‘This is Your Life in Silicon Valley’: Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf discusses Prop C, Uber, Bay Area Sports and more

Image Credits: The Washington Post / Contributor / Getty Images

Welcome to this week’s transcribed edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley. We’re running an experiment for Extra Crunch members that puts This is Your Life in Silicon Valley in words – so you can read from wherever you are.

This is your Life in Silicon Valley was originally started by Sunil Rajaraman and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff in 2018. Rajaraman is a serial entrepreneur and writer (Co-Founded Scripted.com, and is currently an EIR at Foundation Capital), Kaykas-Wolff is the current CMO at Mozilla and ran marketing at BitTorrent. Rajaraman and Kaykas-Wolff started the podcast after a series of blog posts that Sunil wrote for The Bold Italic went viral. The goal of the podcast is to cover issues at the intersection of technology and culture – sharing a different perspective of life in the Bay Area. Their guests include entrepreneurs like Sam Lessin, journalists like Kara Swisher and Mike Isaac, politicians like Mayor Libby Schaaf and local business owners like David White of Flour + Water.

This week’s edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley features Libby Schaaf, the Mayor of Oakland. Lots of ground is covered during this interview, including Uber’s proposed move to Oakland years back and some insight as to why it fell through. We discuss the Prop C battle from the election, as well as the future of Oakland sports.

If you enjoy hearing about the future of the Bay Area and one of its major cities then this episode is for you.

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Sunil Rajaraman:

Welcome to season three of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley, a podcast about the Bay Area, technology, and culture. I’m your host, Sunil Rajaraman, and I’m joined by my cohost, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

This is Your Life in Silicon Valley podcast, and today is actually a pretty special day for us. We’ve been doing the podcast now for over a year. We’re in our third season. We’ve had an amazing set of guests, and today, tonight, is our first live podcast recording. We’re actually sitting in a room right now that feels like it has air conditioning, which is very different than the closet that Sunil and I usually lock ourselves in as we’re doing interviews, and we’ve got about it looks like 7,000 or 8,000 people that are here with us (sarcasm), which is pretty amazing. So thank you to everybody here, and we happen to live from The Battery, which is absolutely amazing membership club in a beautiful space here in San Francisco. So we’re pretty excited, right Sunil?

Sunil Rajaraman:

Yup, and we have a great guest today.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Who’s the guest, Sunil?

Sunil Rajaraman:

Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

We are incredibly excited and feel very privileged to have Mayor Schaaf with us this evening. We’ll get a little bit of a view into the making of a podcast. Typically what happens is we just start into a conversation, and we have the conversation all the way through, and at the end of it Sunil and I get together and we record a front and an end. Tonight we’re actually just gonna start straight in, and we’re gonna have the conversation all the way through, and then we’re gonna wrap up, and Sunil and I will actually do a little bit of work after this fact before we launch the podcast on Monday. That’s what the target is for us. So we’re not gonna belabor with introductions too much, although we are incredibly lucky to have you hear tonight, Libby, so thank you very much for making time out of our day to come visit with us.

Libby Schaaf:

I’m happy to be here.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

How many podcasts have you done, just out of curiosity?

Libby Schaaf:

Probably fewer than 10 and more than two.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Okay. We’re not the first. We try. We have really only two rules, two questions, one rule. One rule is there are no cuts, so we just talk all the way through. Two questions that we always ask, and the rest of the conversations are gonna flow. The first question we’ll start out with has everything to do with you. Our podcast is all about the culture of the Bay Area, and most of the people that are in the Bay Area are not actually from the Bay Area. Myself and Sunil are actually both transplants from different parts of the country.

Sunil Rajaraman:

I was born in Saratoga.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

But really, okay fine. I give him that a little bit.

Libby Schaaf:

Saratoga might be another part of the country.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I kind of feel like it is.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Oh, burn already. I’m not getting off to a strong start here.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

No, it’s true. It’s so far south that water goes in the other direction. For us one of the things that’s most interesting is learning about where you spent your time growing up and in particular what brought you to the Bay Area. We happen to know that you grew up here, so we’ll change the question up a little bit. You grew up in the Bay Area. Talk about your life growing up, and really one question on top of that. At what point in your life did you say, “I knew I was going to be the mayor of Oakland?” Was it like six years old?

Libby Schaaf:

No, it was like five years ago. Actually it was, like, on election day four years ago when I knew. Being born and raised in Oakland is so much of who I am, what my values are. It absolutely drives me in so many ways. I always say that Oakland is not just a place on a map. It is values. It stands for things. It’s a place where social movements have launched. Everyone from the Black Panthers to the Hells Angels. It’s a place that believes in protest. And it also has this gritty authenticity that I love so much and I fight every day to preserve. It’s full of artists and creative energy. It still has a working class ethic, but it’s going through an amazing moment of chance. But first and foremost Oakland has always been hell of proud of its diversity. That is something that I grew up just knowing that I lived in a very special place.

I always remember this moment. I was a Girl Scout growing up, and I went on this international encampment, and I was a little disappointed. I’d ask people like, “Oh, I’m from Oakland. Do you know where that is?” And not everybody would know until I brought up our sports teams. Sports always locate people. Until somebody said to me, “Oh, Oakland. Aren’t you afraid to live there?” And I was too young to fully understand kind of the insidiousness of institutionalized racism, but I knew from that moment that that judgment made me angry, that my city was beautiful because of its diversity and was a beautiful place to live that had its urban challenges but had so much strength. So just lifting up the beauty of my city has really been a lifelong passion.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I think that’s a super nice way to talk about Oakland, but I wonder has that always been your view of Oakland? Was there ever a point where you were like, “I think I’m ready to go somewhere else?”

Libby Schaaf:

No.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

No.

Libby Schaaf:

I went away for school partly because Oakland was full of distractions, but I kept on always coming back like I just couldn’t be away for long. I love my city. I believe in it.

Sunil Rajaraman:

I’m really interested in this question of, okay, we all have jobs or I think most people have jobs. But you wake up, you’re mayor of Oakland, one of the top 50 metropolitan areas in the United States. Just very tactically what does that look like? Do you have a group WhatsApp with the other top 49 mayors? Are you chatting with each other about problems? What do you wake up and actually do?

Libby Schaaf:

I have these mornings where as I’m driving to work maybe I’ll check my text before I go in or I’ll check newspaper headlines. I’ll get some calls on my way to work, and I like to say there are days where by the time I’ve arrived at work I’ve had three flaming bags of shit thrown in my window. That’s part of being the mayor of any city. Every day it’s a new adventure. I run a police department. I’m in charge of the road conditions. There are a lot of challenges, places for missteps that are part of my daily life.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

But is there like a support group for mayors?

Libby Schaaf:

My first support group is my family. I have two very darling children and an amazing partner who is just an advanced version of what a man should be. I have an incredible team around me in the mayor’s office. I never make big decisions alone. But, yes, mayors do talk to one another, and particularly in times of crisis. I reach out to Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh, with the horrible shooting in the synagogue as someone who’s gone through a massive loss of life tragedy myself or many mayors reached out to me in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire, so yes we do take care of one another. We tell our stories that only we can get. And, yeah, we lean on each other.

Sunil Rajaraman:

So scare us a little bit here. We all know the scariest thing that can happen with our Commander in Chief. A decision could lead to drastic ramifications. Let’s just say he decided to make the biggest and worst decisions possible for Oakland that could affect as many of us in the Bay Area. What would that decision be? What is the scariest thing?

Libby Schaaf:

Dropping a nuclear bomb on Oakland. That would be bad. It’s probably not out of the question with this particular Commander in Chief. We’ve definitely had our words with one another through Twitter and through the media. You may remember when he was running for president he actually said that Oakland was one of the most dangerous places on the planet, and I was very shocked when I looked up at the TV screen in the airport waiting area and saw my tweet response, which was that no, Donald Trump’s mouth is the most dangerous place in America.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Are you a social media person?

Libby Schaaf:

I was afraid you were gonna ask me this question. Social media and I have a challenged relationship. I think we need a little couples counseling. When you are a politician social media is a very, very angry, upsetting place. And I mean that in a couple ways. One, it’s really frustrating as someone who is trying to resuscitate any faith that you all might have remaining in elected officials, particularly in this day and age and when there’s a lot of mistruth on social media it’s very frustrating. But even more than that particularly because of my little battle with the president and my very outspoken position on being a sanctuary city of which I’m very proud, and really wanting to protect and make feel safe every member of my community regardless of where they came from or how they got here. I’ve had people post pictures of my children on social media and say that they hope an illegal kills them. Those are things that are really disturbing, and I will be honest with you, I give elected officials advice that as a mental health gift to yourself stay off social media.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I think that’s good advice in general. Let’s talk about Prop C. Your perspective as a mayor of Oakland on San Francisco’s voters decision on Prop C?

Libby Schaaf:

Ooh, you’re asking me to wade into another mayor’s political territory.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Absolutely. We’re on the San Francisco side today.

Libby Schaaf:

Listen. I think it is very difficult for anyone who lives in the Bay Area to take a position against more resources for homelessness, period. This is the moral crisis of our times in so many ways. Homelessness is the evidence of failure of just about every major system that we have. And we have got to feel ashamed that in a region that is so wealthy that we allow our fellow men and women to live like this. Now, that said, obviously as someone who’s in government there’s a lot of devil in the details, and how those resources get allocated are really good questions. But the need for more resources, I believe is clear.

Sunil Rajaraman:

You come at it from a different angle, though. You introduced a program last year if I’m not mistaken. It was the Keep Oakland Housed Project. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Libby Schaaf:

Sure. And let me start with the proposition that I believe to really change the world and to do it at some reasonable amount of time public, private partnerships are the way to do it because government was designed to be stable and predictable, which means we don’t change quickly. We don’t respond well, and we don’t take risks whereas the private sector is willing to do all those things. And yet no matter how much beautiful nonprofits like Battery Charged or Battery … What was this called again?

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Power.

Libby Schaaf:

Power, Battery Powered, raises you can’t touch everybody. You need your public systems. You need the government to do its job because we touch everyone, and that is where you have fundamental transformation. Keep Oakland Housed was really a recognition that while we address the housing shortage, while we address triaging people who are on our streets we have got to go upstream and prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. And I am pleased to report that the results have been spectacular. In our first six months we kept just under 500 households from becoming homeless. And the average cost was $3,000. What I’m talking about is someone who’s housed, but something happens in their lives that interrupts their ability to pay their rent.

One story was a developmentally disabled adult who was actually the breadwinner of the household taking care of his very, very elderly mother. Their washing machine broke, and he could not figure out how to navigate keeping his work uniform clean without a home washing machine. He got disciplined. He was sent home from work, and that made them fall behind in their bills. So not only did Keep Oakland Housed catch them up, keep them from being evicted, provide them free legal assistance, but bought them a washing machine, and also provided some case management to make sure that they could remain stably housed in that situation. That’s just one story of 500 in our first six months.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Is there a city or a place we can point to outside the Bay Area that’s doing a good job handling this problem? I feel like every pundit has a take just like everybody has a take on how to fix Facebook and social media right now. That’s the latest one. But you have so many smart people weighing in on this subject. It’s the journalist, it’s the mayors, it’s everybody. Does anyone have it figured out or more right than someone else?

Libby Schaaf:

I think the best examples are outside of the United States. We have cities particularly in Northern Europe where homelessness does not exist. Housing, shelter is a right, and the government invests in that just like we invest in roads and a sewer system and all sorts of public systems housing is considered public infrastructure. And I think that is the type of mindset that we need to start shifting towards.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I want to shift gears a little bit. How much do we dislike the Raiders in here?

Libby Schaaf:

Is my friend from the 49ers still here? I’m very bitter at the Raiders. I’m, as you know, born and raised in Oakland. Stood in the rain at their last Super Bowl victory parade when I was in high school only to see them leave for Los Angeles the very next year. Got them back at a price that was really unreasonable, and now they’re screwing us again. So I’m very bitter. We made a very, very reasonable bid to keep them here with Ronnie Lott and a group of privately financed folks that were gonna help us build that stadium. And I believe that the NFL definitely deserves to be sued for really abusing fan loyalty, abusing the brand where a team and the place that it represents are inextricably linked especially when you’re talking about Oakland and the Raiders.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Yeah. You talked about earlier on how sports sometimes are the way point for how we recognize where people are or can help people relate to us. So what do you next? The NFL is not the only sports team that anyone cares about or the Raiders are, but what do you think about next?

Libby Schaaf:

No, and I think the NFL has engaged in a little bit of questionable decision-making lately.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Just a little.

Libby Schaaf:

On some other topics or issues. I am working very, very well with our baseball team, and we’re very excited about a waterfront ballpark right next to Jack London Square where the ferry lands, so you San Francisco’s can just get your cocktails on on the ferry, arrive at an A’s game. You’ll be so happy. And the views are spectacular. So that is actually proceeding extremely well. I think the A’s, Dave Kaval is like the Energizer bunny, has a great attitude, really is listening to the community about what the community needs out of this project. And then the Warriors. I actually take great offense when people put the Warriors and the Raiders in the same sentence to say both your teams are leaving you. The Raiders are leaving us, absolutely. The Warriors are moving their building, but the team is still ours. They’ve always been the Golden State Warriors. In fact they originally played in San Francisco before they built their arena in Oakland. Their commitment to staying involved in the community has been unequivocal, and I think you’re gonna see some exciting announcements to really demonstrate that they mean it.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

And what’s your overall take then? Is there going to be an impact with the Warriors moving their stadium? What is the actual net impact to Oakland? How will it be felt into the community?

Libby Schaaf:

Well, the dirty truth is that sports teams do not necessarily economically benefit cities. Sorry Raoul if he’s still here. It’s one of these little dirty secrets. We actually lose money every time the Raiders play a game in Oakland because of how the lease and the game day expenses are arranged. Again, I believe that civic pride has a value, so I don’t just look at it in terms of dollars and cents. I believe that Oakland with a new A’s ballpark, very exciting at the waterfront, still the home of the phenomenal Golden State Warriors. How fun is it to watch these guys play?

Sunil Rajaraman:

This is probably a bad time to say that I’m a Cavs fan. High school was Ohio for me. I’m sorry, 2016 3-1.

Libby Schaaf:

Yes, I’m sorry too. I think that is also makes room for people to get more excited about emerging sports. Let’s have some women’s soccer teams in Oakland. Let’s also evolve around what we consider the basis of our pride.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

How do you think about the space that the stadiums have been in? What do you want to do there?

Libby Schaaf:

Oh, at the Coliseum?

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Yeah.

Libby Schaaf:

I’m really excited about what the A’s have put forward as a potential development. That really is much more community serving, a lot more housing, affordable housing, more businesses. And their design kind of leaves the ball field there, so it’s almost like a historic relic. We can all come worship at it and think about all the amazing things that happened there. But they’ve designed something that really addresses the threat of sea level rise. Their commitment to environmental justice has been impressive to me. And their interest in having a world class youth sports academy on that site, so that you are still having a sports use, but instead of high paid professionals you actually are nurturing the next generation of athletes from East Oakland. That excites me.

Sunil Rajaraman:

I want to stay on this subject of moving a bit and speaking of moving. You’re probably seeing an influx of a lot of tech companies especially with the boom here, lack of affordability in San Francisco. What’s the city’s relationship like with tech at the moment? I would just love to hear your take on tech culture and what you feel about it.

Libby Schaaf:

Yeah. There’s a lot of tech bashing going on right now in the Bay Area. There’s a lot of fear about tech companies moving into Oakland. We had Uber coming, and people were freaking out about that. And then they changed their mind, and now we have Square coming. When Uber announced that they were moving to Oakland I sent a very well publicized letter to them, which was basically welcome, we’re excited you’re coming, and now let us tell you what our expectations are for you to behave well.

I think that is for us all to really be clear with companies how you come into a community, how you really own the fact that tech does not look like America, that the board members, the highest paid employees do not reflect the diversity of my city and that you have an obligation to do something about that and that there are ways that you can support the community other than buying a ticket to a rubber chicken dinner. You can think about what products are you purchasing? What services are you using? Are these companies that are owned by people of color? Do they pay a living way or are they working cooperatives? Do they have some other type of social impact? I will give this to Uber. When they were thinking of moving in we introduced them to a great Oakland company called Red Bay Coffee. It’s a worker’s cooperative. It hires almost exclusively formerly incarcerated workers, and they make damn good coffee. And Lord knows those of you who work in software probably need to stay caffeinated.

So that was a good story, and even when they decided to not come to Oakland they actually continued their contract with Red Bay. I believe it’s still in place today. It’s created a lot of great jobs. And that type of thought in what you’re buying, who you’re hiring I think is really important for tech to embrace. I am still really hopeful and optimistic about the role of technology in solving our problems.

Sunil Rajaraman:

What company do you want to have move to Oakland?

Libby Schaaf:

One that actually embraces our values, and that could be any number of companies, and it could be one that I haven’t heard of yet.

Sunil Rajaraman:

We’ve done a lot of these interviews now, and it is a recurring theme that we hear, a criticism of tech is just lack of civic responsibility. Here we are in San Francisco, and we sometimes don’t even go to the local restaurants because lunch is served in the cafeteria. Is there an example of a person or a company that you could point out to that is consistent with Oakland’s values that you think is doing a good job within the community?

Libby Schaaf:

Sure. Pandora started in Oakland, has never had a cafeteria very intentionally, wants their employees to go out and support the local mom and pop restaurants and bars. And, boy, we’re getting a lot of good bars in Oakland. I think that has always been part of their value from the get go. And then I’ve gotta give it to Marc Benioff in Salesforce. His very intentional analysis of the gender pay gap. His actually wading into politics, his going into Indiana and saying, “If you do not remove this homophobic legislation I’m pulling my company out of your state.” That is brave. And he threw down on Prop C. The fact that Salesforce was gonna be, like, the sixth-highest taxpayer under Prop C, the fact that he put millions of dollars into actually getting it passed that is pretty phenomenal. I think that that type of attitude that you have a responsibility not just to your shareholders but to your stakeholders that your company cannot succeed if it is in a community that is failing. That is the type of thinking that we need.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Yeah, we touched on this earlier but on the other side of that was Jack Dorsey. If memory serves, and I’ve gotta fact check this, just let me edit after time. But Mayor London Breed was on the Jack side of the argument, was she not? Did you have a conversation with her about that?

Libby Schaaf:

After the election was over I did. Again, I think the devil is in the details. Sometimes you can be for the cause or the issue but against the specifics about how you have to address it. And I think that that was her distinction. After the passage of the measure she’s actually fought to try and get it implemented, so I think she’s come around on that issue. Again, we all have got to work closely together. And I think you’re gonna see a lot more regional conversations around tackling homelessness. Sam, London, and I are constantly in contact. But to really look at the Bay Area because people often don’t just stay within one jurisdictional boundary. We really have to see our interconnectedness and our interdependence.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I think Benioff is like the political darling of the Bay Area as a tech CEO. We actually heard, was it you Sunil, who said that he’s thrown his hat in the ring for the 2020 election also?

Sunil Rajaraman:

Yeah, no.

Libby Schaaf:

Oh, who’s not running for president.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Yeah, right.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Do you have an announcement to make, by the way. I feel like-

Libby Schaaf:

No, I’m also about Kamala. I love Kamala Harris.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Just making sure because we heard …

Libby Schaaf:

She’s my hometown girl.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

There’s rumors. So you mentioned bars and restaurants in Oakland in particular.

Libby Schaaf:

I heard I was gonna have a glass of wine at this podcast. Come on.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Sunil and I like to keep it very straight and steady with our glasses of water. In all seriousness, though, top two restaurants. You’re kind of every week I want to go to this restaurant in Oakland, and your this is a special event, I want to take my family out for a nice meal. Top two restaurants in Oakland?

Libby Schaaf:

You know it’s really bad to make the mayor choose favorites. They’re all my favorites.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

You’re just trendsetting. You’re not choosing a favorite, just trendsetting.

Libby Schaaf:

Why don’t I just give examples of the two most recent restaurants that I’ve eaten at.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Alright.

Libby Schaaf:

My favorite business lunch restaurant is a wine bar called Downtown Wine Merchants. That’s because it’s right across from City Hall, but it actually has really good food, and on Wednesdays Maria makes homemade enchiladas that will knock your socks off. And then for a more fancy dinner I recently took my former Chief of Staff, Tamika Moss, out to Duende, which is Spanish fare. It’s an old floral depot building that’s this beautiful old art deco building, and it’s right in the heart of all the bars and scene that’s going on in uptown on Telegraph right across from the Fox Theater.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Those sound like favorite restaurants to me. Thanks for picking the favorites. I’m just kidding.

Libby Schaaf:

I have no favorites. I love them all.

Sunil Rajaraman:

So Mayor Schaaf. I have a confession to make. I do this thing. We live in San Mateo now, my family, and I go on Redfin. I do this once a week. And I look at where I can move, and I look at real estate in the Bay Area. I have this negotiation with myself and say, “Okay, I could still live in Oakland and reasonable commute to San Francisco if I had to, et cetera.” Does anyone else do that? I’m curious, just by show of hands. Everyone does that. Okay, alright. So give us the sell on the East Bay for those of us who don’t live there, just if you had to sell Oakland on the East Bay.

Libby Schaaf:

Oh man. I have never seen a city that has a more inspiring mix of raw nature. If you like nature like redwood forests and streams and hiking up in the hills there is a ton of nature in Oakland. And yet you are in the middle of one of the most vibrant, hopping, hip urban centers in the country. And the international flavor. Again, Oakland just last month was named the most racially and ethnically diverse city in America. And it’s not just that that’s the only kind of diversity. It’s diversity of genders, gender identities, family compositions. It’s all there. Everyone walks around the lake, just all of Oakland’s … It’s like a giant community living room around Lake Merritt.

And yet you’re in the middle of the city. You have all the culture and arts and amazing food, and it is so much less expensive than San Francisco. And the public transit is amazing. I just popped over here on BART. I take BART all the time. It’s so funny. People are like, “Aren’t you the mayor? You take public transportation?” I said, “Yes, I’m not stupid.” It’d take me twice as long to drive. The access is great. The vibe is great. The diversity is great, but it’s really beautiful, just beautiful.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I love it. We’re getting close on time. We’ve got a couple more questions for you.

Libby Schaaf:

All right, bring it.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

In the Bay Area as the mayor of Oakland what is the topic that you want this audience of mostly San Franciscans [to be aware of]. It looked like for our listeners maybe about a quarter raised their hands that they commuted in from Oakland here to San Francisco, so I’m gonna assume that the rest of you that are here in our audience are from San Francisco in particular. What’s the one topic that you want San Franciscans to know about that’s important to Oakland?

Libby Schaaf:

Institutionalized racism. I think it is something that we don’t notice enough of. And when we look at our housing policies, when we look at homelessness, when we look at the criminal justice system there are forms of oppression that have just been baked into the system. And I think we have got to be brave and talk about it, talk about its impacts, and start unraveling it.

Sunil Rajaraman:

I want to talk a little bit about something you just went through, the teacher strike, and thematically how this is something that seems to be happening across the country — Oakland, Los Angeles, I think it was Denver, West Virginia, Kentucky. What’s going on and how is this gonna play out, and what do you think the long-term solution is? Are we gonna see more of this? What’s going on?

Libby Schaaf:

Yeah. And on a personal level the strike was really hard for me not just as the mayor, but I’m a graduate of the Oakland public schools, and I have two kids in Oakland public schools, and there is only so much Fortnite that a 13-year-old can play in a week.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I don’t know. I have a young kid. I don’t think there is a limit of time that they can play.

Libby Schaaf:

I’m just like, “Please Dear God, let us settle the strike because I cannot take this boy in my house anymore.” But seriously I think it’s telling that professions that have been traditionally dominated by women are traditionally underpaid, so let’s just put that out there. Thank you for a little snapping out there. Secondly, we have to as a state say that public education is worth investing in. And yes, that means reforming Prop 13. That means changing the way that our tax structure works. So it pained me because there was so much anger between the officials of the district and the elected school board and the teachers. And really the enemy is much bigger than what is inside Oakland. And clearly this trend shows that this is not an Oakland-specific problem. It is much bigger than that.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Yeah. And cost of living it’s crazy. I think I read somewhere why that’s now even in San Francisco it’s well over $3,000 to rent a one bedroom, and Oakland is sort of approaching that. Again, they’re just kind of struggling with what is the long-term fix.

Libby Schaaf:

I’ll talk about two things. One, it’s time that we all take responsibility for the fact that we all play a role in educating our children. It’s not just the job of the public education system. One of my big passions in Oakland is something called the Oakland promise where we are literally giving newborn babies that are born into poverty $500 college savings accounts and financial coaching for their parents. And there are different supports all the way through different points of people’s lives all the way to having personal mentors for kids that get into college including community colleges and multi-year scholarships to make sure that kids don’t just go to college. They get through college. And that’s an investment that we as a city have made in partnership with a lot of philanthropy. I think that kind of attitude investing in opportunity, investing in things that break intergenerational poverty is part of the question because we need higher earners to afford this expensive Bay Area.

And then we’ve gotta lower the cost of housing. There are a lot of things that have increased the cost of living, but nothing compares to what has happened with rents in this Bay Area. And we know that that’s not just an affordability issue. It’s also a supply issue. We’ve gotta build. Oakland’s doing its fair share. We’ve got more than 9,300 units of housing under construction. For the first time ever actually we’ve built more housing in Oakland last year than San Francisco did.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

We have a final question that I’m gonna prep you on, and then I’m gonna ask you another question as well just because to be fair there was a little bit of skepticism in the audience here. To be fair you said, “I like to spend time away from social media,” so we’ll give you a bit of extra time to think about this. We asked all of our guests as we close out each show who is the follow person, organization that you think everybody that’s listening should actually go and follow. It could be on Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram wherever you spend your time, Facebook, could be watching the news.

Libby Schaaf:

Well that’s easy, me.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I like that.

Libby Schaaf:

Next question.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

You don’t have to answer that yet. But let’s talk about you. When you finish your term as mayor what do you do next?

Libby Schaaf:

That’s such an impolite question.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Yeah, right.

Libby Schaaf:

I honestly have no idea. I really don’t.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

State, national politics?

Libby Schaaf:

The one thing I promise you, and I’ve worked behind the scene in politics long enough to have seen people that were running for this next job while they were doing their current job not very well. So I have always promised myself that if I ever had the incredible honor of leading my hometown, the city that I have been madly in love with all my life I will cross that finish line in an exhausted heap of gelatinous mess because I will have just taken every ounce of energy of every cell of my body to try and make my city a better place, and I have no consciousness beyond that very single mission.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

I’m inspired. I think I’m gonna move to Oakland. That’s inspirational. If that isn’t inspiration I don’t know what is.

Libby Schaaf:

What part, the gelatinous mess part?

Sunil Rajaraman:

Yeah, that’s usually me every night on the couch watching Netflix falling asleep to the Sopranos. Let’s pin you down to the social networks that you spend your time on, and yeah everybody here is going to follow you obviously. If you’re not already, you’re gonna pull out your phones and do that in a moment. But who should we all be paying attention to?

Libby Schaaf:

Okay, not Donald Trump.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Clearly.

Libby Schaaf:

Thank you. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. I think these are two of the boldest leaders that I have seen. There are so many politicians that play it safe, and these are two people that have courage. And I think we need to support them because if you go on a politician’s social media feed you will see the daggers and the yuckiness, like I said threats to your children’s lives. So please give people love for actually sticking their necks out. Reid Hoffman said to me once, “Thank you for throwing yourself on the hand grenade of public service.” So, yeah, I would say Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Alright. I just have to ask. I’ll throw in another one. I’m curious to get your technology take now. Let’s just say, and you don’t have to say anything bad about Mark Zuckerberg or whether you think he should be running Facebook or not, but let’s just say you could put a CEO of Facebook in right now if he decides to step aside, who do you think would be a great CEO of Facebook?

Libby Schaaf:

What about Jen Pahlka. Jen Pahlka is the founder of Code for America, and she really believes in the power of technology to transform government to truly be for the people by the people. So I think that kind of attitude about both the responsibility and the power of technology is the kind of attitude we want. I guess my second choice would be Kiran, right here. She’s amazing. What are you now, the COO of Neighborly and general counsel. Yeah, she’s really cool. I would put her in too.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

For our listeners you can’t see her, but she looks very impressive, I assure you, and very CEO like. So Google her after you listen to us.

Libby Schaaf:

Kiran Jain, J-A-I-N. Do you have an interesting social media feed? Should we all follow you? Time to get interesting, okay.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Mayor Schaaf, you’ve been amazing. Thank you so much for spending the evening with us.

Libby Schaaf:

Oh no, thank you for having me. Thank you to the Battery for hosting us. And take care. Love Oakland.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

How many of you have listened to the podcast? Nice. So we’ve got maybe about half or a little bit less than half. So everybody that is here that has a phone, which I’m gonna guess is everybody, take your phone out. Pop open whatever, iTunes, Stitcher, Breaker, wherever you’re listening to this podcast from or you want to listen to the podcast from and do the following. I love Sunil. You guys probably know this that listen to the podcast. I love Sunil so much that every single time we record a podcast I say to everybody that’s a listener I love Sunil so much that every chance I get I rate him five stars. And if you that are sitting here in this live audience love Sunil as much as I love Sunil, which I’m just gonna assume you all do, please go to that podcast app, find this podcast, rate us five stars because it actually helps this podcast get even more distribution, so thank you for doing that.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

Yeah, please do. Just hit subscribe. If you include a little comment with the rating that’s awesome too. Also I’ve been using a new player called Breaker, which I really like, so that’s another one I like. We want to say thank you to Erica from Mozilla. Erica if we can have you stand up. Erica works with the mayor and the mayor’s team most recently and made the connection for Sunil and I so all of this happened tonight because of Erica.

Libby Schaaf:

Let’s just be clear. Erica usually was the one that was telling me about the flaming bags of shit coming into my window. That was her.

Sunil Rajaraman:

Erica’s awesome. A special thank you to Karissa Torres-Cruz who is here in the audience. She’s one of our producers and helps us run the whole podcasts. All of the amazing guests that we hae on she helps us organization and run everything, so thank you Carissa. We want to thank El Sur Restaurant, so actually you don’t know this yet but you are gonna get some food from El Sur, which serves empanadas and is one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco. Thank you to Marianne Despres who might be here. Maryann are you here? Well, you’re gonna get amazing food, so standby for that. Very special thank you to Tyler who is our sound guy. He’s over in the corner. What you may not know about Tyler is that he’s always sitting in that tiny little hot, sweaty closet with us. And kind of our joke with Tyler is that he’s always got his shirt unbuttoned down to his belly button, and tonight he’s wearing a jacket, so thank you Tyler for the jacket and for being an awesome audio guy.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff:

And thanks to The Battery, Colleen and Stacy for really helping put this together. Would you attend a never live podcast, just straw poll, yes, okay. We’re working on a professional athlete for the next one, stand by.