Beto O’Rourke: ‘Living Close To Work Shouldn’t Be a Luxury for the Rich; It’s a Right for Everyone’

O'ROURKE: "Here's a tough thing to talk about, though we must. Rich people are gonna have to allow or be forced to allow lower income people to live near them, which is what we fail to do in this country right now. We force lower income working Americans to drive one, two, three hours in either direction to get to their jobs, very often minimum wage jobs so they're working two or three of them right now. What if, as we propose to do, we invested in housing that was closer to where you work, very often mixed income housing, meaning the very wealthiest are living next to those who are not the very wealthiest in this country, to make sure that they can both afford to go to the same public schools. That we really have that as a place where in this divided country right now you can come together without regard to your income or your race or your ethnicity or any other difference that should not matter right now. What if we invested, as we propose to do, in high-speed rail and in transit in all of our cities to make sure that if you do not have a car or do not want to use a car, you will not need to have one or you will not be penalized for not having one right now? So having cities that are smarter, that are denser, that have people living closer to where they work and where their families are, to reduce our impact on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, but also just to improve the quality of life, you know, in these built environments, that's an extraordinary opportunity and in our plan to combat climate change we make those investments. Thank you for asking. We appreciate it."