The governor has now beaten two Long Island NIMBYs – and should govern like it
Two Long Island congressmen, Tom Suozzi and Lee Zeldin, ran against Governor Kathy Hochul in the 2022 elections. They both opposed common-sense policies to affordably house New Yorkers and lost. Now, Hochul ought to govern with the mandate she’s earned to build more housing.
Hochul should recommit to passing legislation that will spur the construction of new housing in exclusionary suburbs like Long Island. According to the NYU Furman Center, New York City’s suburbs have had a “substantial” negative effect on housing affordability, contributing to “a uniquely acute affordability crisis” by not building enough housing to match regional economic growth. In January 2022, the governor proposed several laws at her annual State of the State address to encourage new housing construction, including legalizing accessory dwelling units (ADU) statewide. She scrapped the plan to legalize ADUs a month later, after backlash from Long Island elected officials including her primary and eventual general election opponent. Resubmitting and signing into law that package of bills, which housing advocates expect her to do in 2023, is essential to breaking the status quo that’s kept housing unaffordable for too many New Yorkers.
Otherwise known as granny flats, garage apartments, or in-law suites, an ADU is essentially a part of a single-family home converted into a second, small home. ADUs are both modest and potentially impactful. They’re less likely to draw neighbors’ ire than a proposed apartment building but can still create affordable rental housing in single-family neighborhoods. However, they invariably create less housing than an apartment building.
Long Island’s suburban counties have failed to build enough housing compared to the rest of the region. From 2012 to 2021 New Jersey’s inner suburbs produced five times as much housing per capita as Nassau and Suffolk Counties together. Connecticut’s suburbs and the Lower Hudson Valley produced twice as much housing per capita as Long Island in the same period. Meanwhile, home prices in Suffolk County hit a new all-time high in 2021. Long Island permitted only 56,000 new housing units between 2001 and 2018; the Regional Plan Association (RPA) estimates that legalizing ADUs could permit up to 92,000 ADUs in Nassau county in the next 20 years, which would represent a relatively big change in the region’s ability to produce housing.
But more importantly, New York’s elected officials, led by Hochul, must pass modest reforms like legalizing ADUs because doing so will open the door for more impactful housing policies. NIMBY officials like Reps. Suozzi and Zeldin have shown that any efforts to dislodge the status quo on Long Island will be met with total opposition. Demonstrating that this opposition won’t stop a recently elected governor from backing more housing is a prerequisite for being able to fight bigger battles over more powerful reforms in the future, like mandating localities develop site-specific plans to accommodate future growth and preemptively legalizing multifamily housing adjacent to suburban rail stations statewide.
California is the model, where ADU reforms in 2016 led to more than 60,000 permitted new units. Since then, legislators have passed reforms that will have an even greater impact. For example, California mandated localities to develop a plan – called a “housing element” – for accommodating future population growth, including identifying specific sites for new housing. In the past few years, California has continually passed laws to strengthen this requirement to the point where it is ensuring localities are fulfilling that responsibility and approving new construction through outcomes like a builder’s remedy. New York needs a housing element requirement with teeth. Making suburbs build their fair share of housing is a big step toward making Hochul’s housing agenda a reality.
Hochul’s proposed ADU reform was part of a package that also sought to “kickstart transit-oriented development” in suburban communities like Long Island with strong rail connections to the city. The RPA estimates that there’s space for more than 660,000 people in about 263,000 new homes built on current surface parking lots within ½ mile of commuter rail stations in the region’s suburban counties. But in practice “kickstart” meant a voluntary program. To really see prices flatten and then fall, future plans should go further, affirmatively legalizing and incentivizing transit-oriented development in suburban localities statewide.
Democrats also have a political imperative to bring affordable housing to the suburbs, where they lost ground last election. Three of the four U.S. House seats in New York that Republicans flipped in the 2022 election were from those suburbs not building enough housing in Long Island or in the Lower Hudson Valley. Democrats do well in denser areas. Letting Republicans preserve exclusive communities with restrictive housing policies will further consolidate redder suburban districts. With Republican leaders like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis flatly rejecting reforms that will reduce the cost of housing, Democrats like Hochul have an imperative to make these suburbs build their fair share of housing.
Hochul herself admits that 100,000 new units over five years, which her January 2022 plan committed to, is nowhere near ambitious enough to end New York’s housing crisis. We know suburban elected officials will oppose it. This shouldn’t scare Hochul; it should embolden her to pursue more aggressive policies that will produce even more housing. Suozzi and Zeldin already played their only cards. Rep. Suozzi said ADU reform was “radical” and would “wreak havoc” while Rep. Zeldin called it “boneheaded” and an “attack” on the suburbs. Even with such exaggerated, fear-mongering rhetoric, voters rejected their premise.
Hochul should reintroduce, champion, and sign into law the modest housing proposals she withdrew in early 2022. But she should go even further, leading the charge for laws making New York’s in-demand communities affordable.
Hochul bested multiple challengers that decried any change to the housing status quo – the time has come to change that status quo and bring down housing costs for New Yorkers.
You can reach the author of this piece, Andrew DeFrank, at: defrank@nyu.edu
You can reach the editor of this piece, Patrick Spauster, at: ps4375@nyu.edu