to
map it towards income where you're trying to instigate development,
and so that worked, and I think that that clarity
really helped people invest and attracted new developers to the area.
(08:51):
So we were no longer relying on the same small
pool of developers. And I think the certainty was very
good because you know, New Jersey has a history of
political corruption, and feeling that there was some process around
this that it wasn't necessarily predicated on what lawyer or
architect you hire created a better climate for business.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
So you mentioned widening the pool of developers, and this
is something that Joe and I are really interested in.
We went down to North Carolina and learned that towns
and cities really have to make pitches to developers to
get them to come in. What's the process of, I guess,
working with a developer talking to them actually like, what
are the things that they are looking for specifically?
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Well, look, I think that they are interested in an
administration that seems less political in nature and more focused
or aligned in a pro growth mentality that recognizes that
they are in the business of providing housing and there's
mutually beneficial outcomes if we work together. When I became
the mayor of Jersey City, one of the things that
(09:52):
I did with the existing developer pool was I recognized
the fact that we needed to market the city better
to the surrounding areas. I knew that, you know, not
necessarily Soho or Tribeco was in a comparison to Jersey City.
Somebody wasn't making the choice should I live in Tribeca
or Jersey City, but certainly with Brooklyn and Queens and
the outer boroughs. So we got most of the larger
(10:13):
developers at that point together, and what I said to
them was that we would do a marketing campaign where
the city's Economic Development Corporation would match the private dollars
one for one, and it would be targeted in these
areas that we think that we can attract new residents
and new developers. And I was very deliberate that it
would not be political in nature, like I would not
appear in this, My voice would not be a part
(10:35):
of it. It was going to be focused on branding
the city in a different way that ultimately led to
more interests, more demands, more developers, and I think that
that was a very very helpful step that we did
out of the gate. The politics is always problematic and
people are apprehensive about that.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Wait, what do you mean by political exactly?
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Well, the political is in most places, at least in
New Jersey, it's been a history of who you know
and a very small cadre of relationships that have allowed
you entree into the process. And in a place like
New Jersey where a lot of the rules are codified
in a very very loose way, you feel obligated that
(11:14):
you got to have a real certain type of relationship.
And the more you can remove that towards the business climate,
the more likely people are to invest in them. And
I feel like that's been the kind of a big
change in Jersey City overall.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
This is super interesting. I don't think this dimension of
housing unaffordability or the challenges to production has come up.
But when you look at still today Jersey overall, you're
running for governor, do you still see, like outside of
Jersey City a general tendency towards it's going to be
difficult to get approvals and so forth, if you aren't
(11:45):
with the right architect, if you aren't with the right paper,
and so forth. Is that still an endemic problem in
New Jersey at constrainings and the supply of house.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
I think it's a cultural issue in New Jersey. I mean,
we had a senator that is about to go to
jail for gold bars. I mean that's a example of
the political culture of how people perceive New Jersey. I
think that any reasonable person would estimate that you're in
the two hundred thousand unit shortage range for the state
(12:12):
of New Jersey, now maybe given a little and the
production of affordable units is roughly only like three thousand
a year, so you're looking at close to seventy years
to cure the backlog that you have today. It's quite significant,
and there is a sentiment that, you know, municipality by
municipality has this disproportionate amount of control over the outcomes
(12:33):
of housing production. And part of the job as governor
will be to kind of change that narrative. So the
nimbi's not my backyard, are the not monopolizing the conversation?
And there's a lot of ways that I think a
governor can do that.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Well, let's talk about that. How do you deal with
the nimbi's.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And the localities fight it because there must be tension
between state versu.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
Local Yeah, I think there's a couple of things you
could do. So New Jersey has a fair share housing
requirement which has been litigated for thirty forty years, where
every municipality is going to have some sort of obligation
on housing, and a lot of the municipalities push back.
If it's a suburban municipality, they say, well, you're obligating
us to this two hundred affordable units and they come
(13:13):
under an eighty twenty rule, So the two hundred units
equates to roughly one thousand units overall, which is kind
of The mayors would say its taxing on their infrastructure,
which is true. So the nimbi's then co opt the
conversation and drag these out in court for some period
of time.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
So trentd.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
A I think, can do a better job of creating
transparency around your municipality where it is in the process
today that doesn't exist. So for example, if Westfield to
use that as an example of municipality is cooperating and
doing a good job. There's no transparency to that. So
the nimbi's generally control the conversation at the planning boards
(13:51):
because of the fact that there's a lack of information.
So I think TREND being helpful in that is part
of it. Number two is that if you have an
objective to new housing, which New Jersey does, and when
a mayor or council people say that you're going to
make us build these thousand units but added children in
the schools, added needed infrastructure, I do think TREND needs
(14:13):
to tie dollars in resources to those municipalities that are cooperating.
You do need a carrot and stick approach, otherwise you're
never going to get mayors to actually move in a
place that has home rule like New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Okay, so speaking of municipalities and infrastructure, Yeah, one of
your proposals is consolidating some of those municipalities so that
you don't have a doubling or I guess triplicating quadruplicating
is that a thing of services in order to cut costs?
And I get that cutting government services and costs is
obviously very hot right now, But what particular benchmarks or
(15:02):
targets are you looking at here, and how do you
ensure I guess, quality of service as you consolidate.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Yeah, so I think the way that we start this
is more focused on shared services than absolute consolidation. And
from a mayoral standpoint, knowing that again, New Jersey has
five hundred and sixty four municipalities, a lot of municipalities
for a very very small area, all with home rule,
and all have departments that are not necessarily important by
(15:29):
municipality for municipality. Just to put in perspective, seventy five
percent of those five hundred and sixty four municipalities have
less than twenty thousand people. Fifty percent of them have
less than ten thousand people. So a lot of very
small municipalities that all have offices like health departments which
should probably be at the county, animal control should be
at the county, things like that. And so I think
(15:50):
that we've outlined the process to create leverage over the
municipalities via referendum and to force kind of shared service
once try has leverage, and I think that's the way
you got to get there, because nobody's going to voluntarily
give up parts of their government unless you have trend
creating leverage on.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
That why hasn't this been done before? Because when I
think about animal control, for instance, it does seem kind
of crazy that you have hundreds, dozens of municipalities that
are all running their own animal control services. But like
I imagine, there must be a challenge in doing some
of this.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
I think that for the most part, mayors and council
people are reluctant to give up departments or relationships. Often
the people that work in these small municipalities or large municipalities,
or personal relationships. You may know the person's family, they've
been there for a long time, and so just the
bureaucracy and stagnation is what ends up getting you into
this place of not wanting to make any change. People
(16:46):
have talked about it for twenty years about some sort
of consolidation. The difference in how we're approaching it is
that we are using kind of the referendum process around
bonding for municipalities to create leverage over the municipality is
to force it. Apps In forcing it, you're never going
to get it to happen. That's the truth, and so
it's a little bit of a different approach. I could
(17:06):
tell you that the League of Municipalities, which is the
advocacy group for all five hundred and sixty four municipalities
in New Jersey hates what I say, which probably tells
you that I'm right.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
About it, to be honest with you, but that's kind
of where we are.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Jersey City, I think at twenty to twenty two approve
something where developers, on a voluntary basis can expand a
number of units in a plot in exchange for some
level of affordable uni eskumitment. Is that being utilized, like
what is the math work? It's voluntary to include more
affordable units and then they get to expand.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
The number of Is that being utilized? It's used actually
a lot. So it's a little bit different than the
inclusionary zoning ordinance, which was you get an approval and
let's say twenty percent has to be inclusionary zoning depending
on what the zoning changes. This was an overlay zone
that we put in place that basically what it's said
is that within the existing envelope of the building, so
(17:58):
from an outside you could just add more density in there.
It is being used because what you see in Jersey
City is you see a lot of these smaller units
in these larger buildings and they trade it roughly from
the downtown area, let's say one hundred thousand dollars a.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Door on approval.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
So it's of high value to do that for us
from the city standpoint.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Wait, that mean trade at all?
Speaker 5 (18:18):
Like if you sell Let's say, if you let's say
you were a building is approved for ten units, you
would say it's roughly would be one hundred, would be
a million dollars, okay, So and that math is exponential
for if you have a three four hundred unit building.
From our standpoint, it was the best way to approach
a need for affordable housing without changing the esthetics or
(18:40):
the scale of the building on the outside, which is
problematic off into kind of the community group, so to speak.
So it is being used. I would probably say it's
being used as much, if not more than the inclusionary
zoning ordinance that we have in place, and it's just
been another tool to kind of increase affordable housing production.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Since you mentioned aesthetics, I find those really interesting because
esthetics doesn't always come into the conversation on affordable housing,
and it is an issue for a lot of people.
And I think about the look of Jersey City versus
I don't know a Hoboken or something like that. They're
very different. How important are aesthetics in your conversations? And
I guess how do you address some of those issues.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
We have a good planning department and we've gotten better
at it as we've gotten more sophisticated developers into Jersey City.
It's allowed us to be more aggressive with the aesthetics
and push developers a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
So you can dictate what things will look.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
We we can to some degree, and I think that
as the marketplace has become more competitive, the natural outcome
of the private sectors that they're pushing each other to
better products that look better, feel better, better amenities, you know,
whether it's a pool or a kind of a little
golf range or whatever they got going on in there.
It's changed over time a little bit better. And because
(19:55):
we've grown so much, everybody's thinking about how to make
their building more competitive. The building are being absorbed into
the market as quickly as we're building them. They would
tell you that that's largely because of New York's lack
of construction, which is a bigger problem, but it also
has benefited us from the aesthetic standpoint.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So here's a big picture thought that I have go
for it, and I kind of hinted at the beginning,
But New York City and our neighbors on the other
side of the water greatest place to live in the
entire world.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
In my opinion.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
The economic opportunities for an individual here are extraordinary. The
cultural opportunities are extraordinary. I understand intuitively why rents here
or mortgages are so expensive because it's the best place
in the entire world. Jersey City has expanded the housing
stock quite a bit, but also affordability has worsened over
the last decade or so. Is that inevitable because it's
(20:49):
just so good. People want to live in the best
place in the world, and so it's going to get
more expensive because this is where they're sort of like
when I talk to a lot of the yimbi's, I
understand like expanding production there's good for the economy, et cetera.
I'm less convinced that market housing or any housing can
actually make these places cheaper because they're so good, they're
so desirable. Well like, can you actually like solve affordability
(21:11):
or do you just have a lot more people here?
Speaker 5 (21:13):
And that's good enough, you could definitely slow the growth
of rental increases. Okay, so whether you're going to have
a massive rental decrease, I don't know, but you could
definitely slow the growth. And we've seen that in the
last year two years, whereas Jersey City was consistently ranked
as very very steep rent increases and it was problematic
that has slowed because of the supply conversation. Specifically though
(21:36):
for Jersey City, I think that yes, we have been
a victim of our success in many ways and a
victim of New York's lack of construction. So if you
are going to have a regional solution, New York and
particularly Manhattan needs to carry its weight, which is not
happening today.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Just on this beggar thy neighbor issue. I guess, do
you talk to other cities and other towns about like
what they should be doing? And I guess how replicable
is the Jersey City model for a place like New
York or Hoboken or wherever.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
Well.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
I think there's a lot of good things that have
happened in Jersey City, and some of the mayoral candidates
do reference the amount of housing production because it's been
pretty astronomical in Jersey City. It kind of speaks to
the lack of production again in New York. I think
as governor there's a lot of things that you can
do to change the climate in New Jersey around housing production.
(22:29):
And one of the challenges that we've had in New
Jersey is you haven't had a governor with municipal experience
in twenty years, you know, you know, Phil Murphy came
from being ambassador, and Chris Christy was a use attorney,
and John Corzin was you a senator, and et cetera,
et cetera. So I do think understanding the touch points,
the leverage points, how to motivate somebody at the municipal
(22:49):
level is very, very important to being a governor in
a place like New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Actually, speaking of politics, I think in this race, are
you the only candidate in the race that supports the
congestion pricing sea?
Speaker 4 (23:03):
All Right?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
As a resident of Manhattan who doesn't drive much in
the city, I think congestion pricing is great. But I'm
not you know, I'm not.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Using why am I as a New Jersey resident thinking
that it's all how do you sell it?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
How do you sell it? Well, look, people ask me
in a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
This is like also gets to some of the other
questions around housing witches that some of these benefits are
diffused the long term and not meet it.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
So how do you sell So first of all, if
you care about the health issues, or the environment issues,
or mass transit issues, then obviously you should be supportive
of the concept of congestion pricing to begin with. I say,
secondly to people, if you take a step back and
get away from kind of polling data which people would
say I don't like the idea of an additional search charge.
(23:46):
If you ask yourself, who is the person that drives
their personal vehicle from New Jersey every day to midtime
Manhattan then pays fifteen hundred dollars to park the car
in midtowm Mahaanan. It's not regular working class people. Regular
people take the trains and buses to the port Authority
or to Penn Station and then they use the MTA system.
Wealthy people drive their personal vehicle every day. The point
(24:08):
is that you need to invest in mass transit and
we need to get past this kind of concept of
New Jersey versus New York, because New York does rely
on New Jersey transit to service a lot of the
workforce here in New York, and we rely on the
MTA to move us around here once we get here. Ultimately,
when I'm the governor or hopefully get there, want to
get to a place of a regional conversation more around
(24:29):
mass transit. I don't think the current climate of conversation
is productive, and the leverage tool to get New York
back to the table is probably posturing around some sort
of similar tax on New Yorkers eventually to get them
to the table. So you could have a kind of
a holistic regional plan around transportation. That's really where you
got to go if you're going to get the region
(24:50):
to actually move in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Why does New Jersey transit suck so much?
Speaker 5 (24:55):
I mean, that's like the question I get in every
single meet greets. It's probably just because there's a lack
of interest from trend for some period of time. I mean,
you have buses that have been privatized for a long time,
so I think that's problematic. You have a train system
that doesn't have a dedicated revenue source, and you have
administrations that have not really cared for it. It is so
much so It's not only that it's problematic with the
(25:18):
existing service, it hasn't built out any real infrastructure at all.
So when you look at economic development in the southern
parts of New Jersey, you would see that there is
no mass transit, and the reason that you haven't been
able to attract jobs the same way or housing construction
is directly related to the lack of mass transit infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Actually, I'll talk about this a little bit further because
the quality of public services is something that probably transcends
both the sort of more center and left side of
the Democratic Party. That like, where is the future of
any sort of public provision of goods if people don't
think it's good. And so, if you know, the wide
spread perception is that New Jersey transit is terrible, it's
(25:58):
one thing to say, Okay, yeah, they haven't taken it's
seriously fun. But like I mean, this seems to be
a widespread phenomenon. It's people in New York obviously have
the same issues with the subway and they come up
with their stories, and people in the Bay Area have
the same issues with the bart and otherwhere they don't
have the same issues because their government just didn't build
out anything in the first place or whatever, But like,
(26:20):
what is your plan for actually making it a good
quality product that people are like, Yeah, I don't need
a car, I really like the transfer.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Let me just say I think that the reason that
you've seen what you've just outlined is largely because you
have wages that haven't increased at the same rate as
costs for government, and that disconnect has forced a lot
of choices, which ultimately has led to less services. Okay,
on New Jersey Transit, we've outlined kind of a couple
(26:48):
of things that are really big priorities for me on
the funding, and it doesn't rely on the federal government
and we could do it ourselves. Last year film or
if you put in place a corporate business tax, it
was our idea actually on companies with ten million dollars plus.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
He gave us credit for it. He put it in
place for five years.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
Only it's problematic only because a you have to come
back and to fix it, and b you can't bond
against a five year revenue, which you need to do
because if you're going to make New Jersey Transit better,
you got to invest in the train stations and bus stations.
So people feel they're clean and modern and safe. So
got to fix that. Number one, we would do that
right away. Number two is the largest infrastructure project in
(27:27):
the state of New Jersey is really this turnpike widening
project which goes into the Holland Tunnel. And it doesn't
make a lot of sense because it's a twelve billion
dollar project and the Holland Tunnel is still too late,
So it doesn't matter if you make twenty lanes coming
into it, right you have that same bottleneck. And you know,
similar to what the governor of Maryland did and some
of the others, we would reallocate those dollars towards mass transit,
(27:48):
in particular light rail expansion in South Jersey and in
Bergen County. And then I do think that it's a
priority to go away from privatizing the buses.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I don't know which is worse, Tracy going into the
Holland Tunnel from the Jersey side or exiting the Holland
Tunnel in the New yth City side. Miserable in vote directions,
I see no upside unless you're going to radically rethink
that and spending one more dollar on that process.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Anyway, I have a horror story about this, which I
will tell you after this recording. I suspect a lot
of people have horror stories about this, but I want
to go back to housing for a second.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Love housing.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
We touched on tax abatements, and obviously tax abatements are
a classic tool for building more affordable units, but they're
not free, right. You're sacrificing revenue in order to do this,
and presumably you need to offset that lost revenue through
tax increases elsewhere. So where does that offset actually come from?
Speaker 5 (28:58):
So first of all, let's talk about how to chain
change the tax abatement or pilot program payment and lieu
of taxes so that way it actually makes sense in
New Jersey today. In New Jersey, a short term tax
abatement is by right, so developer can fill out a
program and a piece of paper and they get a
five year tax abatement. The long term taxibatements for twenty
or thirty years are the ones that become political circus.
(29:20):
I do think to increase housing supply, you need to
change the long term tax abatements to be somewhat more
like the five year tax abaytmance by right, and the
way that we would see this move forward, assuming get elected.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Is that city council.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
Or mayor would approve an initial ordinance, so you'd have
a public process around what that tax abatement process for
that administration would look like.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
What is the census.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
Tracks, what are the affordability components? What are the community
give backs? Is a union labor whatever those are. Once
it's approved, it should go to Trent and to get
approved there by the DCA, and then at that point
I do believe it should be by right so you
can expedite some of this construction components of it. In
New Jersey have again a lot of municipalities, and the
taxes are divided up between the school district, between the
(30:05):
municipality and the county. The school district and the municipality
are obviously priorities, the county less. So it's another layer
of government that you probably need some consolidation long term.
And most of these buildings are new found revenues. They're
not true tax payments where the developer is not paying.
It's a payment in lieu of taxes. So it is
(30:25):
found money, maybe not as much as you would make,
but there still are a lot of inefficiencies in government,
and you could figure.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
Out that offset through that process.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
There's a lot of inefficient use of land around train
stations in you notice it where it's like there's just
like lots of parking and stuff. It's like, this seems
like it should be like prime places for like really
tall buildings so that someone can walk five minutes to
a train that they take to New York City.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Why is that?
Speaker 5 (30:50):
Why is that a lot of that is owned by
New Jersey Transit actually, and so you have a disconnect
in New Jersey where the zoning is controlled by the
local municipality and New Jersey Transit, who owns the property,
perceives that the opportunity or land value is different than
what the existing zoning is. That disconnect has created a
(31:11):
lot of or no movement.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Really, I just don't understand, like why does Jersey Transit
feel the need to hold all this land part it
could be extremely valuable for real estate right there and
leave it for cars.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
We will use executive orders around that to kind of
override some of the just a transit oriented development restrictions.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
That you have. So the goal is to really use.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
That land and circumvent the existing language in the home
rule municipalities that are problematic.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I want to channel Nimbi's right now, I'm putting on
my Nimbi hat. And obviously, you know, I haven't been
able to go to like a Jersey City town hall
to get like a real sense of it. But I
did the next best thing, which is I went to
the Jersey City subreddit. Okay, there's a lot of criticism
on there of I guess gentrification. Sure, right, people are
(32:08):
complaining that all these new high rises are making things
very different to how they used to be, and you're
actually getting rent increases and hip taxes and things like that.
How do you address those concerns?
Speaker 5 (32:22):
I mean, look, rent increases, unfortunately, you know, as a
byproduct again of the pressure because of New York, and
we're a victim of our success.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
There's no question about that.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
You've seen the population increase in Jersey City. So when
people point to the fact that people are being displaced,
the data doesn't necessarily support that, and the diversity in
the city has remained relatively constant. I think that when
you see a lot of the new buildings that are
going up, those are often on vacant properties that didn't
exist before anything, parking lots or empty lots near Journal Square,
(32:57):
So you're not saying about displacement. It's the same degree
pece people are talking about. Change is uncomfortable for people.
That's the truth, you know. And you know you're always
going to have people that remember what a city looked
like fifteen twenty years ago that might have been a
little bit more grittier, a little bit less safe, and
they still like it because of the way it was.
But I think most people would tell you that Jersey
(33:18):
City's change has been beneficial. On the first three term
elected mayor there in seventy years, so somebody likes me,
and I think that the changes for the most part
have been helpful. Not to say that we don't have
an affordability crisis, but it's a regional issue. It's not
just a Jersey City issue.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I do think you make a good point, you know,
And this gets to my point about why rents have
in fact gone up now that it's gotten more dent
and there are all those great restaurants at the bottom
of the buildings right when you get off of the
path tren it's more deserrable.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
I'll pay more percent.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I'll pay more for it today than I would have
paid an equivalent dollars fifteen years ago when there was
a you know, probably tumbleweed or whatever it was. You know,
I know it wasn't a tumbleweed, And I think this good.
Are you an abundance Democrat?
Speaker 4 (33:59):
You know what?
Speaker 5 (33:59):
I didn't even know until six months ago what that
terminology was, to be honest with you, So, but do
you think that's like.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
A useful answer question? But do you think that's like
a useful flag?
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Could that be?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Like?
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Is that like I don't know the political I don't know.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
I mean, I don't think it's a useful political term, truthfully,
because I don't think a normal person would read ezracline
in the book like we would read it. But I
don't think by and large a independent voter, which is
what democrats need to move ultimately to be successful, is
going to understand when you say I'm an abundance Democrat.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
And to be fair, I don't know if anyone is
saying that or proposing that anyone should say that, But
I'm just curious about I think the resonance of this label.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
I think there is validity to the argument that we
put a lot of layers and restrictions in place to
get anything accomplished. And that's not necessarily only Democrats, it's
everybody in this country. And I do think that we
need to kind of move forward on stuff. I don't
know if the term I mean, it's kind of like
I guess the last couple of months, you hear it.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
More and more often. We'll see if it sticks around,
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Or people saying it these days. Stephen Fillip, mayor of
a Jersey City candidate for the Democratic Party's nominee for governor.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Thank you so much for coming on for having me.
It was really great. Thank you both.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
That was great.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
It was a lot of fun. I will say Tracy
that you know, I always get so nervous talking to
politicians because I worry that there's gonna be so canned.
You know, we don't do a ton of those.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
They tend to be very on message, very on message.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Talking to Steven talked like just talking to like a
very normal person about issues. I mean, you know, I'm
sure people would disagree with him about his characterizations something.
It felt like a real conversation.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, I mean, he definitely had a lot of policies
that he could point to. I guess the big question
is still how replicable this is elsewhere? And for instance,
you know he talked about on the gentrification issue that
you're not displacing existing buildings, you're building run primarily empty
lots and things like that. There aren't many empty lots
(36:04):
in places like Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
No, in the primary are many empty lots left in
Jersey City? Yeah, and so part of the question. So
that's how you know, we were talking about like what
specific mechanisms, and I believe that they exist. But today
it's a very different city than it was fifteen or
twenty years ago. And so the degree to which Okay,
well this is just Manhattan spillover or maybe Brooklyn or
you know whatever spillover people who did work going to
(36:27):
live in Manhattan in the first place, but then the
easy pickings have been gone certainly strikes.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Me as the real starting points were different.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
You mentioned tumble weeds, Joe. Yeah, did you know that
tumble weeds come from Russia and there are an invasive
species in the US?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Really?
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yes, I did not know that. Speaking of housing, have
you ever seen the pictures of like houses being absolutely
like swamped by tumbleweeds?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
No, Russia in the eighteen seventies. They arrived in South
dakoted a likely inflat seed from Russia. These plants are
known also as Russian thistle. That's super interesting. Yeah, they're
cool looking. So I don't mind that they got here.
I mean, I guess it's not good. Houses are swamped
in it.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
No, it's cool. They're actually a big problem.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
It's a serious problem.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
One other thing though, that we only got into it
a little bit. It does seem like because of the
sort of disorganization of American government, you get a lot
of really silly things, like the New Jersey Transit owning
a bunch of land that it could be, you know,
worth hundreds of millions of dollars if you just put
a bunch of apartments on there, and people would presumably
(37:31):
kill to live in a nice high rise apartment a
two minute walk from a train station that would take
them right into New York City, and instead it's just parking.
And yet because of like the zoning, and it just
seems like, let's get it together, come on, let's get
it's just really annoying.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Well, there's a lot of stasis in policy.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Yeah, it seems so.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I think we've learned that over and over again.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
You know, one last thing too, because it took me
a minute. I think it took both of us a
minute when Stephen was talking about, oh, housing being very
political and what he meant by that, yeah, was super interesting,
Like we've definitely not talked about the idea that, well,
one barrier to housing could be essential corruption, which is
a word he used, but you know, even like polite
forms of corruption.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
It's very interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
This has been another episode of the oud Loots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Stephen Phillip. He's at Stephen Phullip. Follow
our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash Ol Bennett
at Dashbot and Kilbrooks at Keil Brooks. From odd Lots content,
go to bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots. We have
a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you
can chat about all of these topics. Plenty of stuff
in there about housing twenty four to seven in our
(38:43):
discord Discord dot gg slash Oddlocks.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
when we talk about housing policy and the origins of tumbleweeds,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
I'm Jill Whysenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Been covering little local politics these days. Tracey, it's not
our normal beat, but sometimes there's a little intersection.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
We're going local, not macro micro.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
We're going micro. So it's interesting because we did a
recent episode. Listeners may remember it was one of the
candidates for the mayorship here in New York City's are
on Mom Donnie and he sort of talked about his
vision for affordability. Actually backing up for a second, it
feels like housing affordability is suddenly swamping everything is the
(00:53):
issue almost regardless of your perspective, that is like on
top of many people's minds these days.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Well also, so we've talked about this before, but also
seems like a bipartisan issue, right and like you don't
get a lot of bipartisan things nowadays. I'll just put
it that way.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
No, but it's interesting, like you know, at one point
there is like healthcare and sometimes climate other time. Right now,
it just feels like there is such a so much
anxiety about housing affordability and all this stuff, and it
feels like it's a nationwide thing. Within the Democratic Party,
there are different wings of how people talk about it,
so we obviously talked to the socialist candidate for mayor.
(01:30):
There's also what people would call like this sort of
like more liberal abundance view that you know, the answer
is just we just need more and use whatever levers
to pull to like get more in some way. So,
you know, even within one party though, although everyone sort
of agrees on rent and affordability, not a lot of
consensus on the path there.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, so the overall goal is very clear, but I
guess like the levers that you're going to pull to
get there are very complicated, And I have to say
that's one thing that I kind of struggle with in
those topics. It seems like there are so many different
things that you could do, and all of them seem
very like bureaucratic, very technical tax abatements, all these incentives
(02:10):
rent control, and it's interesting to me how you choose
between them about what's going to be most effective.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Can I just say, by the way, you know, I
think a lot of these debates are very part of
the reason they exist because the media is very heavily
represented in New York and San Francisco. I mean, I
don't think that there's a no affordability crisis in like Devenport,
Iowa to the same degree, and I think that's important
to acknowledge. I also think like New York and you know,
San francisc are some of the best places in the world,
so I get why people pay a lot of money
(02:37):
for them. Anyway, it turns out one of the best
cities over the last several years in the entire country
for housing production is our neighbor, Jersey City, right across
the water. I really like Jersey City. I've spent a
little bit of time there, and their mayor, Stephen Phillip,
is running for governor in the Democratic primary right now,
so we have the perfect guest to talk about Jersey
City housing production.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Stephen Phllip.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Thank you, Thank you so much for coming on odd Laws.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
For those people who don't know, you've been in the
mayor of Jersey City for how long I think I
saw it was like in the last ten years, housing
stock has increased like twenty five percent something like that.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
Yeah, I mean, we used to be maybe two percent
of the state's building permits. We're upwards of ten percent now.
I mean, we've been the backbone economically the state of
New Jersey. I've been the mayor there for twelve years.
I've been unapologetically very very pro growth. You could see
the skyline change across the river. So it's been a
good story and we're growing and I'm very proud of
the changes that have happened.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
What's the biggest choke point or hurdle when it comes
to building more affordable housing? Because everyone seems to have
a different answer to this and different things that they
would put emphasis on. But in your view, what's number one?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
What do other people say? Out of curiosity?
Speaker 3 (03:46):
The people say like zoning and things like that, incentivizing
the developers to build something other than luxury high rises,
that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I'd point to a couple of things.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
I mean, in New Jersey, we have definitely have an
incentive program that is complicated. We have obviously zoning with
home rules, so you have a lot of municipalities five
hundred and sixty four municipalities, which is problematic and home rule,
So how do you overcome that, which I think we
have some solutions for and I think that generally speaking,
across the country you have kind of the Nimby sentiment
(04:18):
monopolizing the conversation. And how do you wrestle that away
from them is different in each city or state, But
in New Jersey, I think we've done a pretty good
job of kind of creating a dynamic where the people
that are pro growth.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Can also have a voice there.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
You've been pretty unapologetic in your view that market rate
housing benefits everyone, that there's supply and demand, you expand supply,
it filters down, et cetera. You talk about quote affordable
housing unquote, but give us your general philosophy of housing
(04:52):
and make it more affordable and why you believe that
a lot of the solution is essentially liberalizing and supply
and demand.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Yeah, I think people build what they want with there. Yes,
I think that when you put more restrictions around housing
growth so you know, rent control sounds like a good buzzwords,
But when you're too restrictive around that stuff, you're going
to create a situation where you're not seeing supply being increased.
We've seen in Jersey City pressure when New York City
isn't growing on our housing prices, and when we've grown
(05:21):
a lot, you've seen the demand still high, but the
rent increase is subside.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So it leads you to the.
Speaker 5 (05:27):
Conclusion that the market rate component of housing is as
important to the conversation as the affordable conversation. And you know, look,
a lot of people push back for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes it's rooted in racism. I mean, people have a
different reaction if you use the word affordable housing versus
housing that's affordable. They have a different kind of thought
process around that. But the reality of the situation is
(05:50):
that market rate housing helps you build more affordable housing
or housing that's affordable, and they have to work together
to be successful. And that's how we've approached it in
Jersey City and it's really been successful.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So one of the criticisms of market rate is that
you end up with those developers just building the luxury
apartments because they can ring more money out of those.
How do you address I guess the balance between luxury
housing versus I don't know, housing for the middle class
or housing that's further down the spectrum.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
Yeah, so in Jersey City, we do have kind of
set asides or inclusionary zoning ordinances and those are important.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
We've gone back and forth with the.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Advocacy groups on what's actually achievable, and we've actually come
to a place that's pretty successful. And we generally target
about twenty percent of a housing development to be a
blended affordable component. So that could be workforce housing, that
could be low income housing, which is obviously more stressful
on the overall project. So you got to factor some
of that stuff in. But we do have, you know,
(06:50):
a specific minimum requirement when they do get a specific
incentive like a tax abatement from the city.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Well specific lever.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So, Okay, you've been the main of Jersey City for
twelve years. Is objectively true that the skyline has changed
a lot, Is objectively true that the housing stock has grown.
I'm sure it's benefited just from the fact that, you know,
Manhattan and New York City has been fairly dismal about
expanding housing supply, and so people look elsewhere. But versus
before you came into office, Now, what are the specific
(07:19):
levers that you've pulled to expand production and how can
you like attribute you know, when you do an attribution
of the housing stock, what can you say to what
you've done.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
So.
Speaker 5 (07:28):
When I came into office, the tax abatement or incentive
program was very political in nature, and it seemed to
be by right for the developers that were pursuing it.
And there were two problems with that. The politics of
it created kind of uncertainty and apprehension about people investing
in a market if they weren't familiar with the politics
(07:48):
about it. And the uncertainty of how the process worked
was problematic as well. So we came in and we
changed the policy entirely, and people said it we wouldn't
see the mount of growth. But I viewed it at
the time that it was such a given that you
would get these tax abatements that it didn't necessarily incentivize
more growth. It was already factored into the seller's price
(08:08):
and the buyer's price and the private transaction. So we
had to recalibrate that market a little bit. And so
what I did was we changed the tax abatement process
where we mapped it to census. Tracts based on poor
census were automatically entitled to a steeper incentive. And what
you've gradually saw was people moving away from the waterfront
and investing money because it seemed more certain the process,
(08:31):
and it seemed to have a clear advantage if you
were moving to certain areas. And we mapped it to
the census track, which seemed like a reasonable way to
map it towards income where you're trying to instigate development,
and so that worked, and I think that that clarity
really helped people invest and attracted new developers to the area.
(08:51):
So we were no longer relying on the same small
pool of developers. And I think the certainty was very
good because you know, New Jersey has a history of
political corruption, and feeling that there was some process around
this that it wasn't necessarily predicated on what lawyer or
architect you hire created a better climate for business.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
So you mentioned widening the pool of developers, and this
is something that Joe and I are really interested in.
We went down to North Carolina and learned that towns
and cities really have to make pitches to developers to
get them to come in. What's the process of, I guess,
working with a developer talking to them actually like, what
are the things that they are looking for specifically?
Speaker 5 (09:31):
Well, look, I think that they are interested in an
administration that seems less political in nature and more focused
or aligned in a pro growth mentality that recognizes that
they are in the business of providing housing and there's
mutually beneficial outcomes if we work together. When I became
the mayor of Jersey City, one of the things that
(09:52):
I did with the existing developer pool was I recognized
the fact that we needed to market the city better
to the surrounding areas. I knew that, you know, not
necessarily Soho or Tribeco was in a comparison to Jersey City.
Somebody wasn't making the choice should I live in Tribeca
or Jersey City, but certainly with Brooklyn and Queens and
the outer boroughs. So we got most of the larger
(10:13):
developers at that point together, and what I said to
them was that we would do a marketing campaign where
the city's Economic Development Corporation would match the private dollars
one for one, and it would be targeted in these
areas that we think that we can attract new residents
and new developers. And I was very deliberate that it
would not be political in nature, like I would not
appear in this, My voice would not be a part
(10:35):
of it. It was going to be focused on branding
the city in a different way that ultimately led to
more interests, more demands, more developers, and I think that
that was a very very helpful step that we did
out of the gate. The politics is always problematic and
people are apprehensive about that.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Wait, what do you mean by political exactly?
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Well, the political is in most places, at least in
New Jersey, it's been a history of who you know
and a very small cadre of relationships that have allowed
you entree into the process. And in a place like
New Jersey where a lot of the rules are codified
in a very very loose way, you feel obligated that
(11:14):
you got to have a real certain type of relationship.
And the more you can remove that towards the business climate,
the more likely people are to invest in them. And
I feel like that's been the kind of a big
change in Jersey City overall.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
This is super interesting. I don't think this dimension of
housing unaffordability or the challenges to production has come up.
But when you look at still today Jersey overall, you're
running for governor, do you still see, like outside of
Jersey City a general tendency towards it's going to be
difficult to get approvals and so forth, if you aren't
(11:45):
with the right architect, if you aren't with the right paper,
and so forth. Is that still an endemic problem in
New Jersey at constrainings and the supply of house.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
I think it's a cultural issue in New Jersey. I mean,
we had a senator that is about to go to
jail for gold bars. I mean that's a example of
the political culture of how people perceive New Jersey. I
think that any reasonable person would estimate that you're in
the two hundred thousand unit shortage range for the state
(12:12):
of New Jersey, now maybe given a little and the
production of affordable units is roughly only like three thousand
a year, so you're looking at close to seventy years
to cure the backlog that you have today. It's quite significant,
and there is a sentiment that, you know, municipality by
municipality has this disproportionate amount of control over the outcomes
(12:33):
of housing production. And part of the job as governor
will be to kind of change that narrative. So the
nimbi's not my backyard, are the not monopolizing the conversation?
And there's a lot of ways that I think a
governor can do that.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Well, let's talk about that. How do you deal with
the nimbi's.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And the localities fight it because there must be tension
between state versu.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
Local Yeah, I think there's a couple of things you
could do. So New Jersey has a fair share housing
requirement which has been litigated for thirty forty years, where
every municipality is going to have some sort of obligation
on housing, and a lot of the municipalities push back.
If it's a suburban municipality, they say, well, you're obligating
us to this two hundred affordable units and they come
(13:13):
under an eighty twenty rule, So the two hundred units
equates to roughly one thousand units overall, which is kind
of The mayors would say its taxing on their infrastructure,
which is true. So the nimbi's then co opt the
conversation and drag these out in court for some period
of time.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
So trentd.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
A I think, can do a better job of creating
transparency around your municipality where it is in the process
today that doesn't exist. So for example, if Westfield to
use that as an example of municipality is cooperating and
doing a good job. There's no transparency to that. So
the nimbi's generally control the conversation at the planning boards
(13:51):
because of the fact that there's a lack of information.
So I think TREND being helpful in that is part
of it. Number two is that if you have an
objective to new housing, which New Jersey does, and when
a mayor or council people say that you're going to
make us build these thousand units but added children in
the schools, added needed infrastructure, I do think TREND needs
(14:13):
to tie dollars in resources to those municipalities that are cooperating.
You do need a carrot and stick approach, otherwise you're
never going to get mayors to actually move in a
place that has home rule like New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Okay, so speaking of municipalities and infrastructure, Yeah, one of
your proposals is consolidating some of those municipalities so that
you don't have a doubling or I guess triplicating quadruplicating
is that a thing of services in order to cut costs?
And I get that cutting government services and costs is
obviously very hot right now, But what particular benchmarks or
(15:02):
targets are you looking at here, and how do you
ensure I guess, quality of service as you consolidate.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Yeah, so I think the way that we start this
is more focused on shared services than absolute consolidation. And
from a mayoral standpoint, knowing that again, New Jersey has
five hundred and sixty four municipalities, a lot of municipalities
for a very very small area, all with home rule,
and all have departments that are not necessarily important by
(15:29):
municipality for municipality. Just to put in perspective, seventy five
percent of those five hundred and sixty four municipalities have
less than twenty thousand people. Fifty percent of them have
less than ten thousand people. So a lot of very
small municipalities that all have offices like health departments which
should probably be at the county, animal control should be
at the county, things like that. And so I think
(15:50):
that we've outlined the process to create leverage over the
municipalities via referendum and to force kind of shared service
once try has leverage, and I think that's the way
you got to get there, because nobody's going to voluntarily
give up parts of their government unless you have trend
creating leverage on.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
That why hasn't this been done before? Because when I
think about animal control, for instance, it does seem kind
of crazy that you have hundreds, dozens of municipalities that
are all running their own animal control services. But like
I imagine, there must be a challenge in doing some
of this.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
I think that for the most part, mayors and council
people are reluctant to give up departments or relationships. Often
the people that work in these small municipalities or large municipalities,
or personal relationships. You may know the person's family, they've
been there for a long time, and so just the
bureaucracy and stagnation is what ends up getting you into
this place of not wanting to make any change. People
(16:46):
have talked about it for twenty years about some sort
of consolidation. The difference in how we're approaching it is
that we are using kind of the referendum process around
bonding for municipalities to create leverage over the municipality is
to force it. Apps In forcing it, you're never going
to get it to happen. That's the truth, and so
it's a little bit of a different approach. I could
(17:06):
tell you that the League of Municipalities, which is the
advocacy group for all five hundred and sixty four municipalities
in New Jersey hates what I say, which probably tells
you that I'm right.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
About it, to be honest with you, but that's kind
of where we are.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Jersey City, I think at twenty to twenty two approve
something where developers, on a voluntary basis can expand a
number of units in a plot in exchange for some
level of affordable uni eskumitment. Is that being utilized, like
what is the math work? It's voluntary to include more
affordable units and then they get to expand.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
The number of Is that being utilized? It's used actually
a lot. So it's a little bit different than the
inclusionary zoning ordinance, which was you get an approval and
let's say twenty percent has to be inclusionary zoning depending
on what the zoning changes. This was an overlay zone
that we put in place that basically what it's said
is that within the existing envelope of the building, so
(17:58):
from an outside you could just add more density in there.
It is being used because what you see in Jersey
City is you see a lot of these smaller units
in these larger buildings and they trade it roughly from
the downtown area, let's say one hundred thousand dollars a.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Door on approval.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
So it's of high value to do that for us
from the city standpoint.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Wait, that mean trade at all?
Speaker 5 (18:18):
Like if you sell Let's say, if you let's say
you were a building is approved for ten units, you
would say it's roughly would be one hundred, would be
a million dollars, okay, So and that math is exponential
for if you have a three four hundred unit building.
From our standpoint, it was the best way to approach
a need for affordable housing without changing the esthetics or
(18:40):
the scale of the building on the outside, which is
problematic off into kind of the community group, so to speak.
So it is being used. I would probably say it's
being used as much, if not more than the inclusionary
zoning ordinance that we have in place, and it's just
been another tool to kind of increase affordable housing production.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Since you mentioned aesthetics, I find those really interesting because
esthetics doesn't always come into the conversation on affordable housing,
and it is an issue for a lot of people.
And I think about the look of Jersey City versus
I don't know a Hoboken or something like that. They're
very different. How important are aesthetics in your conversations? And
I guess how do you address some of those issues.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
We have a good planning department and we've gotten better
at it as we've gotten more sophisticated developers into Jersey City.
It's allowed us to be more aggressive with the aesthetics
and push developers a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
So you can dictate what things will look.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
We we can to some degree, and I think that
as the marketplace has become more competitive, the natural outcome
of the private sectors that they're pushing each other to
better products that look better, feel better, better amenities, you know,
whether it's a pool or a kind of a little
golf range or whatever they got going on in there.
It's changed over time a little bit better. And because
(19:55):
we've grown so much, everybody's thinking about how to make
their building more competitive. The building are being absorbed into
the market as quickly as we're building them. They would
tell you that that's largely because of New York's lack
of construction, which is a bigger problem, but it also
has benefited us from the aesthetic standpoint.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So here's a big picture thought that I have go
for it, and I kind of hinted at the beginning,
But New York City and our neighbors on the other
side of the water greatest place to live in the
entire world.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
In my opinion.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
The economic opportunities for an individual here are extraordinary. The
cultural opportunities are extraordinary. I understand intuitively why rents here
or mortgages are so expensive because it's the best place
in the entire world. Jersey City has expanded the housing
stock quite a bit, but also affordability has worsened over
the last decade or so. Is that inevitable because it's
(20:49):
just so good. People want to live in the best
place in the world, and so it's going to get
more expensive because this is where they're sort of like
when I talk to a lot of the yimbi's, I
understand like expanding production there's good for the economy, et cetera.
I'm less convinced that market housing or any housing can
actually make these places cheaper because they're so good, they're
so desirable. Well like, can you actually like solve affordability
(21:11):
or do you just have a lot more people here?
Speaker 5 (21:13):
And that's good enough, you could definitely slow the growth
of rental increases. Okay, so whether you're going to have
a massive rental decrease, I don't know, but you could
definitely slow the growth. And we've seen that in the
last year two years, whereas Jersey City was consistently ranked
as very very steep rent increases and it was problematic
that has slowed because of the supply conversation. Specifically though
(21:36):
for Jersey City, I think that yes, we have been
a victim of our success in many ways and a
victim of New York's lack of construction. So if you
are going to have a regional solution, New York and
particularly Manhattan needs to carry its weight, which is not
happening today.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Just on this beggar thy neighbor issue. I guess, do
you talk to other cities and other towns about like
what they should be doing? And I guess how replicable
is the Jersey City model for a place like New
York or Hoboken or wherever.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
Well.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
I think there's a lot of good things that have
happened in Jersey City, and some of the mayoral candidates
do reference the amount of housing production because it's been
pretty astronomical in Jersey City. It kind of speaks to
the lack of production again in New York. I think
as governor there's a lot of things that you can
do to change the climate in New Jersey around housing production.
(22:29):
And one of the challenges that we've had in New
Jersey is you haven't had a governor with municipal experience
in twenty years, you know, you know, Phil Murphy came
from being ambassador, and Chris Christy was a use attorney,
and John Corzin was you a senator, and et cetera,
et cetera. So I do think understanding the touch points,
the leverage points, how to motivate somebody at the municipal
(22:49):
level is very, very important to being a governor in
a place like New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Actually, speaking of politics, I think in this race, are
you the only candidate in the race that supports the
congestion pricing sea?
Speaker 4 (23:03):
All Right?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
As a resident of Manhattan who doesn't drive much in
the city, I think congestion pricing is great. But I'm
not you know, I'm not.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Using why am I as a New Jersey resident thinking
that it's all how do you sell it?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
How do you sell it? Well, look, people ask me
in a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
This is like also gets to some of the other
questions around housing witches that some of these benefits are
diffused the long term and not meet it.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
So how do you sell So first of all, if
you care about the health issues, or the environment issues,
or mass transit issues, then obviously you should be supportive
of the concept of congestion pricing to begin with. I say,
secondly to people, if you take a step back and
get away from kind of polling data which people would
say I don't like the idea of an additional search charge.
(23:46):
If you ask yourself, who is the person that drives
their personal vehicle from New Jersey every day to midtime
Manhattan then pays fifteen hundred dollars to park the car
in midtowm Mahaanan. It's not regular working class people. Regular
people take the trains and buses to the port Authority
or to Penn Station and then they use the MTA system.
Wealthy people drive their personal vehicle every day. The point
(24:08):
is that you need to invest in mass transit and
we need to get past this kind of concept of
New Jersey versus New York, because New York does rely
on New Jersey transit to service a lot of the
workforce here in New York, and we rely on the
MTA to move us around here once we get here. Ultimately,
when I'm the governor or hopefully get there, want to
get to a place of a regional conversation more around
(24:29):
mass transit. I don't think the current climate of conversation
is productive, and the leverage tool to get New York
back to the table is probably posturing around some sort
of similar tax on New Yorkers eventually to get them
to the table. So you could have a kind of
a holistic regional plan around transportation. That's really where you
got to go if you're going to get the region
(24:50):
to actually move in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Why does New Jersey transit suck so much?
Speaker 5 (24:55):
I mean, that's like the question I get in every
single meet greets. It's probably just because there's a lack
of interest from trend for some period of time. I mean,
you have buses that have been privatized for a long time,
so I think that's problematic. You have a train system
that doesn't have a dedicated revenue source, and you have
administrations that have not really cared for it. It is so
much so It's not only that it's problematic with the
(25:18):
existing service, it hasn't built out any real infrastructure at all.
So when you look at economic development in the southern
parts of New Jersey, you would see that there is
no mass transit, and the reason that you haven't been
able to attract jobs the same way or housing construction
is directly related to the lack of mass transit infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Actually, I'll talk about this a little bit further because
the quality of public services is something that probably transcends
both the sort of more center and left side of
the Democratic Party. That like, where is the future of
any sort of public provision of goods if people don't
think it's good. And so, if you know, the wide
spread perception is that New Jersey transit is terrible, it's
(25:58):
one thing to say, Okay, yeah, they haven't taken it's
seriously fun. But like I mean, this seems to be
a widespread phenomenon. It's people in New York obviously have
the same issues with the subway and they come up
with their stories, and people in the Bay Area have
the same issues with the bart and otherwhere they don't
have the same issues because their government just didn't build
out anything in the first place or whatever, But like,
(26:20):
what is your plan for actually making it a good
quality product that people are like, Yeah, I don't need
a car, I really like the transfer.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Let me just say I think that the reason that
you've seen what you've just outlined is largely because you
have wages that haven't increased at the same rate as
costs for government, and that disconnect has forced a lot
of choices, which ultimately has led to less services. Okay,
on New Jersey Transit, we've outlined kind of a couple
(26:48):
of things that are really big priorities for me on
the funding, and it doesn't rely on the federal government
and we could do it ourselves. Last year film or
if you put in place a corporate business tax, it
was our idea actually on companies with ten million dollars plus.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
He gave us credit for it. He put it in
place for five years.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
Only it's problematic only because a you have to come
back and to fix it, and b you can't bond
against a five year revenue, which you need to do
because if you're going to make New Jersey Transit better,
you got to invest in the train stations and bus stations.
So people feel they're clean and modern and safe. So
got to fix that. Number one, we would do that
right away. Number two is the largest infrastructure project in
(27:27):
the state of New Jersey is really this turnpike widening
project which goes into the Holland Tunnel. And it doesn't
make a lot of sense because it's a twelve billion
dollar project and the Holland Tunnel is still too late,
So it doesn't matter if you make twenty lanes coming
into it, right you have that same bottleneck. And you know,
similar to what the governor of Maryland did and some
of the others, we would reallocate those dollars towards mass transit,
(27:48):
in particular light rail expansion in South Jersey and in
Bergen County. And then I do think that it's a
priority to go away from privatizing the buses.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I don't know which is worse, Tracy going into the
Holland Tunnel from the Jersey side or exiting the Holland
Tunnel in the New yth City side. Miserable in vote directions,
I see no upside unless you're going to radically rethink
that and spending one more dollar on that process.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Anyway, I have a horror story about this, which I
will tell you after this recording. I suspect a lot
of people have horror stories about this, but I want
to go back to housing for a second.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Love housing.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
We touched on tax abatements, and obviously tax abatements are
a classic tool for building more affordable units, but they're
not free, right. You're sacrificing revenue in order to do this,
and presumably you need to offset that lost revenue through
tax increases elsewhere. So where does that offset actually come from?
Speaker 5 (28:58):
So first of all, let's talk about how to chain
change the tax abatement or pilot program payment and lieu
of taxes so that way it actually makes sense in
New Jersey today. In New Jersey, a short term tax
abatement is by right, so developer can fill out a
program and a piece of paper and they get a
five year tax abatement. The long term taxibatements for twenty
or thirty years are the ones that become political circus.
(29:20):
I do think to increase housing supply, you need to
change the long term tax abatements to be somewhat more
like the five year tax abaytmance by right, and the
way that we would see this move forward, assuming get elected.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Is that city council.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
Or mayor would approve an initial ordinance, so you'd have
a public process around what that tax abatement process for
that administration would look like.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
What is the census.
Speaker 5 (29:42):
Tracks, what are the affordability components? What are the community
give backs? Is a union labor whatever those are. Once
it's approved, it should go to Trent and to get
approved there by the DCA, and then at that point
I do believe it should be by right so you
can expedite some of this construction components of it. In
New Jersey have again a lot of municipalities, and the
taxes are divided up between the school district, between the
(30:05):
municipality and the county. The school district and the municipality
are obviously priorities, the county less. So it's another layer
of government that you probably need some consolidation long term.
And most of these buildings are new found revenues. They're
not true tax payments where the developer is not paying.
It's a payment in lieu of taxes. So it is
(30:25):
found money, maybe not as much as you would make,
but there still are a lot of inefficiencies in government,
and you could figure.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
Out that offset through that process.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
There's a lot of inefficient use of land around train
stations in you notice it where it's like there's just
like lots of parking and stuff. It's like, this seems
like it should be like prime places for like really
tall buildings so that someone can walk five minutes to
a train that they take to New York City.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Why is that?
Speaker 5 (30:50):
Why is that a lot of that is owned by
New Jersey Transit actually, and so you have a disconnect
in New Jersey where the zoning is controlled by the
local municipality and New Jersey Transit, who owns the property,
perceives that the opportunity or land value is different than
what the existing zoning is. That disconnect has created a
(31:11):
lot of or no movement.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Really, I just don't understand, like why does Jersey Transit
feel the need to hold all this land part it
could be extremely valuable for real estate right there and
leave it for cars.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
We will use executive orders around that to kind of
override some of the just a transit oriented development restrictions.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
That you have. So the goal is to really use.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
That land and circumvent the existing language in the home
rule municipalities that are problematic.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I want to channel Nimbi's right now, I'm putting on
my Nimbi hat. And obviously, you know, I haven't been
able to go to like a Jersey City town hall
to get like a real sense of it. But I
did the next best thing, which is I went to
the Jersey City subreddit. Okay, there's a lot of criticism
on there of I guess gentrification. Sure, right, people are
(32:08):
complaining that all these new high rises are making things
very different to how they used to be, and you're
actually getting rent increases and hip taxes and things like that.
How do you address those concerns?
Speaker 5 (32:22):
I mean, look, rent increases, unfortunately, you know, as a
byproduct again of the pressure because of New York, and
we're a victim of our success.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
There's no question about that.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
You've seen the population increase in Jersey City. So when
people point to the fact that people are being displaced,
the data doesn't necessarily support that, and the diversity in
the city has remained relatively constant. I think that when
you see a lot of the new buildings that are
going up, those are often on vacant properties that didn't
exist before anything, parking lots or empty lots near Journal Square,
(32:57):
So you're not saying about displacement. It's the same degree
pece people are talking about. Change is uncomfortable for people.
That's the truth, you know. And you know you're always
going to have people that remember what a city looked
like fifteen twenty years ago that might have been a
little bit more grittier, a little bit less safe, and
they still like it because of the way it was.
But I think most people would tell you that Jersey
(33:18):
City's change has been beneficial. On the first three term
elected mayor there in seventy years, so somebody likes me,
and I think that the changes for the most part
have been helpful. Not to say that we don't have
an affordability crisis, but it's a regional issue. It's not
just a Jersey City issue.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I do think you make a good point, you know,
And this gets to my point about why rents have
in fact gone up now that it's gotten more dent
and there are all those great restaurants at the bottom
of the buildings right when you get off of the
path tren it's more deserrable.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
I'll pay more percent.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I'll pay more for it today than I would have
paid an equivalent dollars fifteen years ago when there was
a you know, probably tumbleweed or whatever it was. You know,
I know it wasn't a tumbleweed, And I think this good.
Are you an abundance Democrat?
Speaker 4 (33:59):
You know what?
Speaker 5 (33:59):
I didn't even know until six months ago what that
terminology was, to be honest with you, So, but do
you think that's like.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
A useful answer question? But do you think that's like
a useful flag?
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Could that be?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Like?
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Is that like I don't know the political I don't know.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
I mean, I don't think it's a useful political term, truthfully,
because I don't think a normal person would read ezracline
in the book like we would read it. But I
don't think by and large a independent voter, which is
what democrats need to move ultimately to be successful, is
going to understand when you say I'm an abundance Democrat.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
And to be fair, I don't know if anyone is
saying that or proposing that anyone should say that, But
I'm just curious about I think the resonance of this label.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
I think there is validity to the argument that we
put a lot of layers and restrictions in place to
get anything accomplished. And that's not necessarily only Democrats, it's
everybody in this country. And I do think that we
need to kind of move forward on stuff. I don't
know if the term I mean, it's kind of like
I guess the last couple of months, you hear it.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
More and more often. We'll see if it sticks around,
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Or people saying it these days. Stephen Fillip, mayor of
a Jersey City candidate for the Democratic Party's nominee for governor.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
Thank you so much for coming on for having me.
It was really great. Thank you both.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
That was great.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
It was a lot of fun. I will say Tracy
that you know, I always get so nervous talking to
politicians because I worry that there's gonna be so canned.
You know, we don't do a ton of those.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
They tend to be very on message, very on message.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Talking to Steven talked like just talking to like a
very normal person about issues. I mean, you know, I'm
sure people would disagree with him about his characterizations something.
It felt like a real conversation.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, I mean, he definitely had a lot of policies
that he could point to. I guess the big question
is still how replicable this is elsewhere? And for instance,
you know he talked about on the gentrification issue that
you're not displacing existing buildings, you're building run primarily empty
lots and things like that. There aren't many empty lots
(36:04):
in places like Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
No, in the primary are many empty lots left in
Jersey City? Yeah, and so part of the question. So
that's how you know, we were talking about like what
specific mechanisms, and I believe that they exist. But today
it's a very different city than it was fifteen or
twenty years ago. And so the degree to which Okay,
well this is just Manhattan spillover or maybe Brooklyn or
you know whatever spillover people who did work going to
(36:27):
live in Manhattan in the first place, but then the
easy pickings have been gone certainly strikes.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Me as the real starting points were different.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
You mentioned tumble weeds, Joe. Yeah, did you know that
tumble weeds come from Russia and there are an invasive
species in the US?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Really?
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yes, I did not know that. Speaking of housing, have
you ever seen the pictures of like houses being absolutely
like swamped by tumbleweeds?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
No, Russia in the eighteen seventies. They arrived in South
dakoted a likely inflat seed from Russia. These plants are
known also as Russian thistle. That's super interesting. Yeah, they're
cool looking. So I don't mind that they got here.
I mean, I guess it's not good. Houses are swamped
in it.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
No, it's cool. They're actually a big problem.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
It's a serious problem.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
One other thing though, that we only got into it
a little bit. It does seem like because of the
sort of disorganization of American government, you get a lot
of really silly things, like the New Jersey Transit owning
a bunch of land that it could be, you know,
worth hundreds of millions of dollars if you just put
a bunch of apartments on there, and people would presumably
(37:31):
kill to live in a nice high rise apartment a
two minute walk from a train station that would take
them right into New York City, and instead it's just parking.
And yet because of like the zoning, and it just
seems like, let's get it together, come on, let's get
it's just really annoying.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Well, there's a lot of stasis in policy.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Yeah, it seems so.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
I think we've learned that over and over again.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
You know, one last thing too, because it took me
a minute. I think it took both of us a
minute when Stephen was talking about, oh, housing being very
political and what he meant by that, yeah, was super interesting,
Like we've definitely not talked about the idea that, well,
one barrier to housing could be essential corruption, which is
a word he used, but you know, even like polite
forms of corruption.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
It's very interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
This has been another episode of the oud Loots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Stephen Phillip. He's at Stephen Phullip. Follow
our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash Ol Bennett
at Dashbot and Kilbrooks at Keil Brooks. From odd Lots content,
go to bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots. We have
a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you
can chat about all of these topics. Plenty of stuff
in there about housing twenty four to seven in our
(38:43):
discord Discord dot gg slash Oddlocks.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
when we talk about housing policy and the origins of tumbleweeds,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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