Housing Nixed in Latest Budget Talks

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.”