Governor-elect Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters on the floor of the Assembly chambers on December 3, 2018 at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California.

In summary

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s housing budget tries to do a lot—including building way more housing for California’s middle class.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s housing budget tries to do a lot—including building way more housing for California’s middle class.

Newsom has called for over $500 million in new state money to finance homes for moderate-income Californians. What exactly does “moderate income” mean?  In some incredibly expensive parts of the state—think San Francisco—it means subsidizing apartments for families with six-figure incomes.

Newsom has called on Silicon Valley firms to match his new investment in middle-class housing. But some housing experts—including those at the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office—worry that housing resources aren’t being prioritized to those at the lowest rungs of the income ladder.

On this episode of Gimme Shelter, the California Housing Crisis Podcast, Matt Levin from CALmatters and Liam Dillon from the L.A. Times explore Newsom’s housing plans for the middle class. They then interview low-income housing advocate Tyrone Buckley, who says the housing crisis enveloping higher-income communities has drawn more attention to the struggles lower-income communities have faced for decades.

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Matt Levin was the data and housing dude for CalMatters. His work entails distilling complex policy topics into easily digestible charts and graphs, finding and writing original stories from data, yelling...