Governor Hochul: “The status quo is not acceptable… we have a housing crisis on steroids. There's no other way to describe this.”
Hochul: “We can unleash the potential of City of New York. I believe that I have a vision for this State. I want our teachers to live here. I want our nurses to live here. I want our kids to be able to live here. We can get this done… this transformation is going to be a signal of what New York and New York City residents are capable of when they pull together.”
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that 18 new housing developments will move forward under the Gowanus Neighborhood Mixed Income Housing Development Program, unlocking more than 5,300 units of housing, including more than 1,400 affordable units in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. Governor Hochul launched the program last year to save thousands of units stalled by the expiration of 421-A as part of a package of Executive Actions to increase New York’s housing supply. The Governor also announced today the groundbreaking of 320 and 340 Nevins Street – a 654-unit project, including 154 affordable units, being developed by Charney Companies and Tavros Holdings and one of the first projects to move forward under the program.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.
AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available.
PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below
Good morning everyone. Good morning. I love the sound of this construction noise, keep it going, you can make it as loud as you want. What an exciting day to see life and energy, and labor is working hard to build housing – something that we've talked about for so long and it's happening here.
It's just really, you hear the jackhammers and the excavators, it's just a symphony to someone like myself, and it really reminds us that we're on the cusp of rebirth right here in this community. And that's exactly what's happening here in Gowanus. You know, today we're here to celebrate the groundbreaking of two sites, 320 and 340 Nevins, and 16 other Gowanus sites that are going to be coming back to life like Lazarus brought back from the dead. I said that last June. And so here we are to welcome them back and this is the kickstart.
Residential construction that was halted by the expiration of the tax credit 421-athat had been in place since the 1970s. I want to acknowledge the individuals here who've been working so hard on this. First of all, I want to acknowledge my Commissioners.
I want to talk about RuthAnne Visnauskas and her incredible leadership to make sure we get things done. Also Hope Knight, Empire State Development, taking a leading role in making sure that we get the job done. My partners in the State Legislature. I know Jo Anne Simon is here. Jo Anne, any other State Legislators that I missed here? Jo Anne, thank you. Thank you. We're in Jo Anne's district. That's great. The City Council members have joined us today. Our host Sam Charney and also Nick Silvers, thank you for being the visionaries who stayed with us and got the job underway.
Members of 32BJ and labor, are you got in the house? There you go. I knew you were going to say that. Also, our City Comptroller Brad Lander is here, thank you for joining us and the fight to get more housing built in the city of New York. I see Council Member Gale Brewer has joined us as well as other Council Members so we've got a whole list of Council Members here. Also, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer representing the City here, thank you.
And so this is a good day, good news, but did you catch the other news that came out? Did you see the news that was truly shocking and breathtaking in its scale? I'm talking about New York City's Housing Survey. That if someone's out there trying to find a place to live, a young person who moved here from California because of the tech jobs, or someone who just graduated from CUNY and thought they're going to build their life here, or a firefighter police officer teacher who thought this was going to be their home – how discouraging is it to know that New York City's rental housing stock is the lowest it's been since the 1960s when rent regulations first began?
Now, just to put this in context, the experts say that a healthy vacancy rate is somewhere between five and eight percent. We were living with three to four percent, half of what it should be, and we had a real problem on our hands. But when you go from three to four percent and consider that a problem, we're now at one-point-five percent vacancy rate.
Stark does not begin to describe that scenario for someone looking for a home here in the City of New York. It's not acceptable. The status quo is not acceptable.We don't have a housing shortage at all, we have a housing crisis on steroids. There's no other way to describe this, and sadly, it's one of the top drivers of why people are leaving our State.
They're not all going to Florida and Texas, and I think a lot of them are going tohave second thoughts about that anyhow, I mean, look at their Governors. I'm going to get in trouble for that one, but I don't care. This is a great State. People want to be here and they're only going to other places because there's not a place to live.
We're hemorrhaging families, Black and brown families in particular, who always thought that they'd be able to raise their kids around the grandparents, get the free babysitting. I know that's important. Learn the values, go to the same churches, go to worship in the same community; have that sense of belonging that you had growing up. And now you're going to break the fabric of family because we didn't build enough housing?
That's a tragedy for our families. People are going places like New Jersey and Connecticut. Why? Their taxes aren't lower, the weather's not really different, they do have nice Governors though. But that being said, they have more housing. When we were fiddling while Rome burned, they were building up Rome and that's exactly what we're facing here today.
And I'm getting tired of excuses, getting real tired of – we just didn't build enough; we did not keep up with the demand. We knew what it was. It was always out there, and this NIMBYism and, ‘Not here, we're not going to change that rule that's been in place, we're not going to be open-minded to change,’ paralyze this community and many parts of our State, and now we're facing the consequences.
Our success as a State hinges on one single issue now because all the other factors are great. People want to be here. New York City was named the number one place in the world that people want to be. But wanting to be somewhere and be able to be there are two different dynamics. So we are the place you want tocome.
If we don't have a home for people, they might stay at a hotel for a couple days, say, I'd like to live there someday. Let me see when they start building. Give me a call when New York has more vacancy, because we don't have it right now. We build our housing stock, we're back in the game. It's that simple. And we know how to do it.
We can take sites like this, bring the workers together, put a vision together, work with the State, work with the locals, work with the elected officials. We can do this. We have the capacity. The only thing that's been missing is the will, and that's it where I'm going to make sure we overcome. I intend to act.
I made it very clear here last year that inaction is not an option for this Governor when it comes to building more housing. And last year, the New York Times said that I was the first Governor since Rockefeller, all of you youngsters, look it up. He was Governor for 16 years.
The first Governor who had the guts to take it on. And I know it has not been easy. I've got the scars to show for it, but I don't care. Because we have to keep moving forward. I need the Legislature to support this. I need the support from communities. I put out a plan last year. It was a good, solid plan.
It unleashed the potential that was waiting. They're all pent up. It was rejected. I read all the obituaries of this, even as late as December. People were writing, well Hochul’s done working on housing, except I was rewriting my housing plan when I was reading those articles. We're not giving up. We're not giving up, and we need innovative solutions.
We’ve got to be creative. So back in July, I stood just a few blocks from here and announced a comprehensive package of executive actions because I went back to my team, I said, we have to be able to do something. Tell me what we can do. We put our heads together. And we took a series of executive actions to help boost housing construction here in the State of New York.
So one of those actions is to jumpstart housing growth right here in Gowanus. And yes, you can give that a loud round of applause because this land was rezoned in 2021. Yes. An eternity ago when you think about everything that's happened since then. But it was going to have infrastructure improvements. Waterfront parks for this community, how beautiful, and thousands and thousands of new housing units. The plans were stopped in their tracks when the legislature led 421-a expire.
And again expire the following year, never renewing it. That left nearly 40,000 possible new homes sitting in limbo. And for those who thought that, well, the developers are going to build anyhow because they're such good guys. The numbers didn't add up.
Capital got more expensive. Banks were saying no. No one was willing to deal with the realities that it was a different world for developers. And they said, we’re not going to build. It doesn't work. I warned that. I said it could happen. And now since the expiration of 421-a, the total unit filings have dropped 78 percent in two years.
So instead of getting out of our hole with all this equipment, we dug deeper into the hole. We're in deeper trouble now. Brought the momentum here at Gowanus to a screeching halt. The neighbors saying, what happened? We thought we were going to have all this beautiful work being done here, and many thought the housing would be scrapped for good, but I said no.
No, not taking no for an answer. We're going to press on. We used all the tools we could. We launched a program through Empire State Development. I want to thank our commissioners, our CEO, our president, for working together to figure out some way to bring these stalled projects back to life. To qualify, the projects have to have at least 50 units because we're going big with affordable units that will remain affordable.
That's important to us. And today, I'm proud to announce that in addition to this, we have 18 other projects they're advancing as part of this program. Now, 18’s not exactly what I wanted, but 18’s more than zero. 18 will always be more than zero. And together we're facilitating over 5,300 units right here, 1,400 of which will be affordable.
Yes, affordable for the people to be able to live here. So we're breaking ground on two of them. I just asked our developers my favorite question, when will it be done? I love a start. We'll enjoy the day, but I'm told that June of 2026 there will be over 650 units built right here. That's extraordinary, including 164 affordable. So thank you to the charity companies. And Tavros Capital for being the people who never gave up
You didn't throw in the towel and walk away. You stood up and said, we can get this done. And I thank you for your leadership. Let's give them a round of applause as well. So we still need a statewide strategy. I don't want to piecemeal this all over, it takes too long. Let's just get back to building scale and capacity.
But in the meantime, I'm pursuing a number of actions through our Budget. I'm hoping for support from the Legislature. I'm hearing from so many of them, they're now hearing from their constituents that there is a strong demand. So, I think we're in a different environment right now and I'm really glad to hear that.
The City of New York itself, the Mayor wants to build 500,000 units right here in the city. That's not beyond our capability. That's doable. You know what I say to the Mayor? Let's do it. Let's start building. Let's get it done. And I want no more regulation to be in the way of this. Okay? Let's just look at this. What has been holding this back? We need supply. We can talk about regulations over here, protections. I support the conversation, but we have to unshackle the chains that have held more housing in bondage for too long. That day has to be over, my friends. We can no longer suppress the growth that is so necessary.
So, for the City of New York, working with the Mayor, working with the Deputy Mayor, who we’ll be hearing from shortly. Here's what I propose. Let's restore the tax incentive to include affordable housing incentives. Let's do it. We can do that. Replace the 421-a. But let's grandfather in all the projects that are sitting there on life support, we have thousands of projects that have already gone – are in the pipeline. Let's just unleash those. We can figure out the different formula, a new 421-ax, whatever you want to call it?
We can get this done, but those that have been sitting on the table waiting all this time, they have to be liberated and let's extend their completion deadline to 2031 because right now the market is not good for borrowing money. That will change at some point, and when it does, I want to be able to be unleashing all these opportunities but have the length, the longitude, the length, the opportunity to get them done in 2031. So, we can do that.
Also, outdated regulations that restrict new buildings and conversions. Residential density above far 12. That shouldn't be that difficult. That's the size we were building back in the 30’s and 40’s when we had a housing boom here again, to handle all the capacity of the migrants who are coming from around the world. We built homes for them – the city wants to build more.
Conversion of underutilized commercial. I'd like to see the commercial filled up again, but we're now three years past the pandemic, two years past. We're not seeing all the development we want to see. Let's make those conversions easier. It's a no brainer. How about legalizing the basement apartments where people are living already? Why not? People are there now let's just have some standards in place, safety standards so people don't drown in them like we saw in Queens my first couple weeks as Governor when we had a hurricane. It took the lives of 17 people. People are going to be there anyhow. Let's bring them out of the darkness and make them legal once and for all – the ADUs.
So, I say it's not complicated, my friends. We have the capacity. And let's go forth from today and say, once and for all, and finally, we have the political will to get this done. Now, the Legislature told me they like carrots as well. I gave them a lot of carrots. Those big-sized carrots, not those little cheesy ones you get in the plastic bag. These were full-sized carrots, $650 million worth of carrots, and I put that to the test. We have pro-housing communities. All that money's available for those who step up and say, “Yes. I will commit to being a pro-housing community.” What does that mean? I'll break down the barriers. We'll keep our standards in place.
Yes, we're going to go through SEQR. Yes, we're going to continue the zoning review. Yes, we're going to continue the planning review. Yes, we're going to continue all the environmental reviews, and I did all this for 14 years in local government. I know all the ways you can say no, but I also know the ways to get to yes. So, let's make sure we can do that for our communities.
We already have just announcing this, 20 announced this week from all over the State have signed up for this. I check the numbers every single day. We went from 60 to 80. We have 90 now, right? If I can get to a hundred by the close of business today, that'd be a great week.
So, everybody go back to your communities, say you want to sign up, be a Pro-Housing Community so we can get this done. So, I'm excited about this. We'll be creative. I'm looking at State-owned properties, $500 million sitting on the table next to the carrots saying, let's look at State-owned properties next to transit stations, college campuses, former prisons.
I'm looking at this holistically because we have no choice and so we're going to get it done and in continuation our $25 billion five-year plan to build 100,000 affordable housing units. That plan is still underway. We're moving ahead to build more housing that's affordable for neighbors, so anybody think we can get this done? Anybody with me on getting this done? Can we build more housing?
We can unleash the potential of City of New York. I believe that I have a vision for this State. I want our teachers to live here. I want our nurses to live here. I want our kids to be able to live here. We can get this done over the next day this transformation is going to be a signal of what New York and New York City residents are capable of when they pull together. This will be the vision of how we had a breakthrough. And I'm going to make sure that we unlock the full potential. I'm going to keep focusing on this every single day with every breath I have.
And I know that working together, there is no stopping us. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to build more. Yes, indeed. We're going to build more. Build more housing. Build more housing, build more housing. Build more housing. Build more housing. Build more housing. And 32BJ, you can do your chant, Manny because you guys are really good at yours as well.
Alright. That was great. And with that, a great leader from the City of New York, who's working in tremendous partnership side by side to bring forth more housing here. Our Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, let's hear what she has to say on behalf of Mayor Eric Adams.