Welcome back to the show, everybody.

Today we are very happy to be joined by current Lieutenant Governor and Democratic

candidate for Governor in the state of Michigan, Garland Gilchrist. Lieutenant Governor, thank you for joining us. I'm glad to be here with y'all. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we really appreciate you making the time to come on. Yeah, for sure. So in your mind, what are the biggest issues facing Michiganers today? And what makes you the guy best equipped to solve them? The question is not what's on my mind. The question is in what's

in the minds of the people of Michigan. And so as lieutenant governor for these last six and a half

years serving alongside Governor Whitmer, I have been literally all over Michigan. I've been to all

83 counties of our state across both financials at least three times. So for me, I've had thousands of conversations with people, with families, with business

owners, with students all across the board.

And what they tell me that it comes up like very consistently in every conversation.

Housing.

Affordable housing, available housing, the different versions of that in different communities.

Healthcare, particularly mental health services that people can't access or can't afford. I hear about just the economy in terms of not only just like prices, not only in terms of jobs today,

but in terms of what do people see as their place in the economy going forward? Like, like, is my job still going to be here or is AI going to eat it? Like, it's this industry that Michigan's focused on. These ones, they're going to be the ones that we need to be focused on going forward. And then the last thing, it is pretty personal for me to when that's education. You know, I got three school-age children to go to Detroit public schools. My baby girl who just turned six on June 15th. You know, she's a rising first grader. My twins are rising seventh graders. And I think about how to urgently improve their outcomes. And so those are the things that I hear about from the people of Michigan. But I also hear, they want a problem solver. They want somebody who can, can, like, hear what they're saying and they're like actually find a solution to build a solution to fix the problems. And so, you know, when you've got a problem, get you an engineer to fix it. I'm an engineer. That's what I do. I make things happen. So on issues like housing or education, what is the plan currently? Yeah. So, again, in every community, whether you're in a city, a suburb, a rural community, like people are saying, if not enough homes I can afford, or if not those that are available to me, whatever my station in life is. I talked to, like, for example, school leaders, principals who've been trying to hire chemistry teachers for three years. They would, like, make an offer to a teacher. the teacher then comes in with a family, they go, they tour to school. Oh, it's great. And they go to the community to see if they can find a house they can afford. They can, you know, be enough for them and their two kids. They don't find that. They give them the job offer back. This is a real problem. So for me, you know, as an engineer, nothing frustrates me more than like a problem that's not solved or a tool that can solve a problem that's not being used. And so that's why, after hearing all these conversations, I got to work. Michigan's had a housing trust fund called a state community development fund. We've had it for decades. I'm talking 50, 60 years. It's been on the books. And it never, ever got used.

Housing trust funds literally exists to invest in affordable house. But it's never,

in fairness, it wasn't wasting money because nobody ever put money in it. God. You only have

money in it for two years in 2011, 2012, when the Democrats had a brief majority in the state house.

So what I drove is a $250 million investment into the community development fund and now a $50 million

ongoing investment into that fund. And that is why you have seen tens of thousands of housing

units come online in Michigan just in the last four years at a rate of which we have never seen

in the history of state of Michigan. In fact, just in May, right after Memorial Day, I was able to

announce, make it announcement with a home builder that actually they were going to increase

their capacity to output more of new homes by 10% every year for the next decade because of these

kinds of investments. So this is about building more homes faster,

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