Governor argues regulation rollback will spur housing

Three years ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul attempted to solve a dire housing crisis with a plan to build 800,000 units over a decade.

Her plan would have required that municipalities with commuter train stations such as Beacon, Cold Spring and Philipstown increase housing by 3 percent over three years. It faced pushback from Hudson Valley legislators, who argued the proposal would compromise local autonomy. The proposal collapsed in budget negotiations.

Now the governor is back with a new housing plan that, if anything, gives local municipalities more control: It would overhaul the 50-year-old State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) to exempt much new housing construction from undergoing an environmental review process.

Hochul says SEQRA has become burdensome, adding years to the development process and driving up construction costs, and that it duplicates reviews that often take place at the local level. Her concerns echo a new "abundance" movement that claims that, while 1970s regulations reduced pollution, they have since become obstacles to combating climate change and to affordability. Earlier this year, California overhauled its environmental review process for similar reasons.

The New York plan has support. Last month, 12 mayors and supervisors from the Hudson Valley (not including the Highlands) asked the state Legislature to support the SEQRA overhaul. It also has support — to a lesser degree — from environmental groups such as Riverkeeper, Scenic Hudson and the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, who joined 10 organizations to tell Hochul they believe an overhaul of SEQRA could accelerate affordable housing projects.

According to Johnathan Clark of Scenic Hudson, the groups also support "denser, connected development in places with the infrastructure to support it" because that would allow for "connecting to public transit or promoting walkability, or reducing emissions and protecting open space by shifting some of that pressure to make up that missing housing in disconnected areas that we might want to conserve as open space."

The groups said SEQRA is sometimes used to obstruct and appreciate a suggestion to impose time limits on reviews. "There are times when planning boards, if they have a project in front of them that they don't really like, but they feel like there's not much they can do about it, because their zoning laws that they have in place don't prevent what's being proposed," said Edward Warren of the Hudson Highlands Land Trust. "They'll sometimes try to drag their feet using SEQRA with the hope that the developer will get frustrated and move on."

However, the groups warned that the language of the proposed changes is too vague, which could be exploited to "encourage sprawling development, incentivize housing in contaminated or flood-prone areas, strain existing water and sewer infrastructure, and result in irreversible environmental impacts," they wrote.

"You don't want to create a giant loophole, because developers are just going to drive whatever project they want through it," said Tracy Brown, the executive director of Riverkeeper.

She expressed concern that framing a SEQRA overhaul as a necessary component to create affordable housing sets up a false contrast. "This is kind of a political cudgel for saying that environmental priorities are somehow in opposition to affordability or to abundance," she said.

Here are some concerns that have been raised:

Two sizes fit all

The governor's proposal centers on two sets of requirements for a project to be exempt from environmental review: one for New York City and one for everywhere else.

Under the current guidelines, a multifamily home with three or fewer units can qualify for an exemption; Hochul's proposal would increase that to 100 units outside New York City. "That might work fine in Yonkers," said Brown. "It's not necessarily going to work in Garrison."

Disturbed site

One of the proposed requirements ...