PALO ALTO – Fixing the nation’s housing shortage can no longer be left to local governments alone and Congress must offer more robust solutions to the problem, Sam Liccardo, the former San Jose Mayor running to represent California’s 16th district, said in an interview.
“There has been no significant federal housing legislation in probably three decades. This has been a policy backwater in Congress, and so first we need to make it a federal priority,” he said.
Among the solutions Liccardo will advocate for should he win in November, are tax credits to incentivize converting vacant offices to dwellings and new financing for homeowners who want to build accessory-dwelling units on their properties.
With high commercial real estate vacancies, Liccardo said conversion could be a key part of the housing solution. Hotel properties and older office buildings are especially ripe for residential conversion, he said.
By repurposing rather than demanding new construction “you’re not going to have a bunch of neighbors coming out with pitchforks because the buildings are already there,” Liccardo said.
Liccardo, who opposes a rent control proposition on the California ballot, lamented there is “virtually no multi-family construction happening in the Bay Area right now.”
Liccardo made his housing proposals in a wide-ranging interview with the Peninsula Press Oct. 17 in which he also advocated for AI regulation, gun laws and reproductive health protections that could potentially pass in a divided Congress.
Liccardo, who as mayor spearheaded some of the country’s most stringent gun laws, acknowledged that at the federal level, progress on curbing gun violence or protecting reproductive rights would have to be piecemeal.
California’s 16th district seat is open for the first time in three decades, making for a contentious race between Liccardo, 54, and his opponent Evan Low, 41, a California assembly member for the state’s 26th district. The seat has been held by Anna Eshoo, who announced her retirement last year. The district covers parts of San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties.
Liccardo was ahead by 10.8 percentage points, according to the most recent poll. The lead grew to 16.5 percent after undecided voters were forced to choose.
Liccardo, a California native, served as the mayor of San Jose from 2015 to 2022, focusing on issues such as homelessness, crime and the COVID-19 pandemic. Before his two terms as mayor, Liccardo worked as a federal prosecutor in multiple districts across California.
Piecemeal Gun Laws
Only incremental gun control measures have a chance of passing in Congress given Republican resistance, Liccardo said. These include background checks, ammunition regulation and a federal red flag law.
In swing states specifically, lawmakers and grassroots organizations such as Moms Demand Action have to work in concert to see “what we can get over the goal line,” he said.
“If we make it complex, then the other side is going to spin it in all kinds of ways,” he said. “Let’s start and make it piecemeal and do it bit by bit.”
“I don’t pretend to believe that’s something we can get accomplished in a very divided Congress,” he added. “We have to be pragmatic about the political landscape.”
Crime and Mental Health
Liccardo supports Proposition 36, which would create a new crime category of “treatment-mandated felonies.” Critics have accused the proposition of reigniting the war on drugs by reclassifying some drug and theft misdemeanors as felonies.
When asked what this could mean for increased incarceration in California, Liccardo said there needs to be accountability to break cycles of addiction and resulting crime.
He argued the proposition would deal overwhelmingly with cases that end in probation or a few days in jail if any sentence at all, and would offer some a choice of drug treatment instead of going to prison.
“The severity of punishment doesn’t deter crime,” Liccardo said. “What does deter crime is the certainty of punishment.”
AI Regulation
Liccardo has blamed Congress for failing to update data privacy laws and not holding AI companies accountable for their algorithm’s worst outcomes, including misinformation. Liccardo wants a federal data privacy law and wants to require watermarks on AI-generated images.
A federal policy is necessary, Liccardo said, to avoid “a host of different states, including California, jumping in with their own ideas.”
“If what we end up with is a thicket of 50 different state regulations for companies to have to navigate, we will be putting American innovation at a great disadvantage,” Liccardo said.
Reproductive rights
Liccardo stressed the importance of advocating for women’s access to reproductive healthcare following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson — which repealed the constitutional right to abortion.
Several red states are health care deserts that critically need telehealth provision of primary care, Liccardo said. Telehealth access will not solve everything, he said, but it will give women in red states access to mifepristone and reproductive healthcare if successful.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to actually get Republicans on a bill that will simply expand access without…triggering the far right into a reaction,” Liccardo said.
Liccardo called for a single federal statute to “preempt” any state regulations that prevent doctors from treating or prescribing across state lines. Liccardo wants to build off the latest Supreme Court case that protected access to an abortion pill mifepristone.
“We don’t call it reproductive health. We call it health access,” Liccardo said. “This is something we have to sell in a divided Congress.”
Evan Low Controversy
A group of House Democrats shared a public letter on Oct. 16 condemning Low for using state campaign funds to boost his federal election. This comes after Defend The Vote, a voting advocacy group, filed a complaint to the FEC to investigate Low’s campaign expenditures.
All Democrats signed on to the letter have endorsed Liccardo’s campaign. Lam Nguyen, Low’s deputy campaign manager, accused Liccardo’s team of planting this as a distraction.
“This is a desperate stunt,” Nguyen said in a statement to the Peninsula Press. “Every TV station’s lawyers have rejected these same claims. This is just last minute desperation from a candidate who broke every rule in the recount and has been called a liar by San Jose police and firefighters.”
Liccardo said his opponent is clearly engaged in an “illegal effort.”
“It’s three weeks before the election, everybody knows what’s going on right?” he said. “The FEC will weigh in, but unfortunately that’ll be after November 5th.”
The Peninsula Press is scheduled to interview Low Oct. 24.
This story was reported by: Bhabna Banerjee, Hannah Bensen, Sana Dadani, Michaela Herbst, Rebecca Jattan, Itzel Luna, Neha Mukherjee, Arundathi Nair, Chikodi Ohaya, Anastasia Sotiropoulos, Nina Subkhanberdina, Hina Suzuki, Sasha Tuddenham, Audrey Widodo, and Hannah Woodworth.
