Gov. Hochul addresses the state (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)

Policymakers in Albany sent a clear message to their constituents last week: we are not serious about solving the housing shortage that is driving rents up, causing extreme housing insecurity, and keeping our communities segregated. The housing growth strategy outlined in both the Senate and Assembly one-house budget resolutions is a weak, incentive-driven approach that replicates housing policies that have been tried and failed. Localities that want to remain exclusionary and not add housing can still opt out. It’s all carrots and no sticks. There is not even a data collection requirement.

This isn’t a plan. It’s cowardly cover for inaction in a state with a severe housing crisis.

The Legislature’s budget response serves as an ill-timed repudiation of the well-researched, well-informed Housing Compact plan put forth by Governor Kathy Hochul to end New York’s crisis – a serious and realistic plan with policies that work – and could signal a major missed opportunity for the Empire State. 

The good news is that there is still time to negotiate and come to an agreement that meets the moment, or at least meets in the middle. The reason I am still optimistic is that every single legislator that I’ve met – Republicans and Democrats from rural, suburban, and urban districts – all agree that we have a desperate housing crisis and that something needs to be done. While I am concerned that the excuses that I hear each time I meet with legislators on the Housing Compact might win the day, there are a handful of points for negotiation that have come out of these many meetings that are worth exploring.

Often, legislators start with the lack of infrastructure and planning capabilities in the communities they represent, claiming an inability to support housing at the necessary scale due to pressure on traffic, schools, and sewers. While the Housing Compact has funding for infrastructure improvements ($250 million) and planning ($20 million) capability, I would agree that these sums are inadequate to support a growth strategy to add more zoning capacity for housing across the state over the next decade.

This is the first place for negotiations: doubling incentives, as proposed by the Legislature with the $500 million infrastructure fund in each house’s budget resolution..

Critics also claim that the Housing Compact does not adequately prioritize affordability and will only produce luxury housing. To be clear, though, it is not an affordable housing plan – that was accomplished last year – but rather a much-needed housing supply plan.

But it does prioritize affordable housing by counting it at two times market-rate production for a community to reach growth targets. It also incentivizes affordable housing production with a tax abatement outside of New York City. And by adding density in communities dominated by single-family zoning, New Yorkers will have many more housing options than they do now – at lower price points than they otherwise would. The New York Housing Conference recently analyzed Zillow data to show that condos/co-ops are up to 40% less expensive than single-family homes in the New York City suburbs.

Affordability can be another point for compromise, whether it is in how growth is measured, where growth is encouraged, or incentives for creating new affordable homes. Both the Senate and the Assembly budget plans offer ideas on this. 

Others allege that the density requirements in the governor’s transit-oriented development (TOD) proposal are a threat to areas dominated by single-family housing. While there are plenty of examples of developments that already exceed the proposed density levels right now, alternative minimum density requirements as proposed by the Senate should be considered too. Ultimately, striking a TOD deal will benefit the MTA, make New York greener, and create more multifamily housing – all while desegregating many downstate communities.

Some claim there is nowhere to build, but this is not true. As a region, data shows New York suburbs lag far behind other states – Long Island added just 7 new housing units per 1,000 residents from 2012-2022 and the Lower Hudson Valley added just 13 units per 1,000 residents. The New Jersey suburbs, by contrast, added 35 units per 1,000 residents; Virginia’s suburbs added 39 units. It can be done.

There are a plethora of empty parking lots and innovative adaptive reuses of shopping malls, factories, and apartments that all represent opportunities. But for communities that did recently build new housing, they should have a longer look-back period to credit them for efforts and not be penalized with a higher growth goal. This is an easy fix.

On the issue of local control and the desire to maintain planning power, I would argue that the state does not want to control zoning but rather achieve local participation. Communities still decide where to put more housing, what it should look like, how it will best fit in with public spaces, and existing housing, and meet economic development goals.

However, if communities choose to take no action, then under the governor’s plan the new State appeals board may approve a development that was previously denied. That’s not an ideal outcome, but it reflects the nature of our housing crisis: we’re at a point where such action is the only way to ensure every community does its part. Without this “stick,” there is no plan – and it is where Governor Hochul needs to draw the line.

Still, there are plenty of ways to soften this approach. Negotiators could consider a longer compliance ramp, designation of additional exclusions from growth targets, or easing requirements around preferred actions.

Our world is changing, and updating outdated zoning offers an opportunity for the built environment to be responsive to how we want to work, shop, and live today. And it gets to the core of the affordability crisis: a supply shortage. Governor Hochul has put forth a real plan to solve that real problem with real solutions that work in the real world. Now, all that’s left is coming together on a version the Legislature can agree to. 

And what will happen if they reach an agreement? We will create a more affordable, sustainable, and prosperous New York for ourselves and our children. Is there really any excuse to prevent that future? 

***
Rachel Fee is Executive Director of the New York Housing Conference. On Twitter @RachelFee4NY & @TheNYHC.

Mayor Adams & DOC Commissioner Molina on Rikers Island (photo: Benny Polatseck/Mayor's Office)

On Thursday, Speaker Adrienne Adams will chair a City Council hearing where leadership of the city’s Department of Correction (DOC) will share budget priorities. What may be perceived as a routine hearing impacts the future of thousands of New Yorkers currently suffering on Rikers Island and others who will be sent there.

DOC holds the lives of over 6,000 New Yorkers in its hands, and yet it has shown a brazen disregard for their well-being as well as the City Council’s oversight. If left unchecked, DOC’s actions will lead to more suffering and death. Lawmakers must make sure this year’s city budget brings us closer to, not further from, closing Rikers.

Since Commissioner Louis Molina started, DOC has gleefully and flagrantly ignored any oversight of its authority on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.

In January, the Board of Correction (BOC), which oversees DOC’s compliance with city policy, announced that DOC had revoked the Board’s right to independently view video surveillance of city jails in real time. BOC must now submit a request, subject to DOC’s approval. This blatantly undermines the Board’s oversight as authorized by the City Charter, while further obscuring the suffering of people in DOC custody.

Later that same month at a City Council hearing, Commissioner Molina refused to acknowledge the agency’s failure to protect the safety and lives of trans and gender expansive people in its custody, despite extensive and damning documentation by a Council Task Force and the media. Under questioning, Commissioner Molina not only revealed a stunning ignorance of how his agency operates, but embodied its indifference by refusing to stay and listen to the testimony of trans and gender expansive people who suffered unspeakable harm in DOC custody.

In that same vein, at another City Council hearing in February, Immigration Committee Chair Shahana Hanif confronted DOC with email evidence that the agency was transferring New Yorkers from Rikers Island into ICE custody without a judicial warrant, violating city laws barring such cooperation. The emails also revealed a pervasive anti-immigrant culture deep within DOC, with officers like Rikers Island Captain Deshan Rainey signing off emails to ICE with the hashtag“#teamsendthemback,” referring to ICE cooperation and deportation.

When confronted with questions about how New Yorkers could trust DOC to protect immigrant New Yorkers, DOC’s General Counsel Paul Shecthman sneered at the Council, insisting that a policy memo in 2019 had meaningfully changed DOC culture. The response was shocking, especially when advocates testified about ongoing violations as recently as 2022. It was also insulting, as if an internal memo restating the law would suddenly make Captain Rainey, who still supervises DOC staff on Rikers Island, reconsider how she communicates with ICE or treats people in her care.

Sensing Mayor Adams’ tacit approval of DOC’s actions, people who are formerly incarcerated and their family members have been steadfastly attending every BOC meeting to stop DOC’s attempts to thwart accountability, while keeping a public spotlight on the daily harm that goes unnoticed. Thanks to their persistence, BOC just rejected DOC’s plan to ban physical mail and packages at Rikers Island. But it shouldn’t fall to everyday New Yorkers to hold DOC accountable.

City lawmakers must stand up to DOC and show that it cannot continue to act with impunity. In her State of the City address, Speaker Adams affirmed that Rikers Island must close by 2027, as is the law. Mayor Adams’ and Commissioner Molina’s public doubts about meeting this legally-mandated obligation is simply one more tactic of evasion, and the City Council must not fall for it.

Instead, the Council should use every budgetary and legislative tool at its disposal to close Rikers Island – now. This includes pending legislation to further decarcerate city jails and prevent New Yorkers from entering the system in the first place.

Majority Leader Keith Powers’ and Council Member Hanif’s detainer law package would, among other things, create a private right of action to hold DOC accountable if a New Yorker thinks they were detained and transferred to ICE unlawfully. While the Public Advocate has a bill with majority Council support to finally and completely end the practice of solitary confinement. Passing both bills, while publicly supporting state legislation like the New York For All Act, would send a clear message that deliberately flouting state and city law will not be tolerated and there is a better vision for safety and justice.

The Council must also hold Mayor Adams to his promise of investing in resources that actually strengthen communities. Foremost is bolstering the reentry hotel program established at the start of the pandemic, which was incredibly successful in getting New Yorkers out of jail and into housing with medical and mental health care. At a time when the mayor says he is looking for solutions, expanding this type of rapid reentry housing, in addition to transitional housing slated for the summer, will quickly decarcerate Rikers and give New Yorkers a proven and dignified path to recovery.

These measures, while necessary, are the bare minimum. The only way to ensure there is not one more death, one more deportation, or one more violation of people’s rights inside Rikers is for Rikers to cease to exist. The City Council must hold fast to this north star, and do everything in the meantime to protect those who must endure DOC’s cruelty.

***
Rosa Cohen-Cruz is Immigration Policy Director at The Bronx Defenders. Julia Solomons is Senior Policy Social Worker at The Bronx Defenders. On Twitter @BronxDefenders. 

Rallying for Climate Justice (photo: Chandra Bocci)

We write this on behalf of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, educators, and caregivers deeply concerned for our children’s futures. Over the next few weeks, Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie will finalize the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year. When they do, they must remember their littlest constituents and include the full NY Renews Climate, Jobs, and Justice Package to ensure our children, and all New Yorkers, have a chance at a safe, healthy, secure future. 

Climate change is already taking a harrowing toll on frontline communities across New York State. From flooding in low-lying areas to extreme heat in the summers to crop disruption and beyond, it’s clear we’re in a crisis. And our children – particularly Black, Latino, Asian, immigrant, and Indigenous children – bear the brunt of fossil fuel pollution; dirty air puts them at greater risk of preterm birth, asthma, cancer, reduced cognitive ability, and more.

But despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support climate action – the Environmental Bond Act passed in November with close to 70% of the vote statewide – New York is failing to meet its own climate commitments. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) passed in 2019, almost four years ago, and set ambitious targets for emissions reductions and investment in both renewable energy and climate resiliency. Today’s kindergarteners were babies when the bill first passed. But while our children have progressed, the state has stalled — the law is still not fully funded, and the state is falling behind in its transition to clean energy. Our leaders must act now to ensure this year’s budget fully funds and implements the CLCPA. 

It is also past time for the state to invest in publicly-owned renewable energy, hold polluters accountable, and tax the ultra wealthy to fund climate justice. The climate crisis is rapidly accelerating – so too must our state’s plans to shift off of fossil fuels and invest in community based resiliency and mitigation. Publicly-owned renewables will enable New York to quickly make clean energy available to more and more New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, we now know that corporate polluters – and their funders on Wall Street – have continued to expand fossil fuel infrastructure for decades despite being fully aware of the consequences for people and the planet. They must be held accountable. The Climate Change Superfund Act would make New York’s worst polluters, the major oil companies, pay for the damage they have done to our communities. This would generate $75 billion in revenue over the next 25 years for investment in community climate programs.  

The budget must also include taxes on corporations and New York’s ultra-rich. New York is the most unequal state in the country, and New York City is home to more millionaires and billionaires than any other city in the world. While working parents and caregivers have struggled to stay afloat through three years of a pandemic and disrupted access to school and daycare, corporations – including fossil fuel companies – have raked in record profits. There is no excuse for failing to fund climate justice programs and a clean energy transition when New York is awash in wealth. The Invest in Our New York legislative package will ensure that the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share after years of tax breaks and kickbacks. 

As people who spend our days caring for and worrying about children, we are counting on Democratic leadership’s tenacity, foresight, and commitment to this vital endeavor. It’s time to pass the Climate, Jobs, and Justice package in full. Before it’s too late.

***
Senator Robert Jackson represents District 31 in the New York State Senate, and is a parent of three and grandfather of two. Liat Olenick is a leader of Climate Families NYC, a teacher, and a parent. Laurel Tumarkin sits on the steering committee of the NY Renews climate coalition and is a parent. On Twitter @RJackson_NYC, @Liat_RO, @LaurelTumarkin, @ClimateFamsNYC, @NYRenews.

Housing in the works (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)

Housing has taken center stage in the current budget negotiations in Albany and for good reason: Our statewide housing crisis has become dire, and for the first time in decades, there are many concrete proposals to tackle it.

Discussions about the issue often focus on rents in the five boroughs and how they have reached historic levels, but the crisis does not stop at the city’s borders, nor is the crisis limited to renters. In communities across the state, renters and homeowners are struggling with housing costs, as younger generations are unable to find affordable housing in their hometowns, local governments are unable to hire teachers and firefighters, and seniors must move further away from their families or are stuck in homes that do not accommodate their current needs.

These problems share a common cause: New York has failed to enact a statewide approach for promoting housing growth, providing localities with free rein to make new housing illegal across the state.

But for the first time since the 1970s, the Governor has proposed a framework to plan for sustainable growth in every community. The New York Housing Compact focuses on housing production, aiming to close our housing shortage by encouraging the construction of at least 800,000 homes over the next decade.

Unfortunately, this past week both the State Senate and Assembly proposed major cuts to the Housing Compact that would severely weaken its potential impact. If enacted, their proposals would do little to dent the dire housing crisis; instead, they would maintain the inequitable status quo that we've had for too long. In the face of the first real pro-housing framework that Albany has debated in decades, the Legislature seems to be closing its eyes and hoping the crisis goes away.

In its budget resolution, the Assembly deleted almost every piece of the Compact, including seemingly non-controversial items like enabling outdated office buildings in New York City to convert to housing. The Senate kept the office-to-residential piece, but otherwise, it also nixed all of the Compact’s many tools to encourage new housing growth of all kinds across the state.

In an apparent attempt to save face, the Senate and Assembly included a toothless version of the Governor’s proposal to require every community to grow its housing by a small amount every three years. Instead of imposing even minimal consequences on localities that shut their gates, the Senate’s and Assembly’s versions would try to bribe local governments to plan for housing growth.

While a program like this might sound new, it really just maintains the status quo—towns across New York already receive more money from a variety of county and state sources when they grow, and yet there is still anemic housing growth in the New York City metro region despite rapid economic growth. Similar incentive-based programs in Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, and Washington have failed for decades—particularly in the areas with the least housing growth, most extreme prices, and closest proximity to cities and transit— and there is no reason to think that the Senate’s and Assembly’s proposals will succeed in New York.

The Senate and Assembly included one new and laudable housing initiative, the Housing Voucher Access Program (HAVP), which would provide crucial financial assistance to an estimated 13,760 New Yorkers over the next few years. But as many recent news reports have shown, even New Yorkers who receive these new vouchers may struggle to use them, because there are so few safe and affordable apartments available to rent in New York. While the Senate and Assembly seem to think that the State must choose between policies that support vouchers and policies that support new housing growth, the two in fact need to go hand-in-hand.

As budget negotiations enter their next stage, the Governor needs to fight to keep the Compact strong, while also moving forward with policies in which the Legislature has rightfully signaled interest, such as HAVP and new tenant protections for New Yorkers who live in unregulated housing.

​A statewide framework that includes real mandates to end exclusionary zoning practices, encourage housing growth in transit-rich areas, and ensure all neighborhoods do their part to increase housing opportunities is essential for addressing the depth of the crisis and increasing leverage for renters. It is long past time for New York  to enact a framework like the Housing Compact.

***
Andrew Fine is Policy Director for Open New York. On Twitter @​​andrewdfine.

City Council Member Christoper Marte (photo: Gerardo Romo/NYC Council)

[Update: Less than 48 hours after the publication of this op-ed, Council Member Marte announced he had accepted Steven Wong's resignation]

It has been a month since a top aide to City Council Member Christopher Marte unleashed a vicious, misogynistic, profanity-laced verbal assault on one of the city’s most prominent and respected Chinese-language reporters for the “crime” of covering the Democratic City Council primary in a way he did not like. 

And the Marte aide, Steven Wong, made these comments in multiple voicemails he left for the reporter, who transcribed the recordings, and turned it over to the City Council Speaker’s office for investigation.

Despite all that time, and especially since the comments were recorded, there has been no action taken by the Council leadership or Council Member Marte. In fact, Marte said this week the comments were “not unforgiveable” as he said he would keep Wong on his staff and on the public payroll. Why?

Marte, whom I am challenging in June’s Democratic primary, first said he could not remove Wong from his office payroll without a full investigation. But staffers in the City Council general counsel’s office, and even the head of the union representing Council staffers, said that is not correct.

Wong is an at-will employee. Marte could have, and should have, fired Wong. He knows it. I know it. And voters now know it as well judging from the comments I get from constituents as I campaign across Chinatown and Lower Manhattan’s Council District 1.

“This language would not have been tolerated in any kind of private employment environment, and it should not be tolerated on taxpayer-paid salaries,” one constituent, Community Board 3 member Karlin Chan, told Marte at a meeting. “If he worked for a private company, he would have been terminated already.”

The language Wong used is breathtaking, especially as we continue to commemorate Women’s History Month. In his taped voicemails, he called the reporter a “c—t,” and made a crude sexual comment about her mother, as well as comparable remarks about me.

The story that prompted Wong’s outburst, as recounted in The Daily News, was Marte’s feeble attempts to have it both ways when it comes to his position on the so-called defund the police movement, which is very unpopular among Lower Manhattan voters, especially those in Chinatown, who have been wrestling with increased crime rates, including an appalling rise in hate crimes targeting Chinese residents and AAPI residents more broadly.

Marte on one hand claims he does not support defunding the police, but signed on to the Progressive Caucus’ pledge to “reduce the size and scope of the NYPD.” Almost half of the members of the Progressive Caucus refused to sign that pledge and left the caucus, but Marte stayed.

It was a story on that attempt to straddle such a critically important issue that ran in Sing Tao Daily, one of the Chinese communities’ most respected newspapers, that led to the grotesque sexist attack by Wong on reporter Lotus Chau. There were multiple voicemail messages; Wong knew what he was doing.

One of the great strengths of New York City is that, even as the traditional mainstream media has withered in the face of technological advances and corporate takeovers, independent media – in English as well as the variety of languages immigrants speak in their homes and on the streets – have become more and more important in hearing the voices of all residents, no matter where they come from. There is a vigorous Chinese language media, with competing papers that serve the community, as there are newspapers in Spanish, Yiddish, Russian, Creole, and other languages heard throughout New York City.

Wong’s attack on this reporter is in many ways a threat to the independence of the alternative media where so many New Yorkers learn about civic affairs. The threatening tone and the abusive language can only be seen as an attempt to suppress and intimidate the independence of those outlets. Knowing the targeted reporter, I am sure she will not be intimidated.

As a woman, as an immigrant, as a Chinese-American and a member of the broader AAPI community, I am running to stand up to bigotry and misogyny wherever it rears its ugly head. 

I know that ‘politics ain’t beanbag,’ as the saying goes. It can be rough and tumble, but there have to be limits to acceptable behavior. Steven Wong’s crude, sexist, bigoted, threatening comments are not a close call. Christopher Marte should step up and do the right thing and dismiss Wong from the public payroll. If he cannot see his way clear to do that, maybe he should just step aside himself.

[Update: Less than 48 hours after the publication of this op-ed, Council Member Marte announced he had accepted Steven Wong's resignation]

***
Susan Lee is a candidate for City Council in Lower Manhattan’s District 1 in the June Democratic primary. On Twitter @susanleenyc.

Mayor Adams in school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

New York City Mayor Eric Adams understands the challenge faced by the city’s nearly 1 million New Yorkers living with a disability – and the importance of diagnosing and addressing disabilities early. It was not until he was in college that he discovered he has dyslexia, with which he has contended all of his life and now informs his policy-making.

Early diagnosis is key, but it must be accompanied by strategies to address the disability. That’s where New York City has an opportunity to set a new, cost-effective, national standard through collaboration among government, the nonprofit sector, and the business community.

Mayor Adams took an important related step when he announced last Spring a plan to screen nearly all public school students for dyslexia, to provide additional educational support to students with dyslexia at 80 elementary schools and 80 middle schools, and to open two dyslexia programs (in Harlem and the South Bronx) with the goal of expanding to all boroughs this year.

In his 2023 State of the City Address, the mayor reported on the plan’s implementation, highlighting, among other developments, “launching the first district school in city history dedicated solely to supporting students with dyslexia, and making dyslexia screenings available in every public school in New York City.”

The greater need, of course, is to address disabilities more broadly defined and to provide services in school to help the tens of thousands of students with disabilities envision and prepare for success in college and career opportunities. 

The nonprofit Institute for Career Development (ICD), which we lead, launched in the Fall a two-school pilot program that does exactly that and provides a model that we hope can grow to be citywide. The pilot program was launched in partnership with Discovery High School in the Kingsbridge Heights section of The Bronx and Richmond Hill High School in Queens. 

Through the initiative, ICD now has on-site at each school a full-time Navigator available to work with any student who has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 plan to prepare the student to make the jump to college or vocational training and embark upon a career. The Navigators, whose services in the pilot program are available at no cost to students or schools, will guide students around obstacles and over hurdles as they work to build skills needed to launch fulfilling careers. 

There’s a vital role for other nonprofit organizations and the business community in this regard. Scaling will require broader partnerships, and the students will need practical, after-school, work experience. Montefiore Medical Center, for instance, is already providing volunteer service opportunities for the Discovery High School students. At Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, the students are providing support for a community food pantry as well as after-school programming for middle school students.

As students identify specific career ambitions, other collaborations will be needed. Cisco, for instance, partnered with the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities and ICD to create the AbilITy Cisco Academy, the first fully accessible computer networking certification program for New Yorkers with disabilities. The Academy offers a variety of training programs where people with disabilities can earn industry-recognized skills and certification. Here, too, practical work experience, including internships, is crucial to demonstrating the students’ capacity to work in challenging settings.

Expanding services early to people with disabilities is vital to helping them get off to a fast start, with a clear sense of direction and the specific skills to propel them, and the need is great in terms of scale and societal impact. Experts estimate that as many as 20% of students are dyslexic, which represents 80-90% of all those with learning disabilities, and more than a third of prison inmates are dyslexic. Those statistics don’t even address other disabilities.

The cost of providing these services can be justified both by the enhanced career trajectories of the students (and related increased income tax revenue) and by societal costs avoided (such as preventable criminal justice involvement). The practical work experiences similarly help nonprofit organizations fulfill their missions and enable businesses to identify potential future employees.

Addressing early the needs of New Yorkers with disabilities is a winning strategy for all. Mayor Adams is pointing the way. The nonprofit sector and the business community should join with the City of New York to make it a priority in the year ahead.

***
Diosdado G. Gica and Joseph T. McDonald III are Co-Presidents of the Institute for Career Development, based in New York City. On Twitter @icd_nyc.

Gov. Hochul talks clean energy (photo: office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

It’s time to Upgrade New York. 

Last summer Governor Hochul signed the Utility Thermal Energy and Jobs Act, sponsored by Senator Kevin Parker and Assemblymember Latoya Joyner, which passed unanimously in the Senate and nearly unanimously in the Assembly. This first-in-the nation law — supported by the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, New York State AFL-CIO, utilities, climate justice organizations, building industry representatives, and environmental groups — is a critical first step to rapidly decarbonizing our buildings at a neighborhood scale with Thermal Energy Networks, while preserving and creating middle class jobs. The transformational law is being duplicated in a number of states here in 2023.

Now, the Legislature can and must build off this success to Upgrade New York.

During Climate Week, the Governor proclaimed New York must lead by example and directed state agencies to adopt a BuildSmart NY program, administered by the New York Power Authority, to achieve significant emissions reductions from state-owned buildings, campuses and facilities by 2025. Buildings are the largest source of emissions in New York state, contributing over 32% of all pollution. Rapidly eliminating on-site emissions from the state’s buildings should be a top priority as the state seeks to meet its ambitious climate goals. 

One of the largest owners of buildings in New York is the state itself – with a buildings portfolio of more than 400 large campuses and facilities that spans across every region, each with multiple buildings that rely on oil and gas for heat, hot water, and cooling. Some of the highest emitting facilities include Empire State Plaza; Upstate & Downstate Medical Centers; SUNY Stony Brook, Albany, Buffalo, and Binghamton; and CUNY’s Brooklyn, City and Hunter Colleges. 

The Legislature can lead by example to upgrade New York this session and mandate that all state buildings, facilities, and campuses fully decarbonize by eliminating on-site emissions by 2040. The Legislature can deliver immediate results by approving the funding necessary to ensure that projects to eliminate on-site emissions from 15 of the highest-emitting state-owned campuses are shovel-ready by 2025 – which would cut the overall pollution from state-owned buildings by 40%. 

Because these high-emitting state campuses and facilities have multiple buildings, they are prime candidates for Thermal Energy Networks (TENs). TENs connect multiple buildings together with each other in a shared network that allows transfer of energy with thermal sources like geothermal boreholes, surface water, and even wastewater. TENs are super high efficiency systems that won’t strain the electric grid even during peak seasons. More importantly, TENs provide a true transition for the very workforce that currently install and maintain fossil fuel equipment and piping systems. 

Investing in and building TENs at state facilities and campuses will serve as anchors that will preserve and create middle-class jobs and will ensure New York’s union workforce will be at the forefront of the state’s clean energy transition.

In order to ensure long-term careers for existing and new union members, the Legislature should include robust labor standards and require at least 40% of overall investments and benefits from the work of decarbonizing state, buildings, facilities, and campuses go to residents of New York communities disproportionately impacted by climate change (DACs) as defined under New York’s Climate Law. Utilizing the NYC Building and Construction Trades model of direct entry into apprenticeship programs will allow residents of DACs to gain access to union careers and a pathway to the middle class.

Creating this pipeline of work to decarbonize over 400 campuses and facilities over the next decade is a critical first step that will lead to jobs, recruitment into unions’ direct entry programs, pre-apprenticeship program grants, stipends, and wrap-around services to remove barriers. A long-term pipeline of work is sensible policy that creates the necessary workforce certainty that is required to determine training needs, recruit workers into programs, train workers in time, and build the highly trained workforce necessary to decarbonize our state.

The Legislature can lead again and enact this budget to appropriate the necessary funding, establish requirements for 15 state campus and facility shovel-ready projects by 2025, and mandate that all state-owned buildings facilities and campuses eliminate on-site emissions by 2040. 

By doing so, legislators can chart the next frontier to build healthier, climate-resilient communities and create equitable middle-class union careers that ensure New York has the skilled workforce of tomorrow to realize our clean energy future.

***
Lisa Dix is the New York Director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition. John Murphy is the  International Representative for the United Association of Plumbers, Pipefitters and Sprinkler Fitters in NY.

Housing in the offing (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

We all benefit from an inclusive city that allows all types of people, not only privileged residents, to live with dignity and security. Yet, New York City continues to become an even more impossibly expensive place to live, disproportionately displacing communities of color, “essential workers,” artists, cooks, security guards, drivers, retail workers, and their families.

If we truly want to overcome this disparity, a plan to provide housing for all must deliberately aim to fund the true cost of building enough low-rent units to meet the needs of lower-income residents.

The lag in supply of new low-rent units will otherwise cause rents for these residents to continue to rise, forcing further departures. Regrettably, neither housing plans put forth by elected officials nor existing affordable housing programs are adequate to respond to the scale of this crisis.

Nevertheless, a realistic and feasible strategy to build enough affordable housing does exist. The direct subsidy of private-sector development of low-rent units with public funding is a cost-effective and efficient means to accomplish the essential goal of providing quality housing for all.

In response to the crisis, elected officials have set targets in the hundreds of thousands of housing units. While the word “affordable” has been deployed in press releases, the specific number of low-rent units geared to the lower-half of households by income to be built in the city is yet unclear. The worry is that fulfilling a promise to build new housing of any sort, while challenging, admirable, and necessary, would not provide for those most in need, in danger of displacement, or vulnerable to homelessness. Importantly, even on their own terms, detailed support has not been provided to demonstrate how these proposals would produce enough low-rent units to manage the crisis.

The laundry list of proposed zoning and regulatory reforms is meant to be builder-friendly and to streamline the approval process. While these policies may help reduce the power of wealthy enclaves to oppose affordable housing, they would also reduce the ability of vulnerable residents and marginalized communities to protect the neighborhoods from the detrimental effects of gentrification where they can still afford to live.

Most significantly, these proposals do not do nearly enough to address the most significant constraint to providing enough housing to lower-income households – the high cost of land and construction in New York City.

Conventional wisdom tells us that housing construction has not kept up with population growth. To the contrary, new housing has largely matched the increase in total households. From 2010 to 2020, the city gained 144,000 new households while building more than 186,000 new units. That net gain in total households, however, is deceiving.

In that time period, over 238,000 households earning in the top third of income arrived, while 94,000 in the bottom two-thirds departed, according to Census data. This outcome has been driven by a rise in the real median rent from $1,200 to $1,500 per month — a 25% real world increase on an expense that typically consumes 30% to 50% of a lower-income household’s income. 

The notion that a less-constrained market and upzoning will spur enough construction to meet overall housing demand — including the need for low-rent units — is fundamentally flawed.

Developers will not construct apartment buildings for which revenues do not cover costs; nor will they construct more apartment buildings than they can rent. Because newly-constructed housing will always compete with pre-existing housing, no matter how many units are built, new construction cannot fill overall demand. Available pre-existing units will more often be filled by an influx of higher-income newcomers than by already overly-rent-burdened lower-income residents. As a result, residents who cannot afford the inevitable rise in rents are pushed out.

But what about existing affordable housing programs? These programs, most notably the 421-a tax exemption, Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs), and zoning area bonuses, are not able to provide enough low-rent units to meet the city’s needs.

The inappropriately named “Affordable New York,” the last iteration of the 421-a tax exemption, ensured a portion of below-market units in new buildings geared to households earning “up to 130% of Area Median Income,” a level that nevertheless corresponds to the top 20% of New York City renters. While reinstating the expired program is crucial to continuing to ensure that the supply of market-rate rental housing is maintained, the exemption did nothing to increase the supply of truly “affordable” low-rent units.

For more than 35 years, the primary method of financing new affordable housing has been based on LIHTCs, a complex Rube Goldberg-type system of federal, state, and city sources requiring no or minimal private investment. While funding the construction of thousands of low-rent units, this program is capped at the federal level, limiting the number of units built annually. The economies-of-scale necessary to reduce administrative and construction costs for the most part preclude their use for projects with under 50 units, narrowing the number of available sites that can be used.

In addition, zoning area bonuses for the construction of low-rent units, known as Inclusionary Housing, are attractive because government expenditure is not required. Here, free additional zoning area for developers is meant to offset a portion of below-market rental units in new otherwise market-rate buildings. Another advantage of the free additional area is that project feasibility is not contingent on land price variation throughout the city.

Zoning area bonuses, however, don’t work where market rents aren’t high enough to cover costs. Yet, in expensive areas of the city, they are inherently inefficient because the fully monetized value of the zoning area bonus is not realized in the inherent subsidy.

What’s more, the stipulated reduced rents are either not high enough to cover their added construction cost or not low enough for lower-income households. Indeed, from 2016, when New York City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program was enacted, only 2,065 units had been approved under MIH as of January 2020 – even before the construction slowdown caused by the pandemic struck. 

The key to producing enough affordable housing in New York City is to contribute the additional funding to cover the cost of building the necessary number of new low-rent units. This is where the direct subsidy of private-sector development with public funding can make up for the shortage of new low-rent units that the market will not provide. Direct subsidies, in effect, would reduce the overall cost of development projects so that low rents are sufficient to compensate private investment.

Together with standard equity investment and debt financing, direct subsidies would avoid LIHTC financing and its cap altogether and could be used for any sized project. In addition, direct subsidies would significantly reduce bureaucracy, the overall cost to the government, and the time required before construction can start.

By leaving subsidies in place upon completion, a developer could even be encouraged to hand over a new building to a tenant co-op ownership association in exchange for an investment return suitable to the inherent risk undertaken. 

Along with the same tax exemption for LIHTCs and 421-a, a direct subsidy of $175,000 per unit, an amount comparable to what the city’s housing agencies (HPD/HDC) already supplement to LIHTC projects, would yield a range of new low-rent apartments. This range could include studios with rents of $1,200 to $2,100 per month with a weighted average of $1,750 per month and two-bedrooms from $1,650 to $2,600 per month with a weighted average of $2,250 per month.

In conjunction with existing programs, direct subsidies totaling $1.5 billion annually would fund the additional construction of 8,500 new low-rent units per year — equal to the number of lower-income households that left the city annually between 2010 and 2020.

Funding can be found by rectifying the ingrained unfairness of a regressive property tax system that over-taxes multi-family rental buildings in comparison to co-ops, condominiums, and single-family homes. For example, currently the value of luxury condominiums and co-ops are assessed for tax purposes the same as nearby rental buildings. As a result, the overall effective tax rate on their real-world value is 30% lower than for rental buildings, with an increasingly disproportionate share of this disparity allotted to higher valued properties. In other words, gentrification, and correspondingly displacement, are effectively now being subsidized.

Simply equalizing the effective tax rate on condominiums and co-ops would yield an additional $1.95 billion annually. Reforming the property tax on single-family homes would yield even more.

To augment these funds, like MIH provisions, developers of luxury buildings could purchase zoning area bonuses at market prices directly from the city. Monetizing the actual market value of zoning area bonuses could fund the construction of twice as many new low-rent units than by offering the free zoning area in MIH. In addition, fees could be charged for building above certain height thresholds to compensate for the effects of extremely high towers.

Ultimately, providing affordable housing for all New Yorkers is a choice — our collective choice, not to be left to individual spirits. Our underlying incentive is to sustain a New York that is home to diverse culture and communities. To solve the housing crisis, we need to come to grips with its price tag. An actionable plan needs a measurable goal, an understanding of its cost, and a way to pay for it all. The direct subsidy of new construction of low-rent units with public funding will ensure supply will meet demand even when the market alone cannot.

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David Finehirsh is the Principal of Urban Artisan LLC, a development firm in New York.

Gov. Hochul pitches her housing plan (photo: Governor's Office)

You can’t talk seriously about Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed New York Housing Compact without acknowledging with respect that she is the first Governor in decades to try to get localities in the state to take on at least some of their fair share of housing need.

It is also clear from examining one set of her proposed “preferred actions” that she understands the exclusionary effect of lot-size minimums, height limits, lot coverage restrictions, and parking minimums on the ability to construct multi-family housing. More transit-oriented housing, more accessory dwelling units (ADUs), every locality (and every community district) having to pitch in: all solid goals. 

Unfortunately, the Governor wanted to believe that “buy-in” could be achieved with an approach that, by any sober calculation, does not actually require heavy lifting from localities; that bends over backwards to give localities enormous lead-time for compliance; and that features more carrots than sticks. As they release their one-house budget resolutions this week, the Assembly and Senate are apparently pretending in their initial negotiating positions that an all-carrots approach will, magically, be sufficient.

It never works that way. I know from seeing the federal government eschew enforcement of the central, end-exclusionary-zoning provision of the historic 2009 Westchester housing desegregation consent decree won by the Anti-Discrimination Center in favor of the buy-in approach. The result? Local politicians of both parties unrelentingly resisted change anyway, and the promise of the decree was lost.

So don’t be looking for localities to be welcoming affordable housing because they can reduce the overall volume of housing to be built by doing so. There must be a required minimum component of affordable units in each development so that each is mixed-income and can contribute to easing the affordable-housing crisis. That’s true both in transit-oriented-development (TOD) areas, where under Hochul’s plan development appears to not have any affordability requirement to be a “qualifying project,” and in the equally important non-TOD areas. Failure to build affordable housing in non-TOD areas will leave vast areas of the suburbs as grotesquely racially-segregated as they are now.

And to the extent that we ultimately get to the point that certain projects can be “fast-tracked” in non-compliant localities (not before 2027, and not before 2030 for those localities who come to permit ADUs and split-lots), a choice of requiring 20% of units at or below 50% of area median income (AMI) or 25% of units at or below 80% of AMI will have an entirely predictable, segregation-perpetuating result. Most everywhere, the 80% AMI threshold will be chosen, with the only exception being those community districts in New York City that already have high concentrations of low-income housing. 

To adequately deal with the municipal resistance that is sure to come, the Housing Compact’s new legal mechanisms to shorten the process between proposal and resolution are welcome — but insufficient. History tells us that resistance will continue because municipalities know that, in the end, the ‘worst’ that can generally happen is that they will be ordered to do only what they should have done years earlier.

There are two simple mechanisms to create disincentives to the standard practice of delay, appeal, and delay some more. First, the proposal does not allow costs against the locality or its officers in proceedings before the planned “Housing Review Board” unless there is a finding of gross negligence, bad faith, or malice. In fact, localities and their officers should be made to think twice before rejecting development projects (or keeping them stalled) by the prospect of costs and attorney fees being awarded whenever it is determined that the project should have been allowed to move forward.

Second, the result of a rejection that is ultimately overturned should not only be the requirement that the project be approved. A ‘penalty’ that is a multiple of the units that had been delayed should be added to the locality’s obligation, with the penalty increasing with the delay that the locality has imposed.

In a similar vein – and knowing that resistance will come whenever requirements kick in – there is no reason for there to be an initial three-year safe-harbor extended to localities. Developers should be given an incentive to proceed now – at least in respect to localities that have regularly not been meeting what are the new targets – and desperately needed affordable housing will come into the pipeline more quickly.

To help facilitate that, the state itself needs to play a more active role in developing and facilitating specific projects in specific exclusionary areas. That includes working with for-profit and not-for-profit development partners to meet the state’s interest in creating affordable, segregation-reducing housing.

This can already be done independent of the Housing Compact under an existing state-law doctrine named after a case called County of Monroe. This doctrine allows for the setting aside of local zoning restrictions because of the state’s more substantial interest in this sort of housing development. (Committing to the deployment of County of Monroe for state-assisted and coordinated construction of affordable housing in localities where it is not wanted is far more critical than anyone has yet appreciated. The Governor needs to be clear to state legislators and to municipal officials that the status quo is no longer an option and that all a failure of cooperation in passing or implementing a real Housing Compact will yield is less municipal influence over the shape and location of projects that will be built anyway.)

Part of the state’s role – and here, again, both carrots and sticks are needed – will be taking on localities who deliberately fail to invest in water and sewer infrastructure precisely to avoid the creation of new housing.

The proposed Housing Compact doesn’t need to be watered-down as the “never-build” forces of the status quo maintain; rather, it needs to be strengthened.

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Craig Gurian is executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center. On Twitter @pursuethefacts.

(Credit: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

Sixty-thousand electric vehicle (EV) chargers on New York’s highways. Dozens of large-scale solar and battery storage plants, many of them in the state’s most disadvantaged counties. The largest planned deployment of offshore wind projects in the United States. Thousands of new good-paying green-energy jobs, with skills training programs to ensure they can be filled. 

New York’s already robust clean energy economy has been soaring in recent months, especially when it comes to renewable energy and electrifying the transportation sector. Now, all that investment is slated to accelerate even further as the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – the most significant legislation in U.S. history to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen American energy security – takes hold, advancing economic development and industrial strategy on both the national and local stages. 

Our Kingston, New York-based firm, Miller/Howard Investments, has been integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) research into our investment portfolios since the early 1990s. For decades, as global temperatures warmed and extreme weather events worsened, we — along with many other companies and investors — have been calling for strong federal action to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, both to limit the business risks of the climate crisis and to capitalize on the immense economic opportunities in fighting it. 

Featuring substantial and long-lasting financial incentives for companies and consumers, along with unprecedented investment in key environmental justice initiatives for rural and disadvantaged communities, the legislation is expected to achieve a 40% reduction in U.S. climate pollution by 2030 — enough to keep us in striking distance of our national goals to prevent the worst impacts of this crisis.  

Working in tandem with New York’s ambitious 2019 climate law, as well as the federal CHIPS and Science Act that passed last summer and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act approved by Congress in 2021, the Inflation Reduction Act will direct billions of dollars in new investments into developing advanced manufacturing capabilities, building domestic supply chains, and guiding infrastructure build-outs that promise to uplift every corner of the state. 

The Inflation Reducation Act has something for everybody: It will give utilities more reason to shift toward clean power generation, companies and consumers more options to stabilize and lower their energy costs, and workers more opportunities to find and fill good-paying jobs. And it will give entrepreneurs across the economy incentives to help build the innovative industries we need to solve our climate and energy challenges. 

All of this will keep the investment flowing. 

Of particular relevance to New York is the Act’s substantial incentives for renewable energy production, including tax credits covering 30% of the costs for community solar systems with additional bonus credits of 20% for affordable housing properties and 10% for low-income communities. It also includes long-term tax credits for offshore wind development, including $30 billion in manufacturing tax credits to produce critical offshore wind components. 

Companies with a presence in New York are clearly paying attention to this massive opportunity. Eversource and Ørsted broke ground in 2022 on the South Fork Wind project, scheduled to be operational this year. A handful of other companies have received state financial backing to build a $350 million wind tower manufacturing facility at the Port of Albany. The federal investments will supercharge the ambitious local climate action that has already bolstered our state’s clean energy industry. 

Many New York communities are participating in the clean energy surge, and we are happy to report that Ulster County, where Miller/Howard is headquartered, is right there with them. Our county’s climate and clean energy plan has many green initiatives, some already in effect, including a two-megawatt community solar field in Saugerties, the purchase of three electric buses by Ulster County Area Transit, and the creation of a Green Careers Academy — an eight-week training program in partnership with SUNY Ulster. 

Elsewhere in the state, Governor Kathy Hochul announced awards for 22 large-scale solar and energy storage projects that will deliver clean, affordable power to more than 620,000 homes in all parts of the state, spur over $2.7 billion in private investment, and create more than 3,000 short- and long-term jobs.

Three months later, state officials announced a new competitive solicitation for another 2,000 megawatts or more of large-scale renewable energy. New York has also seized a leadership role in the transition to electric and other electric vehicles with forward-looking policies to guide the shift on the roads. 

Such initiatives not only invest in communities across the state, but also promise to reduce and stabilize energy costs for New York households and businesses. And thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, even more investment is expected to follow. As these state and federal policies take stronger hold, the state’s clean energy economy — and the more than 150,000 jobs that power it — is surely on the rise. That’s great news for New York’s economic prosperity and for protecting the future of our planet. 

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Luan Jenifer is President & CEO of Miller/Howard Investments.