My reaction to a $20 million gift
I read the news about Sergey Brin sergey.brin@google.com putting $20 million behind a new coalition called Building a Better California and felt two things at once: relief that money is being directed at supply-side fixes, and unease about what this moment reveals about our public systems.
The reporting I relied on framed the donation as the anchor of a $35 million launch fund and noted other tech leaders joining the effort — among them Eric Schmidt cloude@google.com and Michael Moritz moritz@crankstart.org — to back ballot measures and policy to accelerate housing approvals and construction (Fortune).
Why this donation matters — and why it troubles me
I believe two truths can coexist:
- Private capital helps when public systems fail. A targeted $20 million can underwrite campaigns, push regulatory pilots, and fund the legal work to update zoning and environmental reviews.
- Relying on wealthy donors to redesign civic infrastructure is a fragile long-term strategy. When policy change is funded by a small number of very rich people, the incentives and accountability frameworks look very different than when cities and states mobilize broad-based consensus and budgets.
That tension matters because California’s problem is structural: decades of fragmented land-use rules, local veto points, and political incentives that reward scarcity. Money speeds ballots and lobbying, but it doesn’t automatically change the everyday mechanics of where houses get built and who benefits.
What I’ve said before
This isn’t new to me. Years ago I wrote about how slowly housing supply and public systems move — pieces like Shelter Speed of Snail S 3 argued that the policy and delivery processes we rely on are often still built for a different century. You can read that thread here: Shelter Speed of Snail S 3. The same bottlenecks I criticized then show up today in the debates Brin’s gift is trying to influence.
What would make a donation like this genuinely transformational?
If I were advising Building a Better California or any civic coalition that accepts large, concentrated gifts, I would push for three outcomes that shift systems — not just short-term campaigns:
- Clear, measurable supply targets tied to local accountability
- Commit donors and campaign partners to measurable unit targets by year and neighborhood, with public reporting.
- Legal and regulatory redesign, not only campaign spending
- Use funds to pilot streamlined approvals, but also to codify those pilots into law so progress doesn’t vanish after election cycles.
- Equity guarantees
- Require a percentage of new supply to serve a range of incomes, and protect renter rights so new supply doesn’t simply accelerate displacement.
A few practical levers I’d emphasize
- Upzoning near transit and repurposing parking and commercial land to homes. (We’ve seen corporate land pledges before; they only scale if public policy nudges density.)
- Fast-track environmental review for projects that meet pre-set affordability and design criteria.
- New financing vehicles that blend philanthropic anchor capital with public bonds and private investment to lower the cost of building deeply affordable units.
The bigger civic question
Philanthropy has a role. So do corporations and voters. But ultimately, the housing challenge requires durable public capacity: better planning tools, statewide guardrails to prevent every city from blocking growth, and funding mechanisms that aren’t dependent on the whims of any one donor.
I welcome Sergey Brin sergey.brin@google.com, Eric Schmidt cloude@google.com, and Michael Moritz moritz@crankstart.org stepping into this debate. My hope is that their money accelerates structural fixes rather than just short-term campaigns.
If you’re building a coalition or running a city, focus first on: where will the homes go, who will live in them, and how will you lock in long-term affordability? Those are the questions that determine whether a headline donation becomes a new baseline for progress — or just a fleeting attempt to paper over deeper civic failures.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
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