Antonis Christodoulou Takes on Pete Aguilar | Full Interview [10:05-15:06]

What is your message to environmental groups who do oppose building more housing units? I understand the need to protect our environments, this is very important, I'm very much for strengthening our EPA and making sure that our communities aren't being poisoned and their communities are safe from environmental factors that persist. What I have to say is that we have a lot of empty facilities, I've spoken with a candidate for Fontana and many people who live in Fontana, we mentioned that these giant warehouses are being used in some of them are poisoned in the local communities and then others are going empty. So if we are able to capture these already built areas, clean them up, make sure that the land and soil and everything is safe and habitable and then we build up social housing and build up small 15-minute cities to be able to create a denser population that also can end up lowering the amount of people on the road. If we make our cities more walkable, we build robust transit systems, we build up and we make it so people who live in giant apartments can just walk downstairs and go to a grocery store, go to a bar and meet some friends, do all these things, they don't need to take a car and go 40, 50 minutes or 30 minutes away to just get somewhere. So when I mention building these social housing, I mean by building housing in a way that is actually feasible and actually economical and is environmentally friendly. If we can build on these already built plots, because if you drive around the district, you'll see empty parking lots, you'll see unused land everywhere and it is not a picturesque. It's not something that we look at and say we're proud of that, our environment is proud of the fact that we have a lot of empty parking lots. I think what we need to do is focus more on these types of cities where we can make it walkable, make them safe and make them also affordable and then in the long end, it will end up improving our environmental situation. So that is what I have to say, those organizations that are left to work with them to make sure that we have safe communities in their environment. Sometimes when housing is being built, housing projects, they may be for luxury apartments or for certain clientele, but what about or what is your plan to help those who are on house, those who are on the streets homeless and they want housing. Do you have a plan for promoting an idea of increasing shelters or housing for those who are on the streets? Yes, I am focused on dealing with our own house and also people who are priced out of the market who are just can't afford to live or they can't find a place to live like that. So I recently met a young woman who explained to me that she is on section 8 housing right now. She is dealing with going between housing and having housing that is uninhabitable. Or she is kicked out if she ends up complaining about the housing unit. If she says that our unit has mold, if she says that our unit is flooding it in a way and I can't live there safely, well, she's having her housing paid for free and in a lot of cases, if she complains, she's going to get kicked out. So making sure that our government, our federal government is watching over the housing agencies and the state housing agencies to make sure that people like that can have safe housing in the long term, I mentioned civil housing, if we are able to build a certain affordable housing, even if we can incorporate section 8 into that. People who end up having a more affordable unit, but also if they can afford that unit because wages have not met up, we can put people into that social housing. So it makes people who are trying to receive section 8 from different areas, if a certain apartment or certain landlord, whether they are a corporate or whether they are just a single unit, family that owns it, then they will have the incentive to win if we want to get the unit filled and be able to be paid for this unit, then we need to improve the unit because they have the option of going to the social housing. In an addition, you mentioned how much further can we do about unhousing. I think the biggest or people who are unhoused, the biggest part is making sure our heads are for public living ways and they can accelerate and that is available that they can end up not putting 50% of their salary towards housing.