NY Gov. Kathy Hochul demands lawmakers sign off on Eric Adams’ ‘moonshot’ NYC housing plan: ‘Let them build!’
Gov. Kathy Hochul demanded state lawmakers sign off on key portions of City Hall’s “moonshot” plan to build 500,000 new homes and apartments across the five boroughs as the housing shortage in New York and its suburbs continues to worsen.
Hochul’s challenge, issued Tuesday during her State of the State speech, set the stage for a second bruising fight with lawmakers over how best to tackle the crisis after they rejected her bid last year to require city neighborhoods and the suburbs to approve more housing proposals.
“Now, I remember last year, number of the loudest voices in opposition said they believed in local control,” Hochul told lawmakers.
“Okay, let’s put that to the test — the City of New York, which is a local government, wants to build 500,000 more homes,” she continued.
“I agree! Let them build!”
Her remarks earned a thumbs-up and broad smile from Mayor Eric Adams, who was in Albany for the speech — and who spoke enthusiastically with reporters about it afterward.
“I am confident that we’re going to land the plane around housing. We have a lot of conversations with the entire industry and lawmakers and everyone realizes we have an inventory issue and an affordability issue,” he told reporters at the Capitol.
Hochul’s plan largely backs City Hall’s housing wish-list, calling for:
- Reviving a program, 421-a, that offers developers property tax breaks if they set aside certain percentages of the units in new buildings for rent stabilization;
- Setting up a similar program for the conversions of office towers into housing;
- Repealing a state law that allows narrow buildings to be taller than wider ones, which critics say costs the city needed apartments;
- Ordering state agencies to find ways to speed up and simplify environmental reviews for new housing developments.
Hochul’s case is backed by piles of research from academics, government watchdogs and reform groups that have shown: The Big Apple alone faces a tremendous housing deficit of nearly 350,000 units; state laws and city regulations have stalled the construction of badly needed homes and apartments; and how the lengthy approval process for many new projects can increase the price tag by as much as 15%.
“The only thing that will solve this problem is building hundreds and hundreds of thousands of homes,” Hochul said during the speech.
“Spending more money or insisting on new regulations will not get us out of the deep hole dug by decades of inaction,” she added. “Already, New York has vastly more regulated housing stock than any other state, but it still hasn’t meant more homes for people and that’s where the status quo has failed.”
The politics of housing might be the hardest of all the nuts to crack in Albany.
Lefty lawmakers in the legislature have pushed back hard against Hochul and Adams, arguing — despite the academic research — that new development fuels gentrification.
They want to tie authorizing increased production to legislation that would allow tenants facing eviction to contest rent hikes in housing court, a measure detested by many landlord groups.
Some Manhattan liberals agree, arguing the reviews and state regulations are needed to prevent overcrowding, while outer-borough and suburban lawmakers have pushed back against any requirement to build new housing, claiming it would overwhelm local streets with traffic and schools with students.
The Assembly’s housing committee chairwoman, Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), paid little mind to the housing portion of Hochul’s speech and instead was seen typing on her phone and trying to chat with other lawmakers.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: housing supply :handshake: tenant protections. Looking forward to working with my colleagues + @GovKathyHochul to craft an holistic housing plan that addresses both the short-and-long term realities of NY’s housing shortage,” she worte on X.
She had fewer words for the Post, telling the paper’s Albany reporter: “I don’t want to talk to you.”
Rosenthal curt response came just days after The Post highlighted how she questioned the need for more unsubsidized housing and said it was easy for New Yorkers “of means” to find housing during an exchange with city officials at a sparsely attended hearing.
In reality, the monthly rent for new leases in Manhattan soared above $5,500 last summer and prospective tenants often found themselves lined up around the block trying to snag one of the few available units. She later backtracked.
