This scorecard was researched and written by Jeffrey A. Popell, a volunteer leader with YIMBY Action.
On February 20, 2026, California YIMBY hosted their first-ever gubernatorial forum on housing, where the leading Democratic candidates got the chance to present to the public how they believe we're going to solve the housing crisis.
So, how did they do? Spoiler alert: while we were impressed by some more than others, we believe all the candidates have room to grow, and we look forward to learning more about them as their campaigns progress.
Please note that YIMBY Action is unaffiliated with California YIMBY. Grades and commentary reflect only the candidates' performance at the forum and do not constitute endorsement.
Secretary Xavier Becerra: C
While we appreciate what his instincts are saying on state-city relations, from what we've seen, we aren't sure how sharp they are on housing.
What we liked
When asked how he would help the most vulnerable Californians, Secretary Becerra correctly pointed out that "infill development offers us one of the best opportunities to actually get housing out quickly", and said he would "really push, make a boost for trying to do infill housing development as quickly as we can".
However, where he really shined was in his surgically precise comments on state-city relations. When asked whether the shortage is primarily the result of local and state regulatory barriers to building, Becerra immediately called out the fact that housing policy is "all driven by localities", and that we need "a stronger state footprint" on the issue "so that no one jurisdiction can try to stop development where we need it".
He went further when asked whether the state should intervene when cities fail: "Yes, cities and counties are subdivisions of the State of California. They operate as part of the state. They are not independent of the state. They are not sovereign." Too often, we have seen municipalities act as if California were some loose confederation of city-states, resisting the implementation of vital state policy at every turn, and it was beyond refreshing to hear someone state so plainly that that's just not how this nation-state works.
What we didn't like
While we're glad to see that Secretary Becerra has a laser-sharp understanding of how to hold our cities and counties accountable, it's less clear that he has as solid an understanding of what to hold them accountable for.
When asked what measurable outcomes he would consider successful in four years, he talked about getting projects shovel-ready, reducing the cost of building, and rent stabilization. While two of these are clearly worthwhile and meaningful goals, the notable absence of zoning regulations, which directly prohibit necessary construction, was telling. (It should be noted that the evidence and tradeoffs associated with rent stabilization and/or control are a subject of debate, including within the YIMBY movement.)
Similarly, Becerra seems to assume cities are acting in better faith than we believe to be the case. For example, when asked why the cost of multifamily construction in California is twice that of Texas and 50% higher than Colorado, the Secretary implied that municipalities use unconscionably high impact fees "to recoup some of the resources they would have had to do the infrastructure that they need". We don't believe this to be the case. We believe municipalities use these fees to prevent development, and that this misidentification constitutes a serious error.
Finally, when asked if he held cities accountable as Attorney General, and whether he would do anything differently, he took the opportunity to brag about using CEQA, one of the most potent and abused tools of the anti-housing movement, to block a housing development in San Diego. We don't bring this up to say that that project should have gone through. Indeed, from his description, it sounds like a dangerous project that he was right to stop. But the fact of the matter is, when asked at a YIMBY forum whether he did enough to get more housing built, Secretary Becerra took the opportunity to spend some half his time talking about a project that he blocked.
What we want to see
Solving the housing crisis requires not just enforcement, but aggressive goals to enforce. If Secretary Becerra wants our endorsement, we need to know what goals he has, because we haven't heard them yet.
Mayor Matt Mahan: B
Mayor Mahan said a lot of the right things, and identified real problems California faces in getting more housing built. But the absence of zoning reform from the platform he presented at the forum was a glaring, and very concerning, omission.
What we liked
Throughout the forum, Mayor Mahan was able to point to concrete policy problems and the solutions to them, with few red flags. He started out of the gate by greeting us as "fellow YIMBYs", and by directly saying in his opening statement that "our housing shortage is a man-made crisis that is stealing our collective future".
He talked about making the approval of infill housing ministerial, eliminating parking minimums, and reducing unfunded mandates which represent a tax on new development. He proposed creating a common application for Affordable housing funding to solve the uncoordinated mess that we have today. He discussed single-stair, elevator, and condo defect reform, and capping impact fees, which can add 20% to the cost of a project.
He committed to a "relentless focus on outcomes" and "sacrificing a lot of sacred cows". When asked why multifamily construction in California was so much more expensive than in Texas or Colorado, he correctly called out the "thousands and thousands of layers of rules and requirements that aren't making things safer[, but rather] making housing more expensive." Most bravely, the mayor vowed to have "tough conversations" with the environmental lobby to get California the CEQA reforms we badly need.
What we didn't like
Instead of many small red flags, we saw only one big one. Despite Mayor Mahan's clear fluency with a wide variety of concrete policy issues, conspicuously absent throughout the forum was any serious engagement with zoning, the fundamental cause of the housing crisis. Despite extensive talk of reforming building codes, reducing counterproductive taxes on progress, adding teeth to RHNA, and improving the funding stack for BMR projects, the candidate made almost no mention of the most powerful tool we have to reduce the cost of housing: upzoning.
When asked what measurable outcomes he would consider to represent success, while the mayor correctly named several, he took the opportunity to highlight what he can't do as Governor. It's true that there is no button on the Governor's desk to magically lower the price of housing or stop displacement. But the Legislature unquestionably has the power to allow housing to be built, and the Governor has both the bully pulpit and the veto pen.
What we want to see
Mayor Mahan didn't endorse SB 79, and stopped shy of calling out zoning as the problem almost every time. How much upzoning does he believe California needs? What role does the mayor believe state-level mandates on cities have in achieving that upzoning? In cases where he might not be entirely in favor of a bill which would require cities to build more, would he veto the bill, or simply fail to advocate for it as vigorously as we might like? We are excited to learn more about the candidate, as the race continues into June.
Representative Katie Porter: B+
Representative Porter had several of the best answers of the forum, and was the only candidate to clearly and directly identify the primary cause of the crisis. However, we were concerned that her performance tended to be light on specifics, and that what specifics there were, weren't great.
What we liked
In response to several other candidates suggesting that prohibitive impact fees were being used in good faith to recoup costs, Porter made one of the strongest and most direct statements of the whole forum: "A lot of cities are not building because they just don't want to. Trust me, Newport Beach has the money to build. They're not under fiscal constraints, they're NIMBYs. Let's just call it what it is." Porter is absolutely, 100% correct here, and it was refreshing to hear someone say it so bluntly.
She also correctly, and bravely, called out labor for largely failing to support bills like SB 79, which she (and we) endorsed, despite their forming a core part of the traditional coalition of her party. She showed some comfort with the science underlying our movement: when asked what measurable outcomes she would consider as constituting success, she was the only candidate to name the percentage of income spent on housing, where most other candidates gave vaguer answers like "the price of housing".
The Representative's shining moment, in the eyes of many YIMBYs, was in response to the question of why it was so much more expensive to build in California than Texas or Colorado. In her own words, "I was worried that this was a trick question, because I actually read the study." While we hesitate to knock the other candidates too much for not being familiar with any given paper, it's hard not to be impressed by a candidate who has literally done her homework.
What we didn't like
While the Representative had several great moments, we found the rest to be wanting. In her opening statement, she calls out "big banks", and talks about "innovating" in construction, finance, and design, a sentiment reminiscent of those who say that we don't need to upzone, because we have this one neat trick to bring down costs—whether that be ADUs, modular or pre-fab housing, or whatever else. When asked if the shortage is primarily the result of local and state regulatory barriers to building, the Representative talked about excessive fees, financing, and again innovation, instead of zoning, which is the most powerful lever localities use to block housing.
Finally, when asked what policies she would prioritize to help the most vulnerable Californians, she took the opportunity to discuss lowering the down payment rate and creating longer-term leases. While both might be good ideas, they're both demand-side interventions to a supply-side problem. The crisis is not one of financial frictions preventing consumers from accessing a plentiful stock of housing, but in the fact that we have made housing artificially scarce. A solution not centered around that fact is no solution at all.
It is perhaps telling that in her closing statement, Representative Porter said she was "ready to help be a partner" in the YIMBY movement—not a member, but a partner. While we're glad that she has supported vital bills like SB 79 in the past, it remains to be seen whether building more housing will form the core of her agenda as Governor, or whether she intends to focus primarily on the margins.
What we want to see
Beyond what bills have already been passed into law, how does the Representative believe we should be building more housing? What role does building market-rate housing have to play in her plans for California? Where does zoning rank, relative to financing and her other priorities? We look forward to learning more, as the campaign goes on.
Tom Steyer: C+
Tom Steyer has supported good bills and staked out controversial positions that excited many of us YIMBYs in attendance at the forum. But unfortunately, it's not clear that his focus is in the right place, or that he wouldn't do harm to housing affordability in his attempt to improve the situation.
What we liked
The candidate came out of the gate strong, touting his historical support for important bills this past year like SB 79 and AB 609. He said, absolutely correctly, that "housing is at the center of affordability", and that the solution will not be in the form of any single "silver bullet", but rather "silver buckshot".
He correctly pointed out that we're "using regulation to stop all building" and that building dense around transit is "by far the strongest environmental thing you can do". He called out his friends and allies in the environmental movement for having been on the wrong side of many important housing fights, and took the bold stance of supporting split roll, where any reform of Proposition 13 has historically been considered the third rail of California politics.
What we didn't like
Despite his admission that "regulation probably is the biggest part of the problem", Steyer spent most of his time talking about reform of Proposition 13 and about bringing construction costs down "by 36%", without ever clarifying where that headline figure came from. Nearly every other question, the candidate pivoted to talk about one of the two talking points.
While correct in saying there exists no silver bullet to solving the housing crisis, it's not clear that he actually believes it. Rather than believing that exorbitant impact fees are being used as yet another tool in NIMBY municipalities' arsenal to block housing, Steyer seemed to agree with other candidates that it was primarily an issue of revenue—meaning that his pet project of split roll would seem to magically solve NIMBYism.
Similarly, Steyer appears to believe that the savings brought on by modularization and unspecified other "technology" would be enough to expand unfunded Inclusionary Zoning policies which many argue represent a tax (and therefore a disincentive) on development, and to implement rent control, which even many advocates acknowledge creates a nonzero disincentive effect on supply.
Despite his historical support for upzoning bills like SB 79, it's not clear what role, if any, further upzoning plays in his vision for California's housing market, or whether Steyer has simply landed on the right side of several important bills.
What we want to see
Steyer's performance at the forum gave us a clear image of someone who wants split roll and believes that unspecified technology could be a powerful force in reducing the cost of housing. First, we'd like the candidate to show his work on that claim. But more importantly, we need to know how precisely he believes he would expand the housing supply and end the shortage, and how that would translate into lower prices for Californians. Unfortunately, we’ve seen almost none.
Representative Eric Swalwell: B-
Representative Swalwell's history suggests strong instincts on housing, which could enable him to be a very effective Governor. However, we didn't get the chance to see them on display at the forum.
What we liked
Representative Swalwell explicitly said, absolutely correctly, that "we have a shortage of apartment housing", while touting his record in Dublin in "building [both market-rate and Affordable housing] like crazy". We were excited to hear that his answer for how he would help the most vulnerable Californians was to "surge supply [to] bring down the rents"—the clearest identification we heard at the forum of the root cause of the crisis.
We also found infectious his enthusiasm for "shot clocks" at every step of the process when building, saying that "if it takes more than a few years to get a housing application approved, someone from the governor's office should come and help you hang the drywall".
And when asked whether the state should step in when cities fail to meet their housing obligations, we were glad to hear the Representative express support for expanding ministerial approval and supporting the Attorney General in enforcing RHNA.
What we didn't like
While we saw flashes of insight, we were disappointed to see little detail in his plans, dodges to several questions, and an excessive focus on demand-side interventions to what the Representative had correctly identified as a supply-side problem.
Despite championing a need for speed and the idea of building hard deadlines into the development process in nearly every other answer, the most concrete the Representative ever got was to suggest "a 270-day requirement for all litigation surrounding housing" and "90 days for every agency to make a yes or no decision on housing". It remains unclear how far down to the local level these "shot clocks" would extend, what teeth they would have, and the degree to which they're a real policy proposal, as opposed to simply the candidate's designated talking point on housing.
At many points, it was hard to get a straight answer. When asked whether the shortage is primarily the result of local and state barriers to building, the Representative pivoted immediately to talk about his "shot clocks". When asked what political risk he was willing to take to solve the housing crisis, he decided to become the only candidate to mention President Trump, who he described as having "declared war on California", suggesting that such position represents any political risk in the nation-state which just passed Prop 50 with nearly two-thirds' support.
Finally, many of the more concrete policies the Representative advocated for and bragged about reflected the same demand-side misidentification as many other candidates. When asked about what he's done in Congress, he discussed down payment assistance and legislation to make student loan debt interest-free. When asked how he would help the most vulnerable Californians, Rep. Swalwell repeated the tired old trope that "owning a home is the greatest source of wealth for most Americans". While historically true, to project it forward is to assume a continuation of the same economic environment we've seen these past several decades—where increasing demand and restricted supply have produced secular increases in the price of housing, only to the benefit of those already bought in. This sort of thinking is dangerous, and a major contributor to the policies that created the housing crisis.
What we want to see
We hope to hear more concrete policy proposals from Representative Swalwell. Without them, there is no way to make an educated vote—only a guess.
Superintendent Tony Thurmond: F
Tony Thurmond's performance betrayed a fundamental lack of understanding of the forces which govern the housing market and the science around them. To elect him would be a step backward for California.
What we liked
Thurmond's headline plan is to build two million units of housing by 2030, and he bragged about increasing funding for Affordable housing while in the Legislature. Unfortunately, that's about as good as it got.
What we didn't like
Tony Thurmond does not understand why the price of housing is high and is unwilling to take the steps necessary to fix it.
Years of evidence have shown us that the price of housing is high because too little housing is legal to construct in too many places. When demand increases and supply isn't allowed to meet it, you get bidding wars that raise prices, causing displacement, housing insecurity, hours-long commutes, and all the other nasty consequences California has suffered for too long. In spite of this, Tony Thurmond seems to view market-rate housing not as the long-term solution to the crisis, but rather as an afterthought, and little more than a piggy bank for Affordable projects.
Secondly, while we're always working to help our cities and counties get their acts together, the fact of the matter is, if they were willing to build, we wouldn't need laws like SB 79, which we were proud to support. However, Thurmond explicitly said multiple times that the state shouldn't be making any demands of localities. Unfortunately, history has shown that when the state fails to step in, cities fail to build. That's how we got here, and Thurmond would have us continue down the same path.
Most damningly, Thurmond doesn't even believe that we can solve the housing crisis. When asked what measurable outcomes after four years he would consider a success, the Superintendent explicitly said that he "[doesn't] see housing prices going down". We disagree—and we're going to make it happen, with or without him.
What we want to see
Unfortunately, we don't believe that there is anything at this point which would change our opinion of Tony Thurmond, short of a complete 180. We wish him the best.
Controller Betty Yee: D
Controller Yee doesn't seem likely to cause active harm to housing affordability, but neither does she seem likely to meaningfully improve it. Pervasive throughout every answer was a relentless focus on financing—perhaps a desirable trait for a Controller, but not for a Governor, and not in this housing market.
What we liked
We found the Controller's mention in her opening statement of "holding our local jurisdictions accountable" promising, and she was absolutely correct to point out the harms of a fragmented financing ecosystem to building Affordable housing. And when asked how Texas and Colorado manage to build multifamily housing at half and two-thirds the cost of California, respectively, the candidate was completely right to point out the rampant delays we see projects experience between initial application and breaking ground—that time is money.
What we didn't like
However, the former Controller seemed consistently unable to conceive of the housing crisis as anything other than an issue of financing. When asked if the shortage is primarily the result of regulatory barriers, Yee responded that "equally important is our funding and financing". When asked what qualities she would prioritize in staffing HCD, she explicitly mentioned an "understanding of housing finance" as one of three in her response.
Financing is undoubtedly vitally important to the housing market, both to market-rate and Affordable development. But at the end of the day, the crisis California faces today is not one of financial frictions making it impossible to build the housing that would otherwise be allowed. It's not about attracting business, or about spending money in cleverer ways. Rather, our housing crisis is the natural consequence of our local governments outright prohibiting the construction of housing that the market has been begging to build. Until she can demonstrate an understanding of that fact, we don't believe that Controller Yee is up to the task.
What we want to see
While we believe her performance at the forum was strongly indicative of how the Controller would—or more accurately, wouldn't—govern, we would love to be proven wrong. While she failed to say much good, she didn’t clearly rule good policy out, and we're hopeful that she will reveal more as her campaign continues.