Gov. Kathy Hochul last week offered New Yorkers a preview of Tuesday’s State of the State message, where she will outline her priorities for the next legislative session.
Among the priorities listed were expanding consumer protection laws, increasing medical and disability leave benefits, eliminating co-pays for insulin, and “bold action” to protect New Yorkers from medical debt.
What was conspicuously missing from her new list of priorities was the centerpiece of last year’s State of the State message — the ambitious, controversial, much-maligned, politically unpopular and ultimately unsuccessful plan to expand housing throughout the state.
Hochul last year set a goal of creating 800,000 new homes statewide over the next decade.
For upstate counties, her target was to increase housing in municipalities by 1% over three years. Targets downstate, where the housing crisis is more critical, were set at 3%.
To meet her goal, about 80% of all localities in the state would have needed to permit about 50 new homes or less over the next three years.
Broken down like that, the creation of 800,000 homes over 10 years seems manageable.
Yet the plan essentially went nowhere.
The problems the governor encountered in getting legislation passed centered on the political unpopularity of housing mandates and the aggressive way in which she proposed achieving her goals.
That last part included a proposal to force local communities to ignore their local zoning laws to get more housing built and subverting existing environmental regulations that protect communities but also serve as impediments to new housing.
Ultimately, state lawmakers rejected the governor’s plan and offered no significant alternative proposals, leaving the problem unsolved for another year.
Given how New York politicians are fully aware of how unpopular a housing mandate is with many of their constituents, and given how every single state lawmaker is up for re-election in November, it’s no wonder the governor didn’t want to emphasize housing again in her centerpiece speech this year.
But the governor and the Legislature also can’t afford to kick the problem down the road another year just because they’re afraid of losing votes.
This crisis has been building for decades. It’s disproportionately affecting poor people and people of color, and it’s driving residents to other states where housing is more affordable and available.
Continued state inaction is not an option. What’s needed is another approach to the problem — this year.
First, the state needs to abandon any past efforts to circumvent or override local control over development to force communities to create more housing for moderate- and low-income individuals.
This situation requires a carrot, not a stick.
That means offering developers incentives to construct new affordable housing and offering landlords, particularly in cities, incentives to convert existing office space into apartments.
The state also needs to look closely at state regulations that are deliberately designed to exclude low-income housing, and to look more closely at zoning and environmental impediments the state places in the way of new development to see if there’s a way to reasonably and safely modify them without jeopardizing the environment or public health.
The governor and lawmakers also need to focus on ways to keep people in their existing homes, such as with some kind of modified “good-cause” eviction legislation that protects landlords and tenants, state rent vouchers and other means of housing assistance.
The housing crisis isn’t going away, and postponing action to avoid voter backlash is not only cowardly, but it will make the crisis more difficult - and more politically challenging - to solve in future years.
A cooperative, incentive-based approach with modifications to state laws that undermine the goals of creating new housing is what’s needed.
And it can’t wait until the politicians feel safe enough to move ahead.