Mayor Steve Adler

00:03Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. TRAIN BY DAY, JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it. No, I appreciate the invite. What's it like being the mayor of Austin? You know, it's a it's a it's a real trip. If you could go back and do it again, would you? I uh I keep I keep reminding Diane that we volunteered to do this. Yeah, I mean, cuz there's so many things about it that are that are spectacular. Um but it is also the most frustrating thing I've ever done. Have you ever done anything in public service before this? Not in any kind of elected office. What What What gave you the motivation to do it? You know, I was in and around politics, uh but um you know, I've worked on some campaigns. I had a friend who became a state senator, and I took some time off helping him set up his office. I think, you know, really it was uh

01:02you know, literally the the city's been real good to me. Uh you know, I came here as a pretty poor student passing through town, never left, stayed here for the music and the breakfast tacos. You know, 40 years later, it's I've achieved so many things that I didn't even know existed, and it was a chance to to to give back. This is the classic case of no good deed goes unpunished. Well, and then, you know, the way it stands now, it's such a strange time, right? Like, everything was fine. Well, I mean, so many mayors across the country had you know, you you have your standard mayor problems, but then COVID hits, and you have everything is exacerbated. And like, what what what kind of like massive change has this been for you? You know, it actually starts before that. You know, yeah. Let's go back. We've had We've had three 100-year

01:57storms in my seven years where people have died. We had a bridge wash out way north of here sending silt downstream and we ended up having to do a water boil in Austin. And this was at the time Water boil mean people had to boil their tap water so the processing in the city of a million people you couldn't drink the water. I mean that never happens. But yet in my time as mayor in 7 years it's happened twice. We had a we had a bomber that was putting bombs on people's porches, mailing people and people were were dying. Uh you know, we had a thousand law enforcement agents here in the city. What we were talking about that. And then COVID. I mean Yeah. What what was the bomber about? Like What was that about? It was no motive. I mean it was just a kid who's obviously had significant problems. I mean he he was you know, evil. He was he was

02:55just randomly sending bombs. And of course when it started we didn't know that it was random. So everybody's trying to figure out who's next and what the plan is and uh it was fascinating to watch the the FBI and then Austin Police Department work on that. Um How long did it take to catch him? You know, it was it was over in in a matter of just a few weeks. Uh and I don't even remember now. I mean it could be even shorter than that. It could be 2 weeks. I I remember it being a really long period of time cuz every day lasted forever. Uh but it was relatively relatively quick. What is it like being the mayor while something like that is going on? While you're trying to sleep and you're thinking like when's the next one going to blow and how do we how do we catch this guy? Like what is that feeling like? It's it's hard, you know, cuz you you

03:46you have you you know your community is scared. And and you know that the community is looking to you to try and gauge how scared it is that they that they need to be. Uh you know, we had the FBI and APD and other law enforcement that was working on. I was kind of like the translator. You know, that they would listen to the official reports by law enforcement and then they would look at me and say, "So, how are we supposed to be feeling for this? What's our swing thought? I mean, what are we supposed to be thinking about right now?" And um I you you read start reading, you know, about other situations, other mayors that have gone through some similar kind of thing looking back in time. And and so many of these things end where it just stops. They don't catch anybody. There's no finality to it. So, there's this lingering unsettled place where you just never

04:39know when it's going to come back again. It was it was a scary, frightening time except for watching those guys work cuz you watch those guys work and I knew that it I got to the place where I knew that if that guy kept setting off bombs, they were going to catch him. And how did they wind up catching him? Uh you know, they they they ended up tracing the the the the packages that were that were coming in. They ended up getting a video at a I think it was like a FedEx place. Uh you know, they they knew that uh bombs had been been mailed at different locations and they had pretty sophisticated equipment to be able to determine in two completely different places what cars happened to be in the same in those two spots over a defined period of time. So, they were doing that. Uh they were um checking the the kind of the ring cameras on on places where they knew

05:40somebody had probably driven by. I mean, it's just a lot of lot of police work. Poof. Yeah, that's a thing, right? If you you have someone doing something like that in your city and there's really no way to figure out why and what there's no way to understand and it's random. He's sending them out to random people. But and then it when it started off you didn't know that it was random, right? So so some of the first How many bombs went off? You know, I might I I am not sure. My recollection is probably about four, five maybe. Uh but the first couple um uh hit uh children of some pretty prominent uh black families in the city. So it initially looked like there may be a link between uh who was getting bombed and this might actually be something that was that was race driven or cuz you just don't know when you only have two or three data points.

06:39Um it could be anything and everybody imagines each one of those scenarios. So you've had that, you've had those storm which washed out the bridge, and then this crazy ice storm. Bastrop nearly uh burned up, you know, a city just east of here, wildfire came. You know, when I came into office we were in the middle of a historic drought. Right. Um um That was when Lake Travis a trunk, right? It did. It was crazy. Crazy. Some pictures of friends that I know that live out here sent me pictures. I was in California at the time, but I was like that is nuts. It was like hundreds of yards between their dock and where the actual water was. We were down to like uh 25, 30% and and I was beginning to get shopped, you know, these multi-billion dollar proposals to pipe in water from aquifers from from east of here. One of the best things I did as mayor

07:32soon after I was elected as I I made it rain and the Lake Travis filled. Filled filled filled right up. Didn't it fill up in like a day? Yeah. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. Wow. Yeah. It's uh the the ice storm out here was pretty bananas. The frozen snow ice storm this that lasted a week. It's very strange. And that that's also a 100-year sort of event, right? It almost in recorded history. I mean, there was there was there was the most And to have that happen at a time when you're in the middle of a pandemic, right? So, all the things that you would have done now gets limited. You know, you're trying to get people off the street and put them into some kind of congregate warming station. It impacts that. It It impacts everything that you want to do to have that happen in the middle of a pandemic. And then we lost power in the city. Yeah.

08:28Uh so, no one had water. No one had electricity. Uh It was pretty interesting. One thing I did find though when you went to the supermarkets that people were kind of like bound together with a sense of community. It was uh people were almost every people were very friendly here, period. It's a very friendly city. But they were even more. It was like it seemed like instead of just flat-out panic, people were talking to each other more. People were offering up possible solutions to different people's problems and how to handle things. It was It felt good. And you live here now. I mean, I I really do think this is kind of a magical place. And I think that is one of the elements. I mean, there were not only in the grocery store, but there are people all over the city that didn't have food and didn't have water. And you know, frankly, when something like

09:14that happens, it's like way too big for government relief efforts to be able to get to people. You need neighbors that are that are stepping up to help other neighbors. And that was happening all over the city. When you first became mayor or when you were running for office, did you have certain objectives that you wanted to fulfill? And when you got into office, what was the difference between your ideas of what you could do and the reality of doing them once you got in there. Well, you know, when I ran the the highest priority if you pulled people was do something about transportation. Uh a lot of people moving into the city. Everybody's, you know, looking at that congestion issues that they'd never seen before. Do something about transportation. We have no real mass public transit. We have an I-35 here, one single high state

10:03going through interstate going through the city. Uh one of the most congested in the in the in the country. So, transportation I knew I had to focus on. I need you guys to stop talking about your traffic cuz it's a joke. Right. Your traffic here is literally a joke. My friend Tony calls it adorable. It is adorable, right? Jamie's from out of town. We're from LA. Traffic here is a joke. It's hilarious. People are like, "This traffic is crazy. Took me an extra 5 minutes to get somewhere." You guys don't have traffic. I know that. If that's your biggest problem, you literally live in Narnia. This is a utopian village. There's There's no traffic. And we And we've been accused of that. It's true. Lots and lots of occasions. But but uh coming in there were two things that I hadn't anticipated. Uh the the first one was the the the level of incoming volume

10:51was something that I hadn't anticipated. I When did it start? When did the like ramp up the people moving here? Cuz it wasn't just the pandemic, right? talking about people reaching out to me. I mean, in the job. I mean, the you could spend your entire time not doing anything but responding to constituents. Oh, okay. Or you could spend all your time doing nothing but trying to mediate the zoning cases that show up every week. I mean, you could spend your whole time never doing anything that's actually big picture and affirmative in a city. And I used to blame city councils before me that they would never actually get in to deal with the really big issues. Well, it was real apparent to me 3 weeks into this why it is that that happens. It's really hard to do it to do that. The second thing was that uh government is hard in Austin.

11:39One, you know, you're may or may not a you don't have a strong mayor like in Houston or New York. Uh so, the city manager has significant administrative and executive powers in the city. When you say not a strong mayor, could you explain that to people the difference between the way uh government works here versus the way it would work in say like Chicago or somewhere like that? Right. So, the mayor in a lot of cities uh is is the CEO of the city. Uh sometimes they don't serve on city council and the city council's kind of like the Congress or the legislature. Uh in a lot of cities, it's the the mayor that appoints the police chief and the executives and the head of the departments. Uh that system is in a lot of cities. There's also a lot of cities in the country uh where the city manager, appointed by the city council, is really the chief

12:31operating officer of the city and really makes all the appointments in the city. The city council operates almost like a like a uh uh a board for a for a company and deals with policy-related issues, not the the management or the executive issues. And that's what we have in Austin. So, I'm on the city council. I'm I have no greater vote or power than any of my peers on the city council. So, it makes it difficult to come into a city and lead when the other 10 people on your council have identical powers that you have with the exception of I have a probably a better ability to be able to convene people cuz I'm the mayor and I have better access to the bully pulpit uh than than they do. So, you learn an entirely different way to lead that I was used to in my companies and my law firm because there I was the the the executive. So, the difference between the way it

13:30seemed the job was versus the actual your actual ability once you got in was pretty stark. Yes. So, this is why things don't get done. It makes it hard. I mean, and you know, I give you another example. Um in Texas, because of the open meetings requirement, I'm not allowed to talk to half of my city council about an issue before it comes up at a city council meeting. I'm not allowed to Why half? Cuz a major I'm not allowed to have You can't have a majority of the city council that spoke to each other prior to a meeting about an issue. Because then you would collude? The thought is is that that government would then be in in the smoke-filled backrooms cutting deals and making things and they would show up and vote. That sounds like fun. And just at that. You know, that's You know, you make decisions that way. Families make decisions that way. I go to my daughter

14:27and I say, you know, we're going to have a family talk about this issue. Tell me what Before we go there though, tell me what you're scared of. Tell me what you're worried about. Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want. have these conversations with your city council. You can't. And and and any kind of business does that kind of thing. Now, if I know what a majority of my city council's going to do on an issue when I walk out onto the dais, then there's a good chance that something went wrong. That seems crazy. Like Yeah, it seems I get the motivation for doing something like that, but it doesn't seem like a an efficient way to handle things. Seems like the more talking you could do and work things out, the better. You The idea is you're supposed to be representing your constituents, right? That's That's what everybody would hope. The best way to do

15:10that would be to communicate and see what's what's the solution? How do we solve these problems? Right. Well, you know, you used an interesting word in your description, which was efficient. Mhm. You know, I I come from private market, private sector, and efficiency is key to to operating and running and and the results that you make. In government, efficiency is not what is prioritized. Inefficiency, engagement it has a has a greater value, currency value. Openness, transparency with government is a higher value. All of those things are not about efficiency. But but that's the values that people have have placed with with government. Under the premise that they're trying to avoid corruption. Correct. So, what were things that you wanted to get done that you haven't been able to get done? You know, I wanted to get a land development code rewrite in the city.

16:14One of the you know, there are so many things that are going right about this city. You know, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, an economy that's on fire. We are one of the safest big cities in the country from a public safety standpoint. We're the fastest growing large metropolitan area and have been I think for like each of the last 9 years. There are so many things that are happening right. But one of the things that that follows from that is housing prices are just off the charts. Now, for somebody who's just coming here from California or from from New York, it looks like deals. If you're living here, kind of like traffic. Mhm. You get used to being able to get anywhere in 15 minutes, but housing prices in Austin is appreciating more rapidly, I think, in Austin right now than any other city in the country, which means we have to

17:06increase the housing supply in the city. But when you start talking about increasing the housing supply in the city, you immediately run into the cultural wars on real estate development that you see neighborhoods. How do you increase density? How do you increase the number of units? How do you increase height? How do you increase the change so that you can increase housing supply? We were That was like a big battle for years. We inherited that battle in the process. We were about 7 days away from adopting a new land development code and then the court stopped us. Before was the goal of this new land development code? Was the goal to increase density? It was to increase more housing supply in the city of all different kinds. Do you get resistance from the residents, the current residents that don't want you to overbuild? They They

17:53don't want their neighborhood to change. Is that the idea? You get resistance from neighbor- neighborhoods that are trying to preserve a certain quality of life or neighborhood character. Yeah. That that is that's important to them. And is there a common ground or a middle ground, rather? I think so. And and and before I leave my office, I hope this summer, we're going to be able to to join with people that were on opposite sides a year and a half ago and and say, "Okay, what is what is it that is achievable? How much of what we need to do can we get done and get the the votes for?" What the court said was, in order for us to pass what we were doing, we needed a super majority to get it done. So, on my our 11-person council, we needed nine votes as opposed to seven votes. Mhm. We weren't nine votes. Now, this is to increase Like, what what

18:50is the actual What What is What are you trying to achieve? Like, what is the actual stated goal? It's to increase the the the number of units of housing units that can be built under our land development code. So, for particular like per acre, like how's it set up? So, certain amount of houses per acre. It depends on in area. Each area has its own rules. It begins with saying on commercial corridors where our zoning says you can just build commercially, we're going to let people build residences there, too. So, if you want to put on a floor above the commercial use that's residential use, we're going to do that. So, we're going to enlarge what you can build in a commercial area. So, you can add condos to the top of an office building, perhaps. Right. And and maybe it's letting more people build auxiliary dwelling units or apartments in the backyard. Maybe it's

19:39going to people and saying if you preserve the house that's on the lot, we'll let you build two other houses on the back of the lot instead of one house on the back of the lot. So, it's increasing the the number of units, perhaps. It's increasing the the the square footage that you can put on a lot relative to the total area. Maybe it's increasing the height that you can put in a particular zone property. So, if you can you can go from only three stories to four stories if you build a certain amount of residential along with that or affordable residential. And is there any consideration to the idea that maybe the city shouldn't grow? Yes. Like some I'm sure there must be some resistance about that. Like people like, "Look, we should keep it exactly the way it is as long as we can. Don't let more people build. And if they're going to

20:30move here and there's no houses, guess what? You can't move here or move outside of town or, you know, figure it out, but don't ruin this thing." When I ran for re-election, there were lots of people coming up to me and their one ask was that I would stop the city from growing. You know, but as I explained to people, there's only one way to really stop a city from growing. Bring in crime. Bring in crime. Make it an undesirable place to live. Anything short of that, I know. and a desirable place is going to grow. It's really I mean, I hate to keep saying this cuz I've said it too many times on the air and I think I've [ __ ] it up. It's too good here. It's such a good city. It really is. There's so many good things about it. Like you think you know what you think you know what city life is. You think you know what's like living in the city.

21:13How there's a certain amount of crime, certain amount of this, certain amount of that. Then you come here and you're like, "Oh no, this is like most of the good stuff and very little of the bad stuff." It's an unusual combination of things. It's not too big, it's not too small. What does Matthew McConaughey say? He goes, "This is a place where everybody's good enough and no one's too good." I [ __ ] it up. Everyone's too good No, no one's too good and everyone's good enough. That's what he says. Yeah, which is a great way to say it. But I think he's I think he's on to something. It's like it's a utopian size city with great values and really friendly people and amazing restaurants and a great art scene and a great music scene and now great comedy scene. Well, it had a good comedy scene before, but since the pandemic when a lot of places

21:59were shut down, there's been three new comedy club four new comedy clubs that have opened up here just within the last year, which is crazy. Now and I love that you start describing, you know, kind of what this vision is of future of of Austin as a kind of a center for this and I love that. Yeah, I think Austin easily could be the center for comedy because it's Comedy doesn't need um show business, but we've always been connected to show business because comedians have gotten jobs on sitcoms and gotten jobs on television shows and movies. But the reality is over the last few years, that's all shifted anyway to the internet. And now comedians have found that's much more profitable and more fun to be independent and there's more freedom because being independent and being able to say whatever you want and do whatever you want, then then the audience finds you and

22:48they know what you really are. They don't It's not you from The Tonight Show or you from this show where you got to kind of pretend to be something that fits some sort of a corporate mold of what they would like a host to be. You can be yourself and comedians now have found this sort of community thing going on where we support each other and we get on each other's podcast and we put up put each other on each other's comedy shows and it's just we don't need show business anymore in that sense. Like the Hollywood show business. And we'd be better off if we're independent. So so many of us are moving here and I've had 10 friends have moved here within the last year. And it's continuing to pile up and as more comics hear about the great Austin scene, more will move here. And and you just you described something that is cultural I think to the city.

23:36I mean that ability to be able to come here and be who you are and to be able to think outside the box and set up different kinds of systems. You know, the watchword in Austin and I think we've talked about this in the past is is keep Austin weird. You can like buy it on a coffee mug They've ruined that that saying though with those shirts. My daughter has one of those. Like take that off. That's ridiculous. Get rid of that shirt. You know, but what does that mean? You know, What does it mean? It's okay to be weird. I think everybody bought it. They have them in Portland, too. You don't want to be weird like Portland. You don't. You only want to be weird like Austin. But I tell you what I think it means in Austin. I think in Austin I think what it means is it's okay to be different. Yes. It's okay to take risks and one of the neat things about this

24:15city is that there's a higher risk tolerance than any other city in the world that I've ever been in. It's okay to to try stuff. Uh and and if you don't succeed, you don't get punished the way you do in many other cities. I mean, you're expected to like learn from that and and try again fast. It it's that that that culture of try something, learn, try something, learn, which is behind startups, which is why there are more startups per capita here in this city than anywhere else. It's a city of early adopters. It's a it's a it's a city where you know, a mayoral candidate a few years back who finished second in the race was a guy who drove through town on a thong on his bicycle. Finished second. I like how you said he second. Imagine if you lost to that guy. Really? You'd be like, "Oh my goodness. I just got to go back to the public or private sector."

25:08Um the biggest issue by far over this past year has been the homeless crisis, right? That's the biggest thing. It's the increase in the tents and the chaos. And you know, when uh Dave Chappelle and I were doing Stubbs, we'd go down to 8th Street and there's that underpass and it was just like a village down there. It was crazy. Um what happened? How did it all get going? Like what what was the motivation for allowing people to camp in public places? Well, that's the count That's the action the council took 2 years ago. But so let's go Okay. back before 2 years ago. You know, when I came into office, we had an outdoor area that kind of looked like, you know, what you have downtown in in Skid Row in LA. But ours was just in a in a in a block area. Uh but that's what everybody talked about. And you Where was that area? It was over toward I-35 toward the highway.

26:03Um it was at the the arch, which was a shelter. Um but most of the people there never went inside. They kind of gathered outside. It was an open-air market of all kinds of of of horrible things and uh people wanted that to disappear. The problem with making that disappear is that you This challenge is not one you can just make go away. You can move it. But but if you close it down anywhere, it's going The people don't disappear. So, they'll come back. But that was a challenge coming into office. Uh but in my second, third, and fourth years in office, I started going to neighborhood association meetings. Uh and whereas in the past, people would want to talk about zoning or flooding, now all they wanted to talk about was this homeless encampment that was near them somewhere. In the woods, in the streams, somewhere nearby. Uh they were blaming the um the the the

26:59petty crime happening in in the neighborhood on them. Every one of them had a wife or a daughter that had a horrible experience related to them. And I was going to these neighborhood association meetings and people were as angry as I have ever seen at a public meeting demanding that something be done. Uh I had one of them uh here uh neighborhood uh guy came up to me after it was over and he said, "You're mayor, fix this. And if you don't, I have a gun and I will fix this myself." Jesus. And and I don't know that he actually meant that, but but there was that was the fervor in the field. And I had as as a member of the city council, nothing to offer that neighborhood association. They were complaining about people that were under an overpass at uh the the the highway not a too far away from them. Uh and I knew that if we fenced in that

27:54overpass, which of course we couldn't do cuz it's not city property, it's state property, but if the state fenced it in and so that those people weren't there anymore, uh they don't disappear. So all they're going to do is is move up the highway or down the highway or somewhere else. And I was going to more and more neighborhood associations that were complaining more and more about encampments and and I had no solution to that. And what hurt was is we knew what worked. So in that same period of time, we said, "Let's house every vet in our city that's experiencing homelessness." You know, there was a national program doing it. A lot of cities participated. Austin was one of a handful of cities to successfully get that done. Community came together. We we we when you take someone who's experiencing homelessness and you put them into a

28:50home and get them wrap around services, there's like a 90 95% success rate that that person will either reintegrate back into society or will sustain themselves in a in a positive way wherever it is. 90 95%. And it seems like Austin being a fairly small city, you're dealing with a much smaller, even though it's a large number of people per se, it's it's it's it's it's almost manageable number. Like you might be able to do that with all these homeless people. Whereas if you're in a place like Los Angeles and dealing with a 100,000 people, like what's the number of homeless people in Austin? Right, you are you're you're dead on and and quite frankly that's the the the gamble or the the what the city council was trying to do 2 years ago. So, on our streets on any given night, there's about 3,000 people that are experiencing homelessness. LA city, almost 50,000.

29:44It's I think it's more than that. 70 something thousand. Then my my numbers could be off. think they know, you know, but it's it's it's increased to the point where I it's hard to say whether or not it's increased or it's exposure's increased because they've all moved to like Venice Beach where there's just thousands of tents. are going up. Yeah. You know, and in Seattle, San Francisco, smaller cities than Austin have three to six times as many people experiencing homelessness. You know, I was with the mayor in LA uh and I and I said to him I said, "God, I don't even know what you do." I mean, the scale of your challenge is so great. The cost to actually turn this around, I said, I I I don't know what you do. And I said, "So, I'm not here asking you what you do. But I'm asking you, what do you wish you had done 8 years ago, 10 years ago to

30:34prevent being where you are today?" What did he say? He gave me the same answer that the experts gave me in San Francisco and Portland and Seattle. They all said if you hide this challenge, it's going to continue to grow until it is so big you can't hide it anymore. But at that point, it's going to be too big for you to actually meaningfully deal with it." They said, "It's It is like the political issue right now in in LA and in San Francisco. It's like the important deep They said, "I wish that we were as resolved to fix it 8 10 years ago as we are today because we would have been able to set up the systems so that we could have reached equilibrium and then we wouldn't be here." You've got places like San Francisco that have such tolerant policies towards homeless people that people gravitate to San Francisco to be homeless, which is

31:24really kind of crazy, but true. People have actually moved there with the intention of like taking advantage of all their services, taking advantage of the food and shelter, and the ability to do whatever you want, and you know, you can actually get money from for certain services in in San Francisco. There's like a fine line between helping and encouraging people to continue lifestyle. And for some people, the freedom of just being able to camp and do whatever you want, like they're they've checked out, right? For whatever reason, whether it's mental illness, whether it's just they prefer this sort of vagabond lifestyle. I don't know what it what it is, but is there a like is there a line that you have to make sure you don't cross over where you don't make it easier for them to be homeless. You want to encourage them to take advantage of these things

32:17you were trying to set up. What you're talking about providing them with wrap-around services where you can actually reintegrate them to society. Like how do you make that distinction? Well, you know, so much of the debate and discussion around homelessness has turned so political. Like so many other kinds of discussions, but but homelessness is is one of the big ones. So, I have continued to ask the people that are working daily with the universe of people experiencing homelessness in our city. About 10,000 people in any given year intersect with our homelessness system. About 3,000 people on any given day in our city experiencing homelessness. And I've asked that question, are we pulling people in? And what they tell me consistently for the last 6 years, 7 years, is that you can find anecdotally where that has happened. But generally

33:10speaking, the overwhelming number of people experiencing homelessness in our city are people who fell into homelessness here. The people that are coming into our city, most of them are coming from the areas immediately around us. I had one of them tell me once that there's not a a Fodor's guide to cities for people experiencing homelessness. And Austin would be in danger going from two stars to three stars, and people would start coming. We have enough challenge getting people experiencing homelessness to go from one side of the city to the other side of the city once they have a have a place. Um so, where I'm looking at here, and I know that that the governor you know, Gavin Newsom in in California uh told people that uh that Austin and and Texas were giving people tickets and sending people to to to California. Did he say that? He said that.

34:07Not true from I mean, I No. Wait a minute, that guy lied about something? That's crazy. That's what I hear. Uh but the uh Um so, so I'm I'm I'm just, you know, we we just need to get We need to get people We need to get people off the street. So, what the council did was we said um we we made it work with veterans, and then I tried to scale up what we did with veterans, but I couldn't get the the resolve to spend the money. And part of the reason was is because people didn't see the challenge. So, there'd be some neighborhoods that were willing to do it. I knew as as sure as the sun was going to come up the next day that this was now accelerating in our city. So, what we said was, "We're going to maintain the ordinances that say if you threaten public safety or public health, you can get arrested and ticketed and put in jail cuz that's important.

34:56Somebody's doing that, they should be arrested and ticketed and put in jail. But if they're not doing that, if all they're doing is surviving, then it is inhumane to either put that person in jail or to force that person to live down in the streams and in the woods cuz you you it's an even un- worse place for them to be. So, we Why is it a worse place for them to be camping in the woods than to be camping on a public street? Well, in Well, one, you don't want anybody camping in a public street, either. Right. So, that's not a solution to the challenge. You can't have that happen, either. Uh but if somebody is in the woods or down by the streams, they're not interacting with anybody else. So, you have you have hundreds of women that are getting assaulted every night as the price to be able to live in that environment because they're they're secluded and

35:55they're not safe. So, you mean if a homeless woman moves to the woods, she's in danger because there's no one around her to protect her? Unless she picks a protector. Unless she She's not in a community of homeless people. And so, this is one of the reasons why these people gravitate towards these places like that Eighth Street underpass because there's a lot of them together and there there's a sense of belonging. and they can see it. Our health officials can find them. We're now vaccinating our entire population of people experiencing homelessness cuz we can find them. The The that we made is that when we did something that meant people are going to come out of the woods and the streams. We should have identified at that point where people could go and not go. Mhm. And we didn't do that. We didn't We didn't manage the public spaces, the

36:41shared spaces the way that we should have. So, what the council did that summer is we said, "Okay, we're going to decriminalize it because every person who you know in 19 in in in 2016 thereabouts, we wrote like 18,000 tickets. And as you imagine, very few of those people ended up in court the following Thursday to pay their fine. They end up bench warrant issues for their arrest. And then you can't get they can 6 months later they have trouble getting a job or an apartment because now they have a criminal record. Right? So, we said, "We're just not going to do that anymore." But, on the same day we did that, we asked the city manager to come back with a set of rules that would say, "Okay, so we we we Where is it that people can go and can't go?" Uh and uh for lots of reasons that never happened. And that's where we made our mistake. So,

37:33if you could go back and do it all over again from the moment you got in the office, what would you have done differently? Well, the the what we did initially uh in terms of with the veterans was real successful. I would do that again. It proves up the model. Can you explain how how that works? Like how what what what what did you do exactly for the veterans? Well, veterans are a little bit easier because they come with resources. So, they come with what are called VASH vouchers from the federal government, which is support to to help do rent supplements. Uh but it then it was reaching out to everybody in the city uh that had apartment building big managers of apartment buildings with these vouchers. And we would say, "Would you take in these vets?" And then and people were willing to do that. Um we had some landlords that were

38:19suspicious of and say, "I'm not going to do this cuz if I take someone like this, they're going to trash out the place." And when they leave, they could be 6 months to evict them. So, I got together with some private businesses and the like. We created a risk fund outside of city government, and we put it into the community foundation, and we said, "If you take a tenant, and they trash out your place or create a problem, you call in the morning, you get a check in the afternoon." Mhm. All the landlords said they don't believe me cuz it's city, it's going to take you 5 months. I said, "It's not in the city, it's privately funded. We're doing it outside the city." That's a great solution. It was great, and and it it took trusting the landlords that they weren't going to be making claims unless they actually had problems. So, you you start with this. You take

39:03the veterans, you have this these vouchers, you bring them into apartment buildings, you get them places. That's step one. So, now they have a roof over their head, but how do you help them clean up providers in the city Mhm. all said, cuz we all got everybody together, and we said, "Let's let's let's get to equilibrium with veterans." So, which means that I mean, you can never end homelessness, but what you can do is get to a place where the rate at which you house people and they come out of housing back to life is the same rate at which they show up experiencing homelessness. I said, "Let's do that with veterans." It was part again of a federal program. What percentage of the homeless folks are veterans? You know, I think it's probably right now about 6% something like that. I think the number was higher back then cuz we had more

39:50veterans on the on the on the streets. But, the service providers all came in and said, "Okay, if you can house vets, you can find places for them, we'll start prioritizing them for giving them services." So, how do you let these vets know about this, and how do you locate the vets? Well, the the people are on the streets right now. I mean, there's the service workers, the the the the mental health interventionists. And they basically go tent to tent, they ask folks, "Are you a veteran? If And then there's special programs. There's special special programs. What I had thought was is that once we were successful there, we would be able to scale it up to everybody. Mhm. But much to my distress, I learned that a lot of people were involved not because they wanted to help people experiencing homelessness, they wanted to help vets. And I understand that.

40:32But when we moved out of vets, I had trouble getting the commitment to raise the resources to be able to do it for everybody. And that's And so so for for 2 years, we were really unable to get the resources necessary to do it. The reason that I feel optimistic right now on homelessness and and and I do, more than I have in the last 10 years in this city, is because in our city right now, because it's become a political issue, because of the vote we just took, um because of everybody getting so angry, the vote. The vote is that now it's illegal to camp on the city in the city streets. a there was a referendum and the and the community said, "We don't like tents. Get rid of the tents." That what we're saying. Uh let's criminalize it again. Um you know, as a practical matter, criminalizing it isn't ultimately going to help. We have to enforce the new law.

41:26So so the manager and the police chief are charged with doing that. But what we need to do is scale up the same thing we did with veterans. And for the very first time, we have our Chamber of Commerce business organization, Downtown Austin Alliance business organization locked arm in arm with the Austin Justice Coalition and our homelessness leftist advocates all all agreeing on what it is that is the plan. And for the very first time, we have, I think, the access to the resources using uh the 1.9 our share of the 1.9 trillion dollars coming out of DC. And what several of us on the council, and I think a majority of us on the council, have said is rather than taking that dollars from the federal government and splitting it up 50 different ways and sending it out to people. What if we actually took those dollars and put them

42:19toward the homelessness challenge in our city? Let's take the lion's share of that money, put it to one challenge. Let's get the county to do it, then let's go to the foundations in the community and say, "We're going to take this challenge off the table in our city." This is the moment because it's only 3,000 people on any given night. Going back to what you said earlier. All right, it's a theater full of people. this. It's not that not that big. We can do this. It's workable. We can set up the system. And if we set up the system, then that system then that equilibrium place then takes this challenge off the table for us for for an indefinite period. was no fiscal considerations, if someone could come to you and said, "Steve, you got an open check. Like tell me what you need to do. What do What do you want to do? How would you handle it?"

43:08If there was no worries whatsoever about money. If you could just build structures and house the homeless and then it's not just about getting them housed and cleaned up and fed. It's also about figuring out drug programs. It's figuring out mental health programs. It's figuring out how to get them gainfully employed. How to get them counseling. Maybe there's some serious psychological issues that are leading to them being on the street. Everyone is different. You've got a wide spectrum of problems and issues and what would you You would You would You would We know that there are a lot of people that need services. But we also know if you try to give those services to people while they're intense or while they're in congregate living situations, the success rate is down like a 20%. Why is that? you can't always find them. Because they'll move in and out of those

44:03places. So, it's hard to actually know where they are to focus. Makes it harder for them to get a job when their address is in a congregate shelter somewhere. They lose their papers. It just life is that much harder if every moment of every day you're trying to survive to the next moment. Get somebody into a home then they can work with their social worker and actually begin to pull things together. So if you get them into the home much more successful those services. So we have to get places for people to be plus those wrap around services. Most of the people that are experiencing homelessness are not people that have mental health challenges or substance abuse challenges. Most people are the victims of the perfect storm. I mean they are literally people married family and then there's this like huge medical bill and they can't pay it and it starts

44:54causing problems between them and their spouse. They have a bill collector that's now calling them all the time. So they start paying that bill sometimes and then not their car bill all the time and then they lose their car. That causes friction in the in the household. Things are getting like really ugly at this point. They don't have the car and one of them loses their job. And then the next thing you know spouse leaves with the kids, car's gone, the bill collector is still coming and then and then person loses their apartment and they end up on the streets and they raise their hand and they say I need help. I don't know who to call cuz they literally have no one to call and they say if you can just help me help me for a month or two or three I can right this ship and get back. If you can get them off the street into a home with a job training program or

45:45even just stabilize them get them what they need real good chance they can get back into life. But if the longer you leave them on the street the longer they're there the harder it's going to be for them to be able to pull back. The wait list right now in Austin for somebody in that situation who raises their hand is is is like a year year and a half to get housing. So, we're creating a lot of the challenge that we that that we're dealing with cuz we don't have the capacity. Uh and and that's been the frustration. But, for the very very first time, we actually have the agreement on the plan, the way we measure it over time, exactly what it's going to cost. We have the We have the resources from the federal government. I think we're having foundations now that are uh in discussions willing to to to step up and take a a big piece of this.

46:34Before I leave office here in the next year and a half, my number one priority Now, if you could, what would you do? Would you build large apartment structures? And when you do that, how do you connect that to to guidance? Like, how do you connect that to counseling? How do you connect that to, you know, healthy meals for these folks? How do you connect that to, you know, someone who's going to give them counsel? Someone who's going to tell them like, here's the steps that you need to take to get back on track. Let's work on this together. Here's your project. This is what you have to do today. And this is what I'm going to do to help you. Well, you you don't you don't create any living situation without already having those support services part of it. So, you don't just put them up in a hotel. No. It wouldn't It wouldn't work. Right. Right.

47:30And there are lots of different models about what that could work look like. So, we're we're buying now some motels, hotels, uh because it's it's it's cheaper and better for taxpayers to do that uh than it is to to build something new. We're working with developers in the city that have a track record of success. We have people like uh Mobile Loaves & Fishes and Alan Graham that have built small kind of communities of of mini homes. I mean, there are lots of different ways and and the people that are doing this again are like 90-95% successful. I don't know what you do Joe about about about poverty. I don't know what you do about racial dispar- I mean, uh uh uh wealth disparities among on racial lines. I mean, there are some issues that are societal issues that are so big, I don't know what you do with. But, homelessness, we know exactly what

48:25works. And it's purely a question of is the community serious enough about putting the resources against it to fix it. Has any community brought homelessness back from like a a a very high level to a much more manageable level? Has anyone been successful? Houston, just down the street is real successful. So, but but Houston did is they started doing this 20 years ago. Mhm. So, 20 years ago they went to HUD in DC and they said, "We want to start building and buying places for people to go. We're going to give them services cuz we think this will work." And HUD supported them like as a pilot program. And it was successful. So, every year they've gotten more stand for? Housing and Urban Development. One of the cabinet offices in DC. So, they they they uh uh got funding. They were successful. So, every year they've gotten more and more

49:18funding. So, every year I think this past year or recently they got over $40 million. I think Dallas was like at 11 and Austin was like at three. What we need to do in Austin is what Houston did over the last 20 years. We need to do it over the next three years. I mean, it works. But, it's going to be more expensive for us in the next three years or so than it is in Houston. But, once you get there, once you set up a system because people move in, you know, you one, you divert as many people as you can before they get to that place. Once they if they get past the diversion, you didn't divert them, then you get them into some kind of rapid re-housing, emergency housing, exiting them to permanent supportive housing, hopefully exiting them back uh to to to to society. And then you keep filling, backfilling those spots. Then if once you reach equilibrium in

50:09that system, then then then it then it doesn't cost LA budget this year. Did you see that? The LA line item for homelessness this year in their budget, a billion dollars. A billion dollars. I don't even know what to do. I mean, it's crazy. And guess what? It's not going to do anything. It And it won't. Their numbers are so big that it won't set up their system. Yeah. It and then it becomes just massive bureaucracy and that nothing gets done. The problem with a place like LA is that it's too big and there's too many people and it's just not going to get done. And that's the one thing that I look at Austin, I go, "This might work." Like, you can kind of it seems like you can kind of manage things way better when you're dealing with a million people than when you're dealing with, you know, whatever Los Angeles has now. When you're talking

51:02about 3,000 homeless folks, how many counselors do you need? How many people do you need working on this problem? How many like you're obviously going to need folks that are experts in helping people rehabilitate and getting back into society. And you're going to deal with a bunch of different kinds of scenarios. Some people have extreme mental health issues, some people have drug addictions, some people are like the story that you just laid out earlier, just a bunch of things happen, the perfect storm, and they wind up being homeless. So, the plan that So, so our Chamber of Commerce criminal justice advocacy group. And and and I've watched them move last 5 years be at town hall meetings where they argue with each other over what it is that's supposed to happen. Uh they they they engaged in a facilitated conversation. Chamber, D.A., Downtown Austin Alliance,

52:02ECHO, the umbrella organization, a facilitated conversation. They invited me to participate. It felt like a marriage counseling session. And what they what they they brought in an outside person uh and they were trying to come up with a small exercise project that they could do together to build trust. And what became apparent when they were actually got in the room with the facilitator is they could agree on what it was that was the whole plan from from from A to Z. Uh they couldn't fund it. But they could agree on what the plan was. But the fact that they could agree on it was the first time I had seen that in in my lifetime in this city. Uh and then more and more people started surrounding that and saying, you know, if they're going to agree that this is the right way to go, then then we ought to figure out how to fund this thing.

52:51And that's where we are right now. So, that plan that they came up with with the facilitator, by the way, one of the architects of the practice in Houston, came in and I think that it said that they have to increase their capacity of people to do the kind of casework that you're talking about by about 250 people. So, they're bringing about 250 counselors {slash} rehab experts {slash} job specialists, people that can help these people become gainfully employed, people that can help these people clean up. And then what what could be done to incentivize these people? Like could is it giving them hope in the sense of like marking progress and making a you know, making a like a show of it, like saying this is fantastic. Look what we've done. We're all working together. I know everybody here is down and out or you're in a situation where you'd rather be in a

53:47better situation. We can all help and look at these examples of ways we've done it. And look at these examples of people who've been like you, who've gone through this program and are now happy, normal members of society and maybe some of those folks can even come back and help and offer counseling and maybe even speak to these people and say, "Hey, I was in the position that you were in and we can all get out of this together." And they and they and they do. But remember that this universe of people that are experiencing homelessness run the gamut. And most of them don't have the mental health challenge or the substance abuse challenge. Most of them don't. So, it's a question of just helping those people right themselves and then get back. Uh but and there'll be some people who are just gone. Right. Uh and and really what you're really

54:35trying to do is to find a safe place for them to be uh and and decrease the frequency with which they're interacting with police and showing up in emergency rooms. you do that? Well, you know, in our city, just by way of example, the 250 people that are most chronically experiencing homelessness, that have the most significant challenges they're dealing with, the frequent flyers in our emergency rooms and in jails and all that, are costing our collective community, our collective community, about $220,000 a year. 250 250 people each $220,000 a year. Each person? Each person. About $50 million our community pays every year for those 250 people. That seems like a problem. That's it. You think? Yeah. All right. That's how reality shows like The Hunger Games get started. What have we Somebody looks at Somebody goes, "I got an idea." There's there's a better idea.

55:35But but to take those 250 people, you know, and and and really get them to a safer, better place. All the statistics, all the studies show they're going to end up in the emergency rooms less, end up in the hospitals less, end up in jails less. Most of the people are eager to be able to actually get a job. There's a dignity in having a job. Right. And and you know, in our city we have workforce solutions, which is the local arm of the federal uh Department of Labor, where they bring in programs. And we're trying to train people at our city. We have tons of great jobs in the city. What we don't have in this city are the middle-skilled trained people to take the middle-skill jobs, cuz we have a lot of them that are available. We don't have people that are trained to do them. We have a lot of people who can step into a $150,000-a-year job, plus.

56:29So, we have a program to train people, to give them less than a four-year degree, less than a two-year degree, a certificate, so that they can go do do something. By the way, a a welder in this city right now, with a brand new certificate, makes 80 and 90 thousand dollars a year. Uh that's not a two-year degree. But but so, our workforce solutions, I asked the number the other day, how many people have you brought into your program that self-identify as experiencing homelessness? It was like six 650 people in their program over the last two years. I said, what success do you have of actually putting somebody into a job? It's 65%. We ought to be doing that kind of thing. So, part of it is new people, part of it is giving greater capacity to the to the services that exist, so they can create more slots. Um but that's where we are

57:20right now. I mean, it's pulling all those pieces together, uh so that we can actually do that. If we do this, if we do this on this timing, I think we're going to be the first city to be able to accomplish that kind of of turn in that period of time and it only happens because our challenge at this point is about average. I mean people see it in the city right now because of what the council did 2 years ago. So it is, you know, in everybody's face right now. And people want to do something about it which is which is great. But what they don't want to do, I don't think, is send people back to the woods. They want people out of tents. It is inappropriate, it is wrong to have people tenting on our streets or on our overpasses. That is not a good place for them. It might be better than being in the woods, but it is a bad place for

58:11people to be. And we have to get tents gone. So buying up hotels and motels, buying up places that are available, and then having all these people in place, and you think this can all be ramped up and become a successful program by the time you're you're out of office? I don't think it will be finalized cuz I think we'll be in the middle of this 3-year period of time, but I think it'll be tracked. I think the money will have been committed and raised. And there'll be a glide path for 3 years. There'll be a group that is in charge of governing this and holding people accountable that operates outside of government. It will be the city or the county because these challenges are too big for the city or the county. It's got to be a place that has funders and foundations and businesses all part of the of the governance of this of this process.

59:06Now, the hardasses amongst us would look at this and say this is a personal accountability issue and these people need to get their [ __ ] together, you know, and then why should we help them? Nobody helped me. That kind of thought process. Um but then the more compassionate would look at maybe those 250 people that keep getting arrested over and over again and saying how much would it cost to talk to those 250 people and work with those 250 people and figure out a way to change their perspective and bring like there's two different schools of thought, right? There's a school of thought, you know, these people need to figure it out on their own. This is school of thought as they are, regardless of their circumstance, they are a part of our community and we need to figure out how to help them. Like what arguments do you get pro and con in

59:51that direction? Like what what arguments do you get in terms of like the the 250 problem people that keep getting arrested and wind up in the hospital? Like what There are two extremes. All right, so there's there's the there's the one group of people who say I am only concerned about the aesthetics of this issue. Right. Get them out of here. Right. Put it somewhere where I don't have to deal with it. Not I mean just make it go away. And then there are the people that are only concerned about um um taking care of people and they and they don't believe that uh there is a need to to to manage shared public spaces in a way that actually preserves for the public the use of public spaces. Yeah. They're only concerned about the person experiencing homelessness. What I have found in our city is that there are while those two extremes exist, almost everybody in this

60:45city has some of both. They they don't want to see it and there's got to be a better answer to it, but they want you in a city that has so much going for it as much resources as this city has. We ought to be able to solve for this in a way that we're proud of. Yeah. Uh it's almost like I wish there was like a contest where people from around the country or around the city or well wherever it would be could come in and like there would be a prize. If you could turn any of these 250 people into working productive members of society, figure out how to clean them up, counsel them. I wonder what could be done if there was like real incentive, you know? If like say if there was like a million-dollar prize for whoever could take these people and turn them turn whether it's a small number of them or even just one. Take a person who's completely down and

61:40out and look and just go over their record, look at their what what's happening in their life. It seems like it could be done with enough resources and attention. You can change people's lives. But could you you know, like how much would that cost and would it be If you're thinking about $250,000 a year for each one of these people, that's what you're saying? 220. 220,000 dollars a year. It seems like you pay someone $100,000 a year just to babysit these [ __ ] people, you'd save $120,000 a year and you might be able to fix it. Like some of these people it's there's got to be a way to get through to them. People can change. It's really hard, but they can change. If you got enough attention and enough motivation, you hit the right frequency with them, talk to them in a way that resonates with them, give them like manageable

62:31goals that they could sort of get momentum going and start recognizing that oh, if I do these things and continue to do these things, I can actually live a better and healthier and happier life. It seems like Yeah, I'll drive over to you. Yeah. And and and I would love to see that and and and there's got to be has to be more and more that because what Austin is dealing with right now is not very dissimilar from what's happening in a lot of cities around the country right now. They're just not dealing with it. Yeah. Which means like in another four to six to eight years, what you're seeing happening in LA is going to start happening in in many many more bigger cities around the country. taken to mitigate it. cuz people aren't. They're hiding it. They're they're letting it be in places people don't see. It's going to come out. This is a national issue. Yeah.

63:21And then my hope is, well, I would love to have it have it happen today, but at some point in the next, you know, four to six to eight years, uh it's got to be that that nationally the government stepping into this and saying we've got a this is an emergency, we've got to fix this. Yeah, it seems like it has to be Again, there's this thing that people want personal accountability, they want people to just go and figure things out on their own, but it has to be recognized that different people start off in life at different places. This idea that we we all have equal opportunity is nonsense. It's just not the case. And so if equal opportunity doesn't exist, you can't have equal expectations. You just can't. Some people come from horrific abuse and drug-abused families and violence and crime and they're they're just they didn't start at the same spot

64:17as you or I. They They got unlucky with where their their station in life is. And as a community, the compassionate thing to do is to try to give those people a hand, reach out, give them a hand. But it's like how much? How much do you do? And how much is it How much are you doing where you just enabling and encouraging people? You don't want these sort of like really uh overly progressive programs that ultimately do more harm than good because it just enable people to continue to live this life. You want to kind of guide them, right? Right. And and and what the studies show is that most of these people, and it is not everybody, but most of these people, if you can give them a key to a room, they will take that room rather than being out on the street so long as they can bring their pet or their girlfriend uh so long as they're not being asked to

65:17to do another 10-point program cuz they've done 20 of those and they're just not going to do that again. But if you can get someone into a place where they're safer and then get them the services, you'd be surprised at the number of people, the success rate of getting people to stabilize themselves. Uh, and then there's just dignity in work. There's there's dignity in community. There's when you start giving people back that measure of dignity, that's what that's what most all of these people want. Not everybody. There are, you know, but but most all do. Yeah, and you got to have, I guess, different plans in place for different kinds of problems, right? Different plans in place for the people with mental health issues. Different plans in place for the people who are drug addicts. Right. Different plans for the people that just are unfortunate.

66:08This last year, um, I would imagine as a mayor of a city had to be insanely challenging with all the issues regarding whether or not to open or not to be open. I mean, this is the only time in our lifetimes where the government has actually stepped in and said, "Hey, we have to shut down businesses and we have to deem certain businesses essential." What was that like? Horrible. And and especially horrible here in Austin uh, because we had South by Southwest, which is a huge festival. You know, brings in 250, 300,000 people from all over the world coming into our city the second week in March. And we're looking at this this this virus that is like moving across the the the world and and people are dying. Seeing it now hit in California and and Seattle. And we're just about to bring 5,000 people from Seattle into our city. You know, we could be bringing in 10,

67:1115, 20,000 people from Asia uh into our city. Um so the very first thing that that that I had to do was working with the South by folks who were incredible and the doctors and the data was to say, "We're going to pull down this event." Uh and it was resistance did you get for that? Uh there was a lot of resistance. Uh there was also a lot of support uh because people were seeing what was happening. You know, within 10 days, it wasn't an outlier anymore. I mean, everybody was pulling down big events in cities across the country and it all happened within 7 to 10 days. Uh but that first one uh was was was hard. I mean, it was hard all year long with businesses cuz you want to keep things open. Uh you know, Austin has has done this well so far. The the mortality rate in Austin is half of the state average. The mortality rate in Austin less than

68:10half of the of the national average. Doesn't Don't you think that has to do with a lot of the active people here though, too? It has It does. I mean, we're younger population, healthier population, but it's also true about cases. Mhm. And it doesn't explain the number in in in cases. Uh you know, it's the same way it does death or hospitalizations. Uh you know, this and a lot and as I was as I've said to my community from the very beginning, this is not about laws or ordinances cuz ultimately you can't enforce these things anyhow. Right. It's trying to get the information out to people as best you can and then a community makes a decision about what it's going to do culturally uh in in its communities. And in the city, the people leaned into it. What was it like watching different cities all across the country have different responses, different states

69:01have different responses, and to try to figure out who's doing this the right way. What is the right path to take? Is the path to give people personal responsibility? Is the path to insist on very strict government inspired lockdowns? Like, how did you sort of navigate that? You know, we we had a an incredible team of people at the University of Texas you know, the the physicians at the Dell Medical School, but also the the the statisticians and the and the modelers modeling out all kinds of different scenarios and then the data getting better and better for the models as as each week passed. We had a really good health authority here in in in Dr. Escott, you know, a a director of the of the public health department, Hayden Howard. Um we just had we had good people and we got positive results from some of the early steps we we took. Uh

70:08but I watched what was happening in the country. It was hard for everybody, you know, around the country cuz no one knew But I have to say you guys handled it so much better here than so many other places. So many other places they they put these very draconian methods into place and it just ruined the economies of these places. You guys didn't do that here. You know Right now, you know, we we have not only a mortality rate that's less than half of what it is in the state. If our state mortality rate was the same as in Austin there'd be over 25,000 Texans still alive today. But we also have one of the lowest unemployment rates of any city in the country. It's pretty amazing. Um I think unfortunately obesity is a factor in Texas. I mean, the food here is just too damn good. It's a real issue. Well, it's a lot of tacos. Barbecue. But, that seems to be a

71:03gigantic I mean, 78% of the people that are in the ICU for with COVID are obese. You know, it's a it's a real issue. And so, fortunately, Austin is an incredibly active city. You know, you go down the lake and you see all these people running around and it's like it's a very very active city. And there's a lot of people that engage in all sorts of different outdoor activities and you know, all those things are conducive to good health and healthy immune systems and I think that's one of the good things about this city. Magical place. Welcome home. It's pretty [ __ ] awesome, man. Um, you had a little problem during the pandemic with that one thing you did when you you kind of told people to stay home when you weren't staying home. I was already gone. What was that What was that about? What was that storm like when people got upset at you?

71:54You know, it was a it was a mistake on so many different levels. You know, I went on a trip at a time when it was okay to take a trip. I got information while I was on the trip. I should never have have warned people back home. What was the motivation to warn people? Like, what were you thinking? I got new information that once I was as I was gone, I got new information that indicated that there was a growing cloud. And I reported it. And I should have come home first, then reported it. Yeah. And I didn't. I mean, on so many different levels. Hm? How did you get busted? Uh you know, I it was nothing I was hiding, you know, so I was publishing pictures of it and and I just didn't think there was anything I I hadn't realized it, but it was a month afterwards. So, it happened like the first week in November. And then in December you got Yeah, in December

72:44So, people figured it out. They put the two and two together and said, "Oh my god, that guy was on vacation when he was saying to not do anything." Right. Right. So, it That a mistake and and you know, I obviously regret that and you know, it's been a it's been a a sore spot and and I wish I hadn't done it and I apologized but you know, now I just need to focus on on what it is that that is the work to be done. Well, it's quite a long time ago but there there was these different schools of thought about how to handle the the pandemic, right? There's some people said just leave like like the governor when he said uh we're going to be 100% open. No mask mandate, do whatever you want. Everybody was like this is crazy. You're going to kill people. The the president called it Neanderthal thinking but then months later everything's fine. I mean, he it turned

73:37out he was correct. And it was a good move. if I was governor, I probably would have done things a little bit differently. you have done differently? I probably would have extended some of the stuff in another couple weeks. But why? If you see how it worked out. Well, remind you, you know, our mortality rate is half in Tex- in Austin as what it is in the rest of the state. Uh so there was no question but that it was time now to open things back up again. But you know, we we we we encouraged our city to keep their masks on and and not to do big blowout parties on New Year's Eve. Uh and I think that that that reduced our numbers from doing that. Uh so you know, I don't know. You know, I don't know either. That's the question right there. I mean, it's like everybody's a Monday morning quarterback in this thing, right? Except for the

74:28governors and the mayors, you know, you folks are the ones that have to make the tough calls and and when you're looking at it, like I talk a lot of [ __ ] but the reality is I'm not a mayor, I'm not a governor, you know, I would not know what decision to make or not to make. My inclination is to always give people freedom but I also know that some people are way more vulnerable than others, you know, and if you're a person like myself who's always exercising and eat healthy, that's one thing. But if you're a person who has not um I'm you know, I'm a compassionate person. I don't think you should be thrown to the wolves cuz you've overindulged and you drink too much and you should just die now because there's a disease floating around that you know, Picture that. miss Yeah, it just for whatever reason it it finds people like that and it's

75:11much more dangerous to them. Did Was there any ever a time where you guys decided or a thought about some kind of a program put together to try to get people to to exercise and to eat better and to supplement with vitamins because those are the steps that we've shown to absolutely help in increasing the potency of your immune system. And and I think, you know, cities need to play in that space. Uh that's why we've we've really uh put resources against the running trail around Lake Austin. You know, there are you know, tens of thousands of people that are that are on there all the time. You know, we do pretty big programs with the employees city. So, you know, 14,000 people and then we, you know, encourage kind of contests and motivational stuff with other large employers in the in the city. Is there something you could do though

76:03to get the word out about that to the rest of the population? Just to let people know I mean particularly things about like vitamin D supplementation which you really you don't get vitamin D unless you get it from the sun or you supplement it. Those are the only two options. And one of the studies showed that out of the people that were in the ICU for COVID, 84% of them had insufficient levels of vitamin D. It has a tremendous impact on your immune system. Like just telling people to supplement with vitamin D would have a a huge impact on people's health and immune system. Getting people to take multivitamins, getting people to drink more water, getting people to cut a lot of crap and processed foods out of their diet. All these things, you know, could be promoted and really should be at a time like this where it really does make

76:46a big impact on who lives or dies. Yeah, we should have been doing a better job of that. We should be doing a better job of that. You know, if this pandemic's told us anything, it's it's this this virus sought out people with comorbidities. This virus sought out people you know, not everybody. There were some healthy people that got really sick, too. There were really healthy people who died. Um but by and large, the the lesson of taking care of yourself really shown to be true in this this this virus. Did you do anything different with yourself over this past year? Recognizing that it it does make you more vulnerable. You know, I should have been doing more than I than I was. You know, I I ended up creating a little studio like this, you know, right off of my bed, and I'm not sure I ever moved very much from the from the from the screen. I mean, it's

77:34been really hard You've mostly been working remotely. Yeah. Well, listen, man, you don't have an easy job. It's thankless. It's very difficult, but you're the mayor of one of the best cities. And again, welcome home. It's great to have you here, and I can't wait for you to open up the the club and and uh you know, the this is a magical place, and the people that are moving in are are adding such richness to the community, and you're part of that. So, thanks for being here. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Good luck to you. I hope you can do something about this homeless situation. I really hope your plan's on track, and if you need anything, I'm here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Eric. All