[laughing] [applause] >> thank you so much for being here. this was squeezing the middle. sarah smarsh and alissa quart. please let your books so the cameras can get them. these books will change the lives, and if you have your book, they will sign it for you and spend a few minutes with you. get a selfie. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> ready to go? good afternoon. good afternoon. we're going to go ahead and get

started. thank you for coming out to this panel. it's a topic that is so timely for us here in austin with all that we deal with every day, both as we see in the past week with our infrastructure in the city and the stress that the city is under. and we're just a little bit in the wake of the bay area when it comes to so many of these issues, so we are thrilled today to have with us randy shaw and cary mcclelland to visit with us about their books from the bay. randy is an author, attorney, activist who lives in berkeley, california. he is executive director of the tenderloin housing clinic, a nonprofit in san francisco that he cofounded in 1980. randy is also cofounded and is on the board of directors of uptown tenderloin. he started and is editor of

beyond in saprocit and is written five latest books and activism that include the activist handbook, winning social change in a 21st century. beyond the fields, cesar chavez, usw and the struggle for justice in the 21st century, and the tenderloin resistance in the heart of san francisco. randy will speak first but i will introduce cary because we will go right to cary after randy speaks. cary is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, lawyer and human rights advocate whose work has taken him around the world to give voice to stories of people persisting in turbulent times. he has trained former child star jewels to be journals in the congo, cajun conflict transformation programs, worked alongside opposition activists in zimbabwe, collaborate on advocacy campaigns in egypt,

syria and myanmar. his award-winning film without shepherds document the lives of six people fighting against extremism in pakistan including now prime minister con. in his innovative new media work with witness and google was nominated for an f award. a practicing attorney, he represents journalists anarchists in defense of the first amendment and his pro bono work focuses on immigration policy. he is ethically by to speak on topics of media, technology, democracy, the rule of law and storytelling. he holds a ba from harvard, a masters from columbia and a j. d. from stanford. we will first hear from randy talking about his new book, generation priced out. then we'll hear from cary. we have a look at of the conversation and then q&a from the audience. >> thank you faq to the texas book festival because these events are to support bring a doing together and have so much

fun and think the bookpeople for body the books. hopefully he people like what you buy our books. my book generation priced out has this in genesis with the ghost ship fire of 2016. do people remember the ghost ship fire of december 2016? baby hands? some do. my day job at the two housing, san francisco's leading provider of housing for homeless. we house over 2000 people. my day job is with a very poor. but after the ghost ship fire occurred in a warehouse in oakland that because off housing crisis get all these artists living at the sleep really didn't meet fire codes or safety codes. they use to get parties at the ghost ship and, unfortunately, on the night of december 22016 while the music was playing a fire f broke out. there were no exits and 36 young

people died in the fire, lawyers, orders, everyone here and when that happened, it said to me how is it that oakland, remember san francisco used to be the expensive city and the artist of the bohemians all moved to oakland without even oakland priced out the working and middle class it as a starting to into this i started realizing there's something wrong with a lot of our progressive cities. we're almost all of them have price out the working and middle class. and so the cities talk about inclusion and diversity but their land-use policies promote exclusion and elitism. and so that led me to start looking at other cities because we all know that bay area and new york city are very expensive. austin ten years ago no one would imagine i be talking about austin in the context of the middle class being priced out.

but austin, like seattle and other cities since 2012, you're all from austin, i don't have to tell you this, the economics of housing have radically changed, radically changed. what i'm here today to tell you, what i say in my book, "generation priced out", we see the moving boxes in the background, austin is at a crossroads. you can follow the lead that saprocit who did when the first dot com boom happened in the '90s and have all the hype a tech workers and not building housing for them and let them just cannibalize existing housing stock, or you can be proactive and built a lot more housing,g, do more density and create the housing so that you don't have the oracle employees pricing out the working and middle class. that's one book is about and s. res. go through in every city of how, what is exactly happened.

i find in city after city can i go over 12 cities, denver and new york city and minneapolis and boulder in san diego and los angeles, san francisco. the story is often the same, and begin a look at the audience and i'm a boomer myself as i have to confess, the boomer homeowners who bought when thingss are chep often are preventing new housing from being built in their neighborhoods, thereby, pricing at millennials. also making climate change worth because c when we say great come we don't want any apartment still in her neighborhood, building up the suburbs, those folks driving greater greenhouse gas emissions and that's not sustainable. so beingsa and of our middles is more than driving a priest or recycling. young have to let housing occurn your neighborhood. that's what i talk about in my book. just to give you a flavor because her theme is about tech, have people seeing the oracle facility in riverfront,

lakefront? dode you know what used to be there, were 244 low income family housing units, heavily latino families to we always say in austin we want to keep diversity. wen had diversity, right near te lake and they could walk down, a great thing to have barbecues. one day the landlord said you are all being evicted. didn't't say why. .. family units, where those families go? i talked about in the book we need to create opportunities for them tech is an asset there

is no question but you have to provide the housing for that population. that's kind of the big picture theme and we will go on with further discussion.[applause] thank you to the texas book festival and thank you for such a lovely crowd here today. i am here to introduce "silicone valley clothes san francisco in the long shadow of the valley". it's become something of a decided democrat divided city in the wake of the great recession. creating a rash of addictions, homelessness, rising property crime rates and displacement to other areas of the bay. he had jobs, opportunity, everything's as a result of tech for people new to the city and not people who had built what is an icon of social justice and activism in the

bay. my job myself having arrived somewhat of a newcomer in about 2011 was to capture and complicate the divided city and this model list the tech and non-tech communities from one another so i interviewed over 150 people they lasted typically somewhere between four hours and eight hours each. and broke them down into transcripts and assembled what i think are the most impactful third for you so you can see a community have a conversation with itself that isn't pretty easy to have we all live in ou own corners of our own communities it's often very challenging for us to understand what's happening down the block let alone across the city from us. the book is an opportunity for us to crack that open.i think san francisco is a useful metaphor or allegory for what's happening in the rest of the

u.s. i'm originally from new york and we've seen in new york the changes occur over 30 or 40 years. and overseeing the private sector is in an american challenge to deal with. i think san francisco lets us look at a compressed period of 5 to 10 years for the change really radical and you can see everyone in the book identifying a niproblem. he yearning for solutions and yearning for collective intentional way of managing the change that's inevitable right now. i thought i'd read a section of the book quickly just to give you a flavor of one of the voices in it this is leon he's an uber driver. this is my introduction. he sits by the window of the cafc on oak street looking down the street at an old strip club now flanked by shops and restaurants. barbers all intended for the young professional. born and raised in the democratic republic of congo he moved here looking for opportunities and a better life. he got a degree in networking

systems and dreamed he would be one of the young and lucky strolling down the street and sunglasses and athletic wear. i didn't speak english at all the first time i went to starbucks i had my dictionary with me, french english and i ordered a coffee. i was hoping the person would just say yes and give me the coffee and i would pay and leave but somehow she asked me do you need room for cream? based on the dictionary room is a space you find an apartment or house so i learned to say no. when i used to go to a burger place and the person would ask how do you like your meat cooked and i said the way you like it sometimes you find

somebody who likes it rare and it's very bad or well done but i deal with that those are vital and states. i came here 2008 the economy was going very bad so i took the path a lot of immigrants take work hard, work hard, work hard, i sold sunglasses. i i was a waiter. there's nothing easy. many people went to works for me and that they kept going so i kept going. it reminds me of the proverb from thomas freeman that the world is flat every ãbevery morning in africa i did giselle wakes up and knows it has to out run the fastest line. it doesn't matter if you're a lion or giselle when the sun comes up you better start running. a friend of mine told me about uber so i knew the city because from time to time i used to work a limo service for extra money so i said why not. i was one of the earliest uber drivers in the world. there was only one service at the time, black town car. it's town cars who made wood what it was now. we knew customer service. we knew how to ndbuild business long-term. it exploded all of a sudden everybody knew uber, everybody wanted to use uber, it's like google and google it it's like i'm going to uber home.uber gave media opportunity ãbi got my own car, i got my own

commercial registration, my own licenses. i have my own company now. two cars, three drivers. san francisco was a take it needs to be 10,000 people eating from that cake and now there's 100,000 aging from the same piece of cake. how do you like uber matt? we get that question a lot now. i don't know why we are not talking what cappuccino do you like a cappuccino. somebody steps into your office, how do you like it here? not hundred percent i love it it's beautiful it's amazing that should be the answer. drivers, we talk about this some people there first question is where are you from. one guy goes from i'm from here. and the lady said you have an said because i drink a lot of coffee. i told somebody i was out of milk that's why i moved here. the ride is 10 minutes and they want answers beyond their imagination. i they want me to tell my life story.it's arrogance more than ignorance. people unowadays see uber drivers as an object.

they think they can use you for a certain specific period of time and do whatever they want with you. it's not sharing cars at sharing people. one day maybe human beings will be obsolete and self driving cars ãbwho is going to get insurance when no one is driving? the people who are so lazy they need a car to pick them up at a push of a button ever all these people will find themselves without jobs too. that's how it goes now. people don't value human beings, making money is what matters. i get so many complaints about homeless people that never used to have it but now they don't fit in people's image of the city. try doing something about it. what about giving some time to read about why those people are there. some people have issues.some people were better than us they didn't have the luck. there's a very thin line between people have a good lifestyle and people on the street, sometimes a matter of a fraction of a second. this client got in the car and i could tell from his accent

he's from india or pakistan, don't get me wrong it's not racist it's part of the story. he goes, do you like working for uber and i said it's a trap i'm dealing with it and doing it. he said where are you from. i sent him from africa a country called congo. i said where you from and he said i'm from here. five minutes ago he told me he moved here six months ago. he asks do you make money doing this. he asked very busy tonight. i'm silent. i said it saturday night it's usually busy. he said are you going to make good money? i said what is good money for you? i said what you do he said i make i am in finance. ãbsome people here are making $10 billion, why shouldn't i be making $10 billion?he said how do they make $10 billion? i told him picasso you submit paint and make $15 million in 10 minutes. what separates me and you and

him. the guy got frustrated and asked if you can please just drop me off over here. i've seen the story already a society that doesn't value beings. people don't want to admit it. we are not first in the world anymore. the michael jackson 80s is over, maybe have the best army of the best economy but for how long? what's the rating of our schools when it comes to math and physics when it comes to other countries? what about the employment rate? how many people have access to healthcare? i am self-sufficient i provide my own energy but every time i meet with somebody who is 21 or 22 years old and telling me he's doing uber x full-time i feel the obligation to tell him to go somewhere else and go somewhere that will care for you. somewhere that will give you shelter, justice system, medical care, these are the differences between animals and human beings i did get these where i grew up. i came here to find them and i still have them.

united states of america it's not a country it's a corporation, it's a platform to make money it's an act. in that platform you have the option of succeeding or failing and in both cases you are responsible. you better start running. and i'm still running. thank you. [applause] cary are going to come back to you for questions. randy, could you speak to the ã ãyear book has a great chapter on austin with 20 different things happening around the city from what is going well to where things are not measuring up. could you speak a little bit for some pros and cons and what you feel like we are doing in austin on the gentrification. >> i think the thing about austin is people we want to keep austin weird. everyone wants to o keep austin weird and we like the image but there's things going on that are like what i call the dark side of austin that really

doesn't get enough attention because were so busy trying to keep austin looking weird. to me being from san francisco and working with tenants my whole career it was weird that someone could go in and suddenly in the six months notice demolished 240,000. when we have the mayor and almost the entire city government saying austin needs to do a better job about segregation. often it needs to do a better job about diversity. austin needs to do better about inclusion but then actual policies are matching the rhetoric and that's what we all need to work on is if you really, there are some places like palo alto in northern california where stanford is they don't pretend to care about inclusion. they don't want to be weird. they want to be a white elite community and they're doing a great job. but austin knights have a different mentality. austin knights say they want diversity and want affordability mebut you have to then do the policies to create it. especially when you guys are doing a phenomenal job of checking tech workers who get

paid very well if you don't add to your housing supply then the tech workers are going to go where working and middle-class people used to live and those units become theirs. where did the working and middle class go? where do families go that austin wants to keep the diversity want to keep. they have to go further out in long commutes which are very unproductive and it's also not creating the austin community because mewhat you really want do is have inclusion want to have better transit. you want to have the infill housing, more livable neighborhoods. for all people. that's why people say it's housing for all as opposed to becoming the greatest enclave. i think austin is really at a crossroads, which way is it going to be? is it going to be we are going to worry about the people who have the money to afford what they can afford or are we really going to care about our latino population or african-american population being todisplaced. we want to be diverse. we don't want to be like palo

alto, like what boulder is becoming. people in boulder say they want to be like palo alto. i think austin needs to be true to what you guys think of austin and that requires building more housing. >> we've been through a pretty challenging cycle here in austin in the last two years on a word that's very controversial.you really did a great job of saying what a horrible name, code next. what is it mean and i love how you treated that in your book but we get so focused on perhaps we've got to move the goalpost and get the new law but your book also talks about the tools we have on the books today in austin when it comes to effective code enforcement for safe housing and how we aren't even putting the resources behind our safe housing so would you speak to that? >> austin has a city manager form of government in your city manager doesn't seem to prioritize housing code enforcement. if the laws are on the books tenants are supposed to have

heat, hot water, you guys know the drill. tenants are allowed to live in conditions in austin that would never be tolerated in san francisco. we have the same housing code as you do. the difference is you don't have enforcement. it's not a priority. that's one very easy way it's getting a little better because of pressure but that's one very easy way to make tenants feel like they can live in austin because if you're living in really bad conditions and paying a high rent or if the only place people can afford or the really bad conditions that doesn't really work for kids families growing up with racks and mold and all these terrible things they talk about in my book. also you can take like minneapolis and portland and seattle they just try to get four plex built in single-family neighborhoods. there's nothing evil about it for plex. tenants aren't evil people but increase in supply and decreases affordability and then needs to be more flexibility and you have a lot of land in austin. you can build without increasing too much density but

there seems to be this feeling like it's all going to work out. because it has always worked out for austin. most of your lives it has worked out. i'm trying to tell you you probably know it's now a different world since 2012. the last five years have i think irrevocably changed austin's housing market and it's not going back to this daisy could be a slacker and get great housing. those days are gone. i hope you're not offended by it. thank you. [applause] speaking of slackers, you have a very diverse set of folks you interviewed for your book. media tycoons in the beta tattoo parlor owners. how did you find your subjects?

>> had been a documentary filmmaker and d journalist for long time so just pound the pavement and reach out to people. you find them. ãbi met him because i was in his cab and he was a good talker. it turns out he was the head of the taxi commission. he was the one who had written a law that transformed san francisco's cab fleets to entirely hybrid admit that the city was given ãbhe is now somebody who lives in dolores park watching uber basically undo the work that he did because now you have 10,000 more cars arriving in san francisco very few of which need meet any hybrid standard.

all of which have increased the emissions in the city. there's ways in which san francisco is once a place of tremendous innovation in the public sector is now the public sector is finding it very hard to keep up with all the innovation and change happening in the private sector.the degree to which our topic is tech today. these are universal problems these problems are amplified by the degree to which technology is entering regulated spaces sort of completely transforming the contract around what a dignified day at work is. the benefits you get in that. ãbthere is a story in san francisco of the one school that lost one classroom that

lost 13 teachers in one year due to displacement in red text. there are these ways in which all these problems are interconnected and the book i think helps us map the degree to which we are all deeply related to each other as much as our lives may feel file load and unique in our own experience, we are radiating and flashing back effects that we don't realize and i think it helps to see that. >> gary mentioned teachers and i talk in the book about my whole theme of my book is how teachers and hotel workers and firefighters and nurses can afford to live in the cities they work in which is crazy but to show you how some people are against any housing in san jose they are building housing for teachers so they can afford your kids teacher can stay after school without having an commute. and a half everyone thinks teacher housing is mom and apple pie. help who could be about against teachers in equal housing. him ãirbthat's the palo alto

world of exclusion that you don't want austin to be but teachers need housing and they can afford to be living in any of the cities i write about. is there a tech solution in their in any of this? or what are you seeing each of you in the bay? where are you seeing engagement in the tech community on these challenges?t' >>. >> i think it's important to recognize tech is not a model in the story there's 10 to 15 people deep within the industry each of whom are illiterate yearning to be useful to the problem. many people consider themselves working in their own day. they wake up in the morning they have to take themselves an hour or hour and and a half bus down to the campus and they work late hours and come back.

finding their own time with their own high rent and own challenges. finding time for volunteerism. all the things that are necessary to turn the community around. equally i think there are major leaders in dc and investor classes who people who think they are trying to lead a certain spirit of volunteerism but it's not enough. i ethink the challenge often from the private sector is that it looks at social impact innovations, looks at philanthropy, looks at volunteerism, treats social justice back in happen ãbthe challenge that the book is reflecting is that those aren't working in the current economy right now.

they are not sufficient and they are not enough to turn things around but the goodwill is there within the tech community. particularly the younger generation sthat wants to buil this in the past cultures that radiate outward and do good. the challenge is figuring out how to build a center of gravity and frankly i don't see another place for it other than the public sector where we can develop a consensus solutions and coordinated actionand critical mass to be able to drive the kind of solutions that really need to radiate across sectors from housing to the schools, to education , to criminal justice. we have a moment there's a ton of wealth coming to cities like austin, san francisco, new york, la, seattle, the wealth is being captured at the one percent currently added not traveling down to either public offers or the working class. what does that mean when we hit the next cycle? and the wealth isn't there anymore? what does it mean in two years, three years, four years or sooner when the opportunity drives up to be able to create air resources we can invest properly together in a way of

life. there is a national project in washington right now that is very divisive and i would argue is outright cruel. in contrast to that we are having a very difficult time in our cities arguing for a way of life that is incidentally just as cruel or accidentally just as cruel or structurally just as cruel. we really need to find this moment in the next several years to really turn that around and figure out ways of coming ttogether. there are people in the book arguing for solutions in that respect and i hope they are the beginning of a conversation around capitalizing net opportunity. >> do we have any tech workers in the audience? i want to tell you guys my book is the most protech book you will ever find and writes about gentrification because the standard book in the analysis you find frequently in san francisco is the blame tech workers that blame the young people paying the skyrocketing

rents to the skyrocketing rents. instead of blaming city policy for not building the housing so there wouldn't be skyrocketing rents.that's what i argue in my book and i laid out because the people who are fighting to get more housing in san francisco are tech workers. they themselves come out of ãb come to their jobs owing $100,000 in student debt and paying $3500 a month for a one bedroom in san francisco, $3000 ã$3500 for a one-bedroom. these folks feel like, and making all this money 80 grand out of college working at facebook but it's going into my student debt and the rent and i don't have anything. i don't have a future in this city and the sweet build more housing and have more affordability.the tech workers are part of the solution. tech companies don't build housing. silicon valley allowed all these jobs to be created both in the 90s and it sits, the cupertino city council won't require apple to build housing so apple adds 10,000 jobs to

cupertino and where are those people going to live? san francisco, there you live in daly city a small town next door it's not hip place. tech workers are moving in becoming part of the solution and temper the scope it should be blamed as they often are. i discuss in the book how documentary there is no blaming of tech workers is so unfair instead of blaming the policies that don't build the housing and pitch tech workers against everyone else for scarce land because we could do a lot more in every city there is the same dynamic where tenants are blamed.the ones paying the skyrocketing rent. they're not landlords they are tenants. they are paying these huge rents you read about and they are mad as hell. that's what i talk about. and with the tech workers and we are seeing in san francisco we elected in june the woman who called wherself ãbshe calls herself the first year and be mirrored, yes in my backyard. because people are starting to realize if we don't build housing it puts all the tenants against each other and

everybody loses. [applause] >> i'm so glad you mentioned yes in my backyard, that's the first place i ever saw that was in san francisco. it must've been in connection with her campaign. it really runs construct to something another sacred towel i put into the room that's fundamentals of the organization of government in this city which is neighborhood associations which is something i know that you speak to in your work and trying to reconcile yes in my backyard with the neighborhood association. >> let me just mention that all these ntbooks come out about gentrification and they never

associate neighborhoods they never blame neighborhood associations it's always evil developers. it's so easy. easy developers. that eliminates any personal responsibility for the homeowner to not let anything get built in their neighborhood. it's the developer who's evil. the reality is the great investment in the place like the bay area is homes go up. when they are not rising we have prop 13 owners doing great and hethey make money by restricting supply.i think austin in los angeles i read about this in every city. austin and los angeles have the two most powerful upneighborhoo groups in the united states. if the neighborhood group doesn't want something to happen, it doesn't happen. but that also means in many might be in this groups is people who have an economic interest in the building housing are being allowed to veto housing. that's not good policymaking. it has to change. i think you see in seattle where they defunded neighborhood groups people of color aren't in the neighborhood groups. you have rall these diverse cities where the policy is being made by a small number of homeowners. and in la they are wealthy ne homeowners. on the hillside you guys are in

law apartments, they were pretty much in favor of mom and apple pie. these hillside belair and sunset and upscale all these places in the palisades, the hillside homeowner groups are trying to stop the whole city from having in law apartments. they don't want them. they don't want any tenants living in their neighborhood. that's wrong. [applause] i'm going to put one more question to randy and cary and then probably questions from the audience. be thinking about questions. i'm sure you can queue up at either microphones i see in the back. i think i think the thorough lawn in both books it is not game over in the bay area. there is a sense of optimism. people carry in your book all

walked are activated and wanting to do something and they are very different ideas on what to do. randy, you did it just say game over. you actually have a blueprint in your book of here are the strategies that can help us. speak for a minute if you would just about your optimism on the issues of gentrification but are we running out of time? >> i spoke a little bit about it in the last question. i think everybody interviewed in the book whether longshoreman who's no longer in the dockyards in san francisco. whether a tattoo artist running their own shop in the mission. whether a major vc investor. whether it's google buzz protester. all see a problem together that they identify nearly commonly and have all oriented themselves to selling thing. there's not one person i met in the bay area who wasn't doing

what they thought kid they could do whether they drew their circle as the community the bay area at large, their town, they neighborhood their family. i'm super optimistic that we have the right energy oriented toward the problem and we have reasonably brilliant people in cities trying to toward solutions. we lost some of our ability to figure out some of these negotiated mechanisms for together and le developing collective action. i also think we at times grill down into solutions that are the beginning of the problem but forget that with housing needs to come infrastructure development. we need to start talking at a scale really arguing for a way of life where we can be together and see each other as equals. that is so much in austin the bay area is new york's tradition. our cities have been a part of that tradition for a long time and if we can revive that again i think we have a path forward. >> my view of cities is that

the working and middle class built the cities. not the rich. the working middle class who runs the ptas. who runs the soccer clubs? who runs the baseball leagues. you take the fabric out of our cities and leave it to the rich and subsidize poor you have failed cities. i'm very optimistic i think people are learning. we are making progress and all the cities i mentioned austin is more at a crossroads than many people but so realizing we have to change or we are losing our middle and working class. i believe the imperative, the public support come rrdown to what people want. i think i'm helping to expose the real undercurrent of why we let people not build housing and stop housing and making the homeowner power in the neighborhood have to address that and change our way of doing it because i'm very optimistic but we have to make the change now, not five years from now. you can follow what i'm doing

if the beyond on twitter. i report regularly on issues around all the cities i read about. i'm very personally connected to all the cities where we are trying to get four boxes in minneapolis and more housing in all the various cities but i think you guys can get involved you can make a difference here in austin. it's a question of political will. p >> thank you randy and carrie. we are going to have questions from the audience. if you can speak directly into the microphone so that folks in the room can all hear questions. >> was born in san francisco, grew up in daly city, went to berkeley and moved to austin a long time ago. i wanted to defendant law austin a little abit. i think the problem in the bay area that you identify is

absolutely correct.the million dollar shack is not good for anybody in the bay area. there's a whole lot of housing there that needs to be torn down. it's 100 years old and not worth keeping but austin building things like the mueller development, fairly high density. all kinds of income levels and also things like foundation communities, which i presume you know about. if you don't know about it it's the most brilliant concept ever heard of. we take decrepit housing, rehab every single unit, allow people in they have to have some income basically the working poor. concept most brilliant ever heard of. is, do you know about it and would you support trying to move that kind of thing to san francisco and bay area?

>> him. >> one of the things san francisco has against it is structurally it's bordered on three sides by water. it can only build up. it can't build out and it can't connect. it has a real challenge. to your point i think for san francisco to be a legitimate viable city in the way randy and i are discussing where working people can live near their jobs and continue to be in communities they been in for generations, it requires affordable housing. it's absolutely required. >> how many different governments? >> the other challenge in san francisco which i don't know austin but san francisco is nine counties discovered independently. from water rights to housing sharing to infrastructure all have to be correlated and negotiated across nine counties. it's a giant mess when it comes

to doing anything significant. >> here we have travis county. >> the bulk of the tenants cannot afford market rent.we have to have the federal government go back to their historic role of subsidizing rent. it's only one quarter of the eligible households for federal housing assistance get that aid. i'm talking about people in my book who primarily are earning to much for government subsidies because obviously i know you have an affordable housing bond that's very important to austin and i think affordable housing is an incredibly important thing in san francisco and we are doing a lot of that but we also have to deal with the working middle class. >> thank you for shouting out prom day at school. people should look for it. but my question i guess

specifically since you are involved with tenants unit. here in texas basically we have no renter enprotections people can get thrown out for even discussing soattendance union. so my question is, how do tenants organize in order to protect each other when tenant unions are de facto illegal. >> the state is preempted so many tools that austin can hel for tenants whenever anyone comes up with a good idea of the state legislature quickly goes up and preempts it again. i feel sorry for austin that your state government is in austin all they do is interfere with what you guys are trying to do to promote affordability. i'm aware of that. i get it. the one thing i don't think they can do is you do the density bonus model where the developer voluntarily accepts affordability and exchange for that seems to me the one thing

your legislature can't interfere with but i'm glad you brought that up ntbecause i should've mentioned it. austin is under hampered by state government trying to protect its lower income population. i'm just going to rip one more time on something we talked about because we get so focused on those ddynamics the state local dynamics but we got tools on our books today to improve the lot for our working class. but are we going to use them? i'm a long-term austin knight and former san franciscan and the question i have is completely irrelevant for austin be very relevant for san francisco and that's rent control. how if clearly see you're low to moderate income person and he managed to score

an apartment in san francisco, especially back in the 90s, you really need it. to be able to stay there.on the other hand, if you try to move there now you got people making quite a bit of money who are qualified for this very low apartment just because they been there so long. i can't wrap my head around it and wondering what you guys think. it's obviously a third rail in san francisco but what you think about that policy wise? >> part of the issue is that san francisco rent control stock is still keyed off of 1979? it's from decades ago. the increase in rent control stock would actually decrease its scarcity in the privilege going around it. i think nonetheless my experience is new york where rent control is a more policy that it actually helps balance

things out.there's too little enforcement in many of the cities around airbnb and will use a rent controlled apartment. that feels like a terrifying crisis. begging for regulation. >> when you're in austin no point, spending time talking about rent control. i don't see that government ever-changing. you nocking have to be thinking about rent control here. it's not happening in austin for the foreseeable future. >> i have a question about a mismatch of economic development bringing jobs and also building housing. he spoke a little bit about that but what are some of the ways corporations were bringing those jobs can play a role in building housing or providing housing? >> that is a great question. as i said and mentioned in the book, how come apple, facebook, all the companies you know are able to add thousands of jobs and silicon valley without building any housing. it is crazy. oracle when they took over the

housing here they didn't have to build anything. that's unfortunate. but what usually happens with the corporations says is it's up to the city to require it and the cities don't want housing. they don't care how much rents go up in san francisco or austin or whatever. they are just gonna bring their workers so that's why the whole theme of my book city policies b make a difference. and cities require job connection, we want you to come. amazon fortunately is not coming to austin it looks like. i was really worried. i was very worried about it coming to austin but i'm thinking, that's great. amazon comes wherever they are coming they don't build housing. read in my book what amazon did at the seattle housing market. they were advertising 10,000 jobs a month. where are those people going to

live? rents in seattle went up like through the stratosphere. so that woman's question is a great one and that's why you have to get city officials to do the right ithing. >> i find this very interesting. my degree which is useless in urban sociology. i want to bring about a point you're ttalking about let's ta about the ãcoming here in austin and replacing all the people on south riverside being forced out with the new housing and the revamp housing as opposed to what united oil workers did in tmemphis tennessee when they moved into they build housing. they built all the housing in west nashville and put together by ford. ford and uaw got together to build the houses. the same thing happened in culver city california. >> what is the question?

>> what can we do to stop people like oracle from coming in and asserting us? and grooming our ethnic neighborhoods in this city because we no longer have the neighborhoods. >> do we have ãbone of the things we are not holding tech companies hire on is diverse of hiring education. programs in the community and community integration. we eare asking a series of questions that get directed properly in housing and don't ask for a suite of other things for them to do so is absolutely an obligation to hire from the community. and there's absolutely an obligation to build in a way that's respectful to what has existed prior to that and doesn't create a huge amount of displacement. >> ã >> oracle and the uaw are very

different. also it gets back to what i say in my book i don't want to push this again this argument city officials have to push the companies and the people have to push the city officials. that's how it works. i hope ãbwe will be signing books in the book signing just now. [applause] >> this year book tv marks our 20th year of bringing you the country's top nonfiction authors.in their latest books. find us every weekend on c-span2 or online at booktv.org. it's thanksgiving weekend on book tv with four days of

nonfiction authors and books. this holiday you will see coverage from several recent book fairs and festivals including texas, boston, and wisconsin festivals as well as programs with republican senator ben bax of nebraska. retired general stanley mcchrystal and many other offers. also this weekend on our afterwards program pulitzer prize-winning journalist josc antonio vargas reflects on living in the united states as an undocumented immigrant. those are a few of the programs you will see this thanksgiving weekend on book tv on c-span2. for the complete schedule visit booktv.org. >>. >> now joining us on book tv is naomi brockwell. naomi brockwell, who is ãb girl? >> apparently it's me. [laughter] >> what does that mean? >> many