

Hochul’s plan to overhaul NYC housing dead in budget talks along with ‘Good Cause’ eviction proposal

Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders have abandoned efforts to strike a deal to overhaul how New York builds and regulates housing, amid soaring rents and a worsening shortage that has turned searching for an apartment into a blood sport.
The talks died amid immovable opposition from suburban lawmakers to proposals that would require development-adverse communities to build new homes and apartments, while landlords pushed back hard against measures that would expand tenant protections and cap rent increases.
“We have to look at how they did in California, it was very ugly, it took several years,” said one Albany insider.
“We’re in year one. This is the first year in earnest.”
“It’s the end of the beginning,” they added.
Sources told The Post that Hochul’s push for mandates to require communities across downstate to approve more apartments and houses was dead as was the counterproposal from legislative leaders to try to induce municipalities into signing off on new development by offering them grants.
Hochul and the legislative leaders had agreed that New York should be aiming to build approximately 800,000 new homes and apartments over the next decade — which is roughly double the pace of the preceding 10 years.
Housing activists hoped they could convince progressive politicians who campaigned against new development — often arguing that it fuels gentrification, a claim heavily disputed by academic research — to get onboard by pairing it with new protections for tenants.
The ‘”Good Cause” legislation would cap rent increases for tenants at one-and-a-half times the rate of inflation and require landlords to renew leases for tenants who pay rent.
Few were surprised when Hochul did not include the expansion of rent regulations in her housing package.
However, activists raised their eyebrows when the legislative leaders — Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-The Bronx) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) — refused to include specific “Good Cause” legislation to negotiate over in their counterproposals to Hochul and only endorsed the overall concept.
“I think everyone’s to blame here,” said one frustrated housing activist.
Two sources said the collapse also appears to have killed a new state housing voucher program, legalizing basement apartments, relaxing the cap on residential building sizes in the Big Apple and easing rules for converting office towers to residential use.
It was unclear if the slaughter had also nixed City Hall’s efforts to secure millions for the New York City Housing Authority to cover rents missed because of the pandemic.
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Hochul made mandating new construction a central plank in the policy agenda that she was attempting to include in the state’s must-pass $227 billion budget, which provides the governor a vehicle to force lawmakers to strike deals they would not be otherwise willing to make on contentious issues.
First, it would require every community board in New York City and village in Westchester County and on Long Island to expand its housing supply by 3 percent every three years.
Communities that don’t hit the benchmark would be subjected to oversight from a state housing board that could override local rejections of housing projects that include units set aside for working-class and middle-income New Yorkers.
Second, it would require that New York City and many suburban communities allow construction of two- to four-story residential buildings near subway stops and train stations.
Those new units would count toward the 3 percent target.
Both quickly earned the ire of lawmakers who represent the suburbs and parts of Queens predominately served by the Long Island Rail Road, who feared significant backlash from constituents who are fiercely opposed to new construction in their areas.
Several sources said that Hochul and the state Senate had considered a variety of tweaks that would have softened the mandates, but lawmakers in the Assembly proved immovable.
In the end, it was not clear what — if any — gains housing advocates made by attempting to bundle the housing mandates with “Good Cause” legislation, which has little appeal to suburban lawmakers who primarily represent homeowners.
“We’re continuing to negotiate towards a final budget,” said Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays.
The Assembly and state Senate did not respond to requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile