What California’s Housing Targets Mean for Its Cities | James Mai

California cities are mandated to plan for millions of new homes, but in a lot of cases, the residents don't want this housing. It will impact the infrastructure. It will have impact on the traffic and congestions. At the same time, housing costs are going up significantly in California, and a lot of people are blaming the shortage of housing for it. Today, we sit down with Vice Mayor of Irvine, James Mai, whose city is in the middle of all of this. If we lose that local control. The state gives basically a free pass for builders to build anywhere in any which way they can. They don't really have to go through the process that normally would happen. James, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting me here. We want to talk to you about housing mandates in California. A lot of cities are required to zone for a lot of housing, millions of homes, and you represent the city of Irvine. Can you tell us what these mandates are about? Yeah, so these mandates are mandates by the city in terms of how many units we need to build, how many affordable units we need to build, how many mid-affordable levels that we need to build as well. So they are passed down from Sacramento down to us, and they're supposed to provide us guidance, but usually they are hard numbers that we need to achieve. And what are these numbers like for your city? Well, for the city of Irvine, it's a little over 23,000 units that need to be built for this cycle of RHNA. We're going into our seventh cycle, which today will be the day where they'll give us the new numbers. But on the sixth cycle, we're at 23,000, a little over 23,000. And that's just a unit number. And what does that mean? When we're hearing these numbers, there's a mixture of affordable homes or market homes. And what does it really mean? Because I heard the numbers are a lot bigger, what you guys have to do. Yeah, so Irvine, what we've done is we've planned for over 50,000 units in order to meet the housing mandates for affordable. We placed a buffer on there as well within those numbers to achieve that, a safety buffer. And the city has allocated 50,000, over 50,000, I believe 56,000 is the number that we need to permit and license in order to meet all of the mandates that are required by the state of California. And why is it higher than the 23,000 number? Because of the affordability number. Our inclusionary number is about 15% needs to be affordable. So in order to hit that affordable number, we need to allocate and buffer for that certain amount there. So you have to allow people to build a lot more because most of these developers will not build affordable housing, right? That is correct. A builder doesn't have any incentive to build a unit that is affordable versus a luxury. it costs the same for them and oftentimes they can't recoup the cost of building an affordable because it's the same as a normal market rate. So they have to build a lot more and then they allocate only 15% or 20%. What's the percentage like? It's 15% for the city of Irvine. It should be 15% for the affordable portion of that. So you guys are going to end up building, allowing developers to build because you're not going to build it yourself, right? We can't build it ourselves. We don't have the deep pockets like that. But we're going to permit, or we should be permitting up to 50,000. That's the plan by 2029. One of the things that I saw, you guys only have 120,000 homes in your city. Right. So this is a huge change, right? Absolutely. How are you guys looking at these numbers? Well, these numbers are going to have a deep impact on the population of the city of Irvine. population, traffic, infrastructure, services, everything needs to be upgraded in terms of our capacity to serve people. This is across the state, right? All of the cities are facing these kind of mandates. Is it similar or are some cities are getting less numbers than you guys? It's similar across the board. Irvine isn't anything special in terms of the lens of Sacramento. The lens of Sacramento is you guys have the land, you guys have the population. They've created a formula for us to increase the number of units that are required within our city. And there's a lot of cities that are facing the exact same thing that we're facing across the board, from small rural towns to large towns like Long Beach or large cities like Long Beach and Anaheim. Everyone is facing mandates from the state of California. And you said the formula. How does that work? Is it based on the household formation? Is it based on population? Is it a complex? Do you know much about that? It's pretty complex, and it's based on what Sacramento gives us. It's a Sacramento formula. That's the easiest way to explain it is Sacramento tells you what it is, and you have to eat it. What's the impact of this? Most people, when they hear numbers like that, they will think there's going to be more people and more congestion, more traffic. What are you seeing as somebody who's been involved with the city? Yeah, absolutely. So the feedback from our community is instantly, when they hear any sort of numbers, is there's going to be a lot more people. There's going to be a lot more cars. Most average car or most average households have at least two cars, two to three cars. If you have a husband and wife working and you have a child or children that live at home, more children are living at home now instead of moving out. Some families have four or five cars per household. So when you think about any increase in numbers, it's going to increase the numbers of traffic and cars, congestion, pollution, consumption. It just comes with it. It comes with increasing the housing number. It's going to increase the infrastructure needs across the board. What I'm hearing from people is they're worried. They're very concerned. And most people are concerned. Just about a couple hundred units, they're already concerned. A couple thousand units, they're very concerned. Over 5,000, we're hitting 5,000. People are near panicking and ready to lobby against it. What about the city from the city's perspective? What do you guys need to plan for and what do you have and what do you don't have? What we don't have is funding, funding for infrastructure, ongoing maintenance costs. That is a big concern for the city. There's funding that's available from the state level. There's not enough funding for ongoing maintenance and costs. Roads are going to be impacted. Everything, electricity, utilities are going to be impacted. A lot of these things people don't consider, or at least I feel that the state doesn't consider when we have to look at a global picture and we have to look at everything that goes into basically creating a city. People don't look at that. In terms of infrastructure, what is the hardest part? Is it the sewage? Is it the water? Is it the electricity? Is it the roads? Is there some parts that is much harder than others? It's a global formula that's difficult. I think the biggest thing, biggest impact is traffic, this traffic impact, because roads become more congested. Any amount of units of housing, it impacts the quality of life. I would say, in general, it's the quality of life. I mean, traffic is a big issue right now. Even going one to two miles in the city of Irvine during peak traffic hours could take you three times the amount of time to get through a normal, if it wasn't any traffic. When the developers come, my understanding is that they give some impact fees to the cities like Irvine. You guys are going to get some money. Absolutely. Does that cover the cost of building the infrastructure? I don't think so. I mean, impact fees are pretty minimal when you consider the larger, bigger picture because you really can't anticipate the full scope of the fees that are required. I mean, there's utilities fees, but then there's also fees that you don't think about, such as public safety, fire, police. We're going to have more, for example, Great Park has been developed right now. There's more police presence that has to go out there because increased crime, crime prevention, responding to crime. Fire needs to be responding. OCFA needs to be responsible for that. So there are these little things that people don't really anticipate, and you can't really anticipate until you actually build out a community. It's only a hypothetical until actually you have people in place The numbers you mentioned is over 50,000 and you're gonna get new numbers, but we don't know the exact numbers But somewhere around 50,000 homes right now you have 120,000 How likely is it that you guys can plan and zone for these 50,000 but it has to be done by 2029, right? Yeah has to be done by 2029. We have to we have to plan for that amount They're saying that we can I'm saying there's a strong likelihood that we're not going to be able to. And that is just because where are we going to place them? In Irvine, there's only three specific areas that we have identified that would be appropriate to build, which is the Irvine Business Complex, IBC, Irvine Spectrum, transit area in the Irvine Spectrum, and then also the third area is over here. The marketplaces have already been built out as well. what if you can't zone for enough homes if we can't build we'll basically be out of compliance and what happens is something called builder's remedy kicks in which basically will allow the builders under certain circumstances to build wherever they would like to circumventing the permitting process entirely and how does that work they just can build anything or does it have to match the community? No, it does not, because it's state. We lose local control, and that's a fight that we're constantly fighting. All the cities are really trying to fight for local control, local control saying that we can control what comes in our city and how it's built out. But if we lose that local control, the state gives basically a free pass for builders to build anywhere in any which way they can. You know, they don't really have to go through the process that normally would happen. So this is something that happened to Santa Monica. I think they were out of compliance for a while and 14 projects came and built. But can somebody build a multifamily unit in the middle of a single family? Or is there still some laws that protects these communities? There's not much protection at that point. When you're out of compliance, there's not much protection. So the biggest concern everyone uses as an analogy is that we can have a single family community and suddenly have an apartment build out in the middle of it. And that's a reality. The quality of life is a major impact. When we look at everything, we talk about the utilities, the infrastructure, quality of life is the most important thing. One of the most important things to me, one of the most important things to anyone that lives in a city like Irvine, or any city, there's community charm, there's the way that people move here for a certain reason, because there's open space, because there is a quality of life, a level of quality of life that shouldn't be impacted by large developments. Sacramento takes a look at Irvine and says, hey, you guys have plenty of space. You have a lot of people. Why aren't you guys looking like L.A.? L.A. had a lot of space, and they built out room for people. Detroit did the same thing. Many other cities didn't, but those cities are not Irvine. That's something that Sacramento doesn't come to Irvine. They don't understand our community. They don't understand why people want to live here. They don't understand opening your door and seeing an open space, grass where your children can play. Nobody wants urban sprawl in Irvine. Well, some people do. The majority of people have families, and they love the way of life here. And I certainly didn't move to Irvine to have urban sprawl or be around urban sprawl. I grew up in urban sprawl. I grew up in the inner city. I know how it looks. And to me, this is a dream here, and it's a dream for many people. Many people don't want to revert back to that. You mentioned there's for your city, because this is a problem across the state, right? All the cities are facing this issue. Where would you put this housing and what would it look like? Is it apartments? Is it going to be high rises? You guys have probably started discussing or thinking, like, what does it look like? The developments are high density. Usually they have shops and stores on the first floor, almost loft style. second third floor fourth floor are residential smaller footprint so we're looking at one bedrooms studio apartments and high density and we're starting to see the development of that because that's that's the configuration that's going to go in putting in thousands of single family home you're going to need thousands of acres to do this and we just don't have that so the only way to to offset that is to go up upwards and there's another component here that most of these that are getting built are rentals is there a thought into how much of the housing is going to be built for purchase versus how much is going to be built for rentals from a city standpoint that's what we want uh working with builders it's not that we're against building i'm not against building uh i'm for uh responsible building and development mixed use or even uh mixed density so if we're going to have to build on a new project let's have some single family let's have some rental let's have some condos let's have some detached mix it up so that we're not just building all high density rentals and that's another thing is people they don't the terminology of affordable housing to some people when you ask the regular Joe Schmoe out there and say what's affordable housing well I want an affordable house I can buy when when the state is talking about affordable housing we're talking about affordable rentals that's the difference I believe the terminology should be proper. We're talking about rentals, not affordable housing. I mean, it is technically affordable housing, but it is rentals that are going to be coming in as well. For me, I want a mix of it. And any of the developers that are coming to Irvine, I want them to have that consideration for the community environment, to allocate some single family, go to the townhomes, go to the duplexes, and have a portion for affordable housing as well. do you guys decide as a city which projects are rental or which projects do you get to approve that or do you have you don't have any say the developer comes and builds it and then they decide to make it rental or well the builder will come to us and tell us their plans and then we can deny or approve right right on the spot so we'll know exactly what they want to put in there so that's part of our job to to vet and filter what kind of projects come through but But when the state is just pushing down on you, you don't really have any recourse. You have to really just get the numbers in. And what if you zone for these housing and nobody wants to build it? What happens then? Well, that's a situation that probably won't ever happen because there's a line of builders that are ready to build in Irvine. This is a very, it's a very lucrative place to build homes for builders. So you think if you zone for these 50,000 homes, people are going to build them? Oh, 100%. waiting for it because it's very profitable for them. I mean, a lot of people want to just come and live in Irvine. There's lines for leasing offices. There's lines. You won't find any vacant ones. You see people even driving down the street, knocking on single family homes like my home, people asking, when are you going to sell your home? Please let me know. We'll pay cash. Every week we have a car full of people coming knocking on doors. So, you know, it's very interesting. I I mean, we have a high demand for rentals and for single-family purchases as well in the city of Irvine. And, James, the state is doing these mandates because we also have a housing issue. You mentioned there's a shortage. Some people don't believe there's a shortage, but the reality is the cost is so high because we haven't built enough. What are your thoughts on that? Because the state is saying the cities had the chance to allow this housing, but they didn't do it for decades. And now the state has to come in and force it. What are your thoughts on that? It's a paradox because you build out a city that people want to live in. Companies want to be here because they want to tap into the talent pool of people living here. Once they're here, people want to come live here because of the companies. So it's a problem. It's a good problem to have, except when you're at a housing shortage and then everyone's living on the perimeter. One of the issues that we are facing as a city is local demand. A lot of people that are working for the city, police, fire, teachers, they live really far away because they can't afford to live in Irvine because there's nowhere to buy, there's nowhere to rent, and if you do rent, it's skyrocketing. In our city specifically, the housing issue is caused by a multiple amount of problems. I wouldn't say problems, but there's a lot of things that contribute to that. One of that is foreign investments into our city. There's a lot of streets in the city of Irvine that are just sitting empty that people have come and purchased as an asset to hold on to that. And it drove up prices and it still does. They still want to invest in the city of Irvine without living here because for a lot of foreign investments, this is a vehicle for them. This is a safe place to invest in. It's a safe place. Government's not going to come and seize their assets. It's an American soil, but it's a problem for us. So we want preferential treatment to our people. That's one of the things that I think a lot of cities, including ours, a lot of things that I'm trying to do is to give preferential treatment to our people that live and work or have a tie to the city of Irvine. So we're trying to remedy some of the housing issues through that way as well. Very interesting. In terms of pushback from the community, you guys are already facing pushback for one or two projects. Can you tell us about that? What kind of pushback are you seeing? Sure, sure. Well, you know, let's start with this. Let's say some cities have a lot of pushback. Their citizens are really mad about this housing mandate, and they're demanding the city fight the state. And that's an option. That's always an option. But not one city has ever won the fight against Sacramento in history. But the battle does cost millions of dollars to fight the state, to actually sue the state. The legal battle. It's going to be a legal battle. It's going to be a legal battle, and it's always a losing battle that costs millions of dollars to taxpayers. So it's not really an option, but residents are willing to even say, you must fight back. We want you to fight back. Even though it will cost millions of dollars and there's a long shot, we want you to. So residents are so passionate that they will do that. But just like in Huntington Beach, they fought and they sued. They lost multiple times and their residents ended up paying the bill for that. We don't want to get in that situation. In the city of Irvine, we're getting a lot of pushback on even small developments. We're talking about 30 unit developments, redevelopments. People don't want it. They're worried about the traffic impact. We're talking about a new one that everyone is really talking about is called Oak Creek Development in the middle of the city, which is a former golf course. a lot of pushback, but also the builder is working on negotiating with that. So it's our job as a city to really negotiate what type of development it is and make sure it's responsible, make sure that, as an example, a school is going to be considered, traffic is going to be considered, environmental is going to be considered. So these are things that we can do to make sure that responsible development goes in, even if it has to go in what is realistic for your city what is a realistic amount of zoning it's a hard question i know oh yeah do you have any thoughts and what would be realistic well i'll give you my unrealistic thought uh which is my own thought is uh sacramento should leave us alone uh we don't want to listen to you guys that's that's an unrealistic thought for me but that's that's that's how i really do feel is that the city of irvine should have the ultimate say on how many units comes in we're gonna we are for building we are for housing we are for for affordable housing but we're the ones who ultimately know uh exactly how many units we can support and what type of uh units and size that goes into our city i mean that's it's almost unrealistic but it's logical it's a logical unrealistic ask from someone like me from the city to ask sacramento to leave us alone let us figure it out that's a logical thing but it's unrealistic realistically what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to allocate to meet the RHNA numbers because we don't want to be out of compliance. The reality is that we have to do that. We have to obey basically what's going on in Sacramento. There's no fight back. There's no pushback. There's no negotiations at all. They're coming out with the new numbers today with zero input from us. They're the ones who dictate how much we need to build here. So there's not really anything realistic that we can do against it except that making sure that the developers are developing in the right way so what do you envision will happen will it be some you guys will have some skyscrapers like or would it be more like some four or five story buildings how do you see this happen well we we can't put a limit on the height of the buildings um but you know i foresee us being a higher density build out so like four or five story buildings yeah uh some probably some of retail centers going away that are underperforming. They'll be more profitable for the builders or landowners. Those will go away. We don't really have any class C or class B buildings, but in other areas of the state, other cities, I was on the housing commission and what we would do is we take a look at some of the property owners of hotels, like of a certain chain or something. If that's underperforming, then they would apply for us and we would approve it. I saw a lot of those come across my table as well on approvals, which were underperforming hotels that would be bulldozed or underperforming office buildings that have been vacant. A lot of office buildings are now changing. People are not going into the office as much. So a lot of office buildings are getting knocked down. Some of the vacant land that you're seeing is going to be housing as well. So industrial buildings, is that going to change as well? That's going to change too. I just think in general, it's more logical as well, just because what are you going to do with an office building that's, you have a 25% vacancy. It doesn't make any sense. It's better to retrofit that into housing. You are new to public service and you have a good story. Can you tell us your story, your background and how did you get involved in public service? I'll start from the very beginning. My family's war refugees from Vietnam, a country of Vietnam. It's a long story, but I'll start. A little bit of the back story in Vietnam is that my family was from northern Vietnam in the early days. They were trading fishermen, and my grandfather was a diplomat. So he had his business. He was a diplomat. He traveled the world, represented Vietnam on the world stage. And there was a communist uprising at the time, and my grandfather, they told him, they said, hey, you got to give up your property and your lands and your money, and it belongs to the state. And he said, no. So what they did was they killed him. They killed his daughter. They killed him. And the family said, okay, we gave up everything. We moved from northern Vietnam to southern Vietnam. That was in 1954, Geneva Accords. they said, where are you going to split? Split the country. They went south, freedom, north, communism. When the north invaded in South Vietnam, there was a war. My family fought against the north, the communists. They fought alongside the Americans, lost a lot of family members. My uncle was in military intelligence for South Vietnamese. He worked with the army, the American army and the CIA intelligence. They took them out. They flew them out of the country, snuck them out in the middle of the night through an ice cream truck got onto the plane the plane almost got shot down but they made it out there they made it out and flew to America and the CIA officer that was working with my uncle, he lived in Cleveland, Ohio and he said well my parents are willing to sponsor your family so that's why instead of going to Camp Pendleton where it's nice and sunny they went to Cleveland, Ohio where it's nice and snowy. So they landed there. The first Vietnamese refugees landed in Ohio in the snow. And I was born first Vietnamese refugee baby born in the state of Ohio. So I'm the first Vietnamese refugee baby that was born there. Wow. My father had PTSD. He met my mother. He was a soldier also. He had PTSD and he had left the family when she was still pregnant. The CIA's father who sponsored our family said, we'll take you guys in. We'll take the baby in. Took me home from the hospital and they said, well, what's his, what's his name? So my mother said, well, let's name him after the sponsor here, James. So I'm named after James. So that's how I got my name, James. And he raised me as basically his second son. He was a war veteran of World War II. The father was. He fought in World War II as a combat veteran. Liberation force underneath General Patton, kicking down doors. They liberated concentration camps. That's what they did. Their team was that. So a lot of things that I had and stories I grew up were very patriotic, pro-America, from the greatest generation. I have some memorabilia still, even from the concentration camp that he liberated when he so i'll tell you a quick story here is when he let he liberated this concentration camp called Flossenbürg in 1944 i think somewhere around there and uh when they got in there the prisoners didn't have anything to give them they're very thankful but their skin and bones um these guys were uh guys that were in there for years and they didn't they didn't have anything to give him but they were carpenters and they were woodworkers so they made him a frame out of the wall of the concentration camp he gave them the knife his knife and they carved it wow and they gave him a frame so he can carry the picture of his wife throughout the rest of the war um so he put the picture in there kept in his pocket it's a wooden one uh made out of like a horseshoe and a shamrock and it's very sturdy you know wood from a concentration camp and he carried it throughout the war and he gave it to me before he passed away so I have that right now on my desk so I grew up in a very patriotic family and yeah that's that's how I started eventually I my story I guess goes let's just fast forward a little bit here when I was 19 years old I decided I'm gonna leave Ohio got on a Greyhound bus $200 and said I'm going to California. So I dropped out of college, moved to California, trying to get to Northern California, but I didn't make it because I ran out of money, right? I had $200. So I stayed in my cousin's garage. My cousins were like, okay, you've stayed here long enough. Get out of here. And I said, okay, well, what am I doing? I guess I'll just, I guess I'll just couch surf. So I couch surfed into a city called Irvine, which is the city next, next door. So I started couch surfing through Irvine, lived throughout multiple rooms in Irvine. I finally rented a room from a bunch of roommates, $400 a month. $400 because I was trading my skills in technology and I was tutoring my roommates on how to use computers. So that was a great neighborhood. I said it was a beautiful neighborhood, single family homes. Everyone's nice. There's a lot of kids here. I said, one day when I come back, I'm going to live in this neighborhood. Long story short, I started a business, traveled the world, came back to that neighborhood, knocked on the door and said, I want to buy your house. I said, well, it's not for sale. You've lived here a long time ago, I see. And so I said, okay, then I'll just gonna, I found a house down the street, rented the house and waited for something, someone to sell. It was either someone's going to sell or someone's going to die. I was just going to wait it out. Eventually both happened. So I bought the house and that's where I live now. And that's the neighborhood that I live in here. But I've had a management consulting firm for 26 years, roughly 26 years. As I mentioned before, after 26 years, I said that I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to use the skills that I've acquired throughout the years and help the community. I was a housing commissioner for, I believe it was four years, and that was a volunteer position. But in terms of politics itself, this is my first term, pretty new. This is my second year in politics, but I've been in business for a very long time, and I've been through a long road, so I take things logically. You know, it's a pragmatic way of governing and, you know, understanding. People say I'm a little different than the regular politician because I've never been a regular politician. And why did you get into it? I got into it because I was doing volunteer work. I had a company, my own company, and I started focusing on philanthropy and nonprofits. And I said I wanted to go back and focus and help people address and get resources for things that I faced growing up. housing was one of the issues. Hunger was a big issue. I was a hungry kid. I don't look hungry now, but I was hungry before. And for women facing domestic violence, I grew up around a lot of violence. I saw a lot of violence through my eyes, through my family. And I wanted to just get involved to bring more resources to people of things that I faced growing up. So that's literally why I got involved in politics. I wasn't really a big fan of politics because I said that a lot of these politicians are out of touch with what goes on in the community so when someone told me he said like well we want you to run because you've been through it you've been through the road you've seen the road you can help people on that road so i said okay well i'll do it then if that's the case i guess i'll do it so i ran for office and what is it like to do the public service you're doing right now right now is it different than when you got in you know it's a lot different because, you know, in philanthropy, you just help people. You don't have to deal with any sort of obstacles helping anyone. You just do what you want to do, especially when it's your 501c nonprofit. I mean, you just do good things. But in politics, when you try to do good things, there's a lot of obstacles. That's why they call it politics, I guess, right? So there's a lot of maneuvering just to do good things. It's a little different. So when people ask me to run for office, I said no, initially. For the first couple of years, I said, no, I don't want to run for office. I said, I don't like politicians. One of the first things I did in politics was give a speech. It's still online. You can look on YouTube there. And I went to City Hall, Irvine City Hall, and I complained. I complained to all the politicians. I said, if you guys don't stand with the people, we're going to remember you when it's time to vote. So you got to support my people. And I said, America is the greatest country in the world. I said, anyone who's crying about racism, try to go live in another country. It's worse out there. This is nothing. It's the most diverse place in the world to live in. It's the greatest place for opportunity. I said, why are you guys crying? This isn't racism. You guys should be facing and going after real racism, not about these emotional words. Don't be triggered about emotional words. I mean, racism exists in America, but it doesn't prevent you from succeeding. Other countries where racism exists, you cannot proceed because of racism. Here, it doesn't matter what you are. It doesn't matter where you start. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, born rich or poor, born black, brown, yellow, red, whatever color you are. You still have the opportunity to succeed, but you also have the opportunity to fail. I always tell people this, is that we have the opportunity to succeed, but we also have the opportunity to fail. So if you fail, no one's to blame. There's no systemic racism that stopped you from failing or caused you to fail. You're the one who caused you to fail. You have the opportunity, as everyone else, to succeed. So that was one of the biggest messages I had politically, and people liked that message. So they encouraged me, not only as a community advocate, but as somebody who's pragmatic and understands what it is, what America's all about. And at the time, I didn't want to run. But when I decided to run, the question was, how are you going to win, James? How are you going to win? You don't have a consultant. You don't have a campaign team. You don't have volunteers. You're going to do no fundraisers. And I said, yeah, exactly. I'm going to win without it. And they said, well, what do you mean? How are you going to do this? You're going to do a fundraiser? I said, I'll do an event for exposure. But the event will be, if you want to attend my event, you're going to bring food. and I'm going to donate the food it's going to be a donation drive I'm not going to take any funds so they said there's it's going to be impossible for you to win and I said no if if I'm meant to win it'll be by the people and God those are the two people that will will get me into office if if I belong in office I'll belong there if not then I'll go back to doing what I do so that's how I ran and uh I won overwhelmingly so everyone was like at first people were not like they didn't believe that because they said, how are you going to do it? And I said, well, I'm just going to go knock on doors. They said, how many doors are you going to knock? I said, I'm going to knock every single door. They said, well, you should just knock on your party's door. Don't worry about the other because they're not going to vote for you. I said, no, I don't want to use that stuff. That's not, I'm going to knock on everyone's door. So I knocked on everyone's, every single door I knocked on. I don't care what flag was on the lawn or even if my opponent's campaign signs were on the, I'd knock on their door too. And sometimes they would take down my competitor's campaign sign after meeting me so it was proof and I said okay this works so I just knocked on every single door possible and met every single person and when it came to it I just I won and that was it that's how I got into office James Mai vice mayor of Irvine it was great to have you on California Insider and come back tell us how the mandates are going in the future absolutely absolutely I will definitely thank you for having me it's been a pleasure speaking with you tell us what you think about this discussion with James. Do you think the mandates are good for the cities or do you not agree with the mandates? And if you have any other suggestions or solutions for California and its cities, tell us in the comments or email us at [email protected] We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Karami, this is California Insider. We'll see you next time.