Housing Nixed in Latest Budget Talks

“It’s done. It’s not happening,” an Assembly source told New York Focus. Lawmakers are poised to reject measures to boost housing supply and protect renters.

Sam Mellins   ·   April 20, 2023
|

State legislators in Albany are likely to remove all major housing policy from this year’s state budget, rejecting both measures to boost housing supply and proposed legislation to protect tenants from eviction and homelessness, three sources told New York Focus.

State Assembly leadership informed members of the decision this afternoon. “We haven’t passed the budget, so who knows what it will be, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to be doing significant things” on housing, said Democratic Assemblymember Robert Carroll, who represents part of Brooklyn.

“It’s done. It’s not happening,” an Assembly source said. “It’s unfortunate that nothing could be worked out.” Another Assembly source also said that major housing policy had been removed from the latest version of the budget.

Hochul press secretary Hazel Crampton-Hays said that there hasn’t been a final agreement on housing policy in the budget.

Mike Whyland, spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Boosting New York’s housing supply was the centerpiece of Hochul’s agenda this year. With the state facing an estimated shortage of hundreds of thousands of units, the governor’s plan would have upped supply by 800,000 units over the next decade, she claimed. The proposal sought to achieve this by imposing mandatory growth targets on every town and city statewide and requiring towns to permit more housing near train stations. This plan met resistance from both houses of the legislature, but especially the Assembly, which rejected it point blank earlier this week.

In the legislature, liberals and progressives were aiming to increase protections for tenants by passing “good cause eviction,” a law that would limit rent increases and give tenants the right to renew their leases, and a rental voucher program for New Yorkers who are homeless or at risk of eviction. Hochul didn’t include either of these in her budget proposal this year, but some lawmakers hoped to win them in a trade by approving Hochul’s housing plan.

Now, it appears that neither will happen. Other measures to boost housing supply — like allowing denser building in New York City and promoting conversions of office buildings to housing — are also likely to be excluded from the final budget.

“Instead of people compromising and figuring out a way to solve these problems, it seems like people are just vetoing everything and we’re not going to get anything done,” Carroll said. “We will never solve our housing crisis if the only housing that gets built is luxury housing in select neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.”

At New York Focus, our central mission is to help readers better understand how New York really works. If you think this article succeeded, please consider supporting our mission and making more stories like this one possible.

New York is an incongruous state. We’re home to fabulous wealth — if the state were a country, it would have the tenth largest economy in the world — but also the highest rate of wealth inequality. We’re among the most diverse – but also the most segregated. We passed the nation’s most ambitious climate law — but haven’t been meeting its deadlines and continue to subsidize industries hastening the climate crisis.

As New York’s only statewide nonprofit news publication, our journalism exists to help you make sense of these contradictions. Our work scrutinizes how power works in the state, unpacks who’s really calling the shots, and reveals how obscure decisions shape ordinary New Yorkers’ lives.

In the last two decades, the number of local news outlets in New York have been nearly slashed in half, allowing elected officials and powerful individuals to increasingly operate in the dark — with the average New Yorker none the wiser.

We’re on a mission to change that. Our work has already shown what can happen when those with power know that someone is watching, with stories that have prompted policy changes and spurred legislation. We have ambitious plans for the rest of the year and beyond, including tackling new beats and more hard-hitting stories — but we need your help to make them a reality.

If you’re able, please consider supporting our journalism with a one-time gift or a monthly gift. We can't do this work without you.

Thank you,

Akash Mehta
Editor-in-Chief
Sam Mellins is senior reporter at New York Focus, which he has been a part of since launch day. His reporting has also appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Intercept, THE CITY, and The Nation. 
Also filed in New York State

A newly obtained document sheds light on how the disavowed diagnosis infiltrated the Rochester Police Department before Prude’s death.

An advisory group set up under a 2021 state law finalized its proposals to cut child poverty in half.

New York’s faster-than-average decarceration has led to dozens of prison closures.

Also filed in Budget

New York has a little-noticed tool to shift billions of highway dollars to climate-friendly public transit projects. The governor doesn’t seem interested.

Here’s a simple explanation of a complicated and archaic formula — and why the state is updating it.

New financial disclosures show when Mujica began consulting for the Greater New York Hospital Association.

Also filed in Housing

A newly discovered 80-page housing package would have included good cause eviction, but legislators were dissuaded by Kathy Hochul’s opposition.

For tenants in the first upstate city to adopt rent stabilization, benefiting from the law’s basic protections is an uphill battle.

Advocates charge that New York’s restrictions for sex offense registrants are “vague, expansive, and unnecessary.” On Tuesday, they filed a federal lawsuit to strike them down.