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Housing Priorities for the Mamdani Admin, SEQRA Reform, & More, with Howard Slatkin & Annemarie Gray
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Experts Howard Slatkin and Annemarie Gray joined …
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Foreign.
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Hello and welcome to MAX Politics. This has been Max coming to you from New York Law School and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Speaking here on Thursday, March 12, 2026. Today on the show, I'm looking back to Max Politics, two housing policy experts, Anne Marie Gray and Howard Slatkin, each of whom leads a housing focused nonprofit, but they both also have extensive past experience in New York government working on housing and planning. There's a lot to dig into right now on housing policy given the ongoing housing affordability and availability crisis in New York City, the start of the Mamdani administration with a mayor elected to make the city more affordable, and with something of an all of the above housing philosophy that's focused on tenant protections, reducing rent costs and building more housing of all types. It's also state and city budget season, of course, and there are some important state level housing proposals being debated right ahead of a state budget agreement that needs to be reached by April 1, the start of the new state fiscal year or shortly thereafter. There's state budgets, often a little bit late, more on that shortly, but they include a significant proposed change to the state's environmental review laws aimed at speeding up the development of housing, among other things like clean energy projects that can often be quite lengthy and delayed. We are also starting to see the implementation of changes to the New York City Charter that voters are approved on the fall general election ballot that had been proposed by a Mayor Eric Adams created Charter Revision Commission. And those changes to housing and land use rules already look like they're going to have a significant impact on increasing housing supply in the city and all across the city at that matter. Further building on the major city zoning overhaul, City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, led by the Adams administration and its housing and Planning team, as well as the City Council changes paving the way for tens of thousands more units and again all over the city, not just concentrated in certain areas, but now the Mamdani administration and the new mayor's new team will be putting together its own housing plan, some of which will be impacted by decisions at the state level, of course. And there's a lot to get into here with Anne Marie Gray and Howard Slatkin in this conversation and of course in other episodes with other guests coming soon. We're always doing a lot of housing talk here on the podcast. Speaking of City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, I did fairly recently have an interesting exit interview of sorts with the outgoing city Planning Director Dan Garodnick, who just wrapped up a very productive and much lauded. Four years leading the city's Department of City Planning and the City Planning Commission. So if you missed that, do check out that conversation after you listen to this one today on the show though. Howard Slatkin, a former high level official himself at the very same Department of City Planning. He's now executive director of Citizens Housing and Planning Council CHPC, which is a nearly 90 year old nonprofit radio research and education organization focused on housing and planning policy in New York City. And Amory Gray, a former housing and planning official in city government, including at City hall under multiple mayors and Deputy Mayors for Housing, is now executive director of the pro housing group Open New York, which says it works to mobilize people statewide to fight for abundant, diverse housing that helps lower rents and makes housing more affordable for everyone. She was also a key figure in Mayor Mamdani's transition committee and I'll ask her about some of that work. So in just a minute we're going to talk about a lot of housing policy, but that will include discussion of the acronym that everyone in the housing world at least is talking about right now, cecra. That's S E Q R A for State Environmental Quality Review Act, a process originating in the environmental movement of the 1970s that requires localities to follow certain steps to determine what, if any, environmental impact might come from certain qualifying actions like housing development. In some instances. That often extensive process created to help protect the environment is seen by many as now being an impediment to addressing New York's housing crisis as well as the climate crisis and more because of the time and money it can cost, while opening up for the possibility of many lawsuits at different stages of the process, all of which can slow needed housing growth. While reformers say not actually providing any additional environmental benefit, there' talk for years about significant reform to Sikra in order to allow more housing to be built and faster. And Governor Kathy Hochul is proposing such changes in her 2026 agenda, changes that are backed by Mayor Mamdani as well as many housing and environmental advocates and experts, among others, including other state and local officials. There's some opposition, of course, from some who don't want to see development and growth move more quickly and always some legitimate concern about the actual environment. And some environmental groups are on both sides of the equ and here are at least looking for changes to the proposal in certain ways. So Hochul's proposed reforms would shift what is required for certain proposals in certain geographic areas. And there's some differences for New York City versus outside the city, and even some proposals for more dense areas of the city versus less dense areas of the city. But that's all up for negotiations right now. She's also looking to create tighter timelines for decision making when the review process still applies to proposals. It does have some support in the Legislature as well, where there have already been bills in the state Senate and Assembly to take on such reforms to these review processes. But it is to be seen whether the governor and the two legislative majorities will come to a reform deal in the state budget agreement due in the next few weeks For a little bit more context, According to the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, New York is one of just seven states that subject land use approvals to environmental review at the state level, and some of them, including California and Massachusetts, have recently enacted reforms to boost housing production. According to the Hochul administration, these reforms to the New York State Environmental Quality Review act would expedite critical categories of projects that have been consistently found to not have adverse environmental impacts. The proposal is to exempt certain types of housing as well, as I said, clean energy and other projects that have no significant impacts on the environment but are still subject to local zoning rules from additional CEQA review Projects will still be required to comply with state regulatory and permit requirements governing water use, air quality, environmental justice and more. And as I said, local zoning and other permitting requirements based on the localities. There's other specifics in the proposal, like I said, about how they'd apply to New York City versus outside the city in different parts of the city, unit size of housing, but that's all being negotiated, so I won't get into more detail now and my guest Howard Slacken and Emory Gray. In just a moment. We'll get into more of the details on that and much more. Very briefly, if you missed any recent episodes of the show, a couple quick highlights. I mentioned the recent conversation with the outgoing Director of the Department of City Planning, Dan Gorodnik, but also most recently on the show, I had a great conversation with City Council member Lincoln Ressler of Brooklyn on the city budget picture, making city government work better in the start of the Mamdani era, improving and implementing the city streets plan for bus and bike lanes and pedestrian space, and his legislation to create the Department of Community Safety that Mayor Mamdani has promised and more. I also had a conversation a few weeks ago at this point with New York City Comptroller Mark Levine getting his first in depth reaction to Mayor Mamdani's preliminary budget plan, and we got into a lot there on the city's fiscal budget and economic pictures. A whole bunch of other good conversations in the feed. My two conversations with the Democratic candidates In New York's 10th congressional district primary, that's incumbent Dan Goldman and challenger Brad Lander. I had in depth conversations with the three leading Democrats in New York's 7th congressional district. That's an open race to succeed the retiring Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez. And I talk with Antonio Reynoso, Claire Valdez and Julie Wan, who are competing in that Democratic primary. So lots to catch up on if you've missed any of them after you listen to this one. All right. Today on the show, we're discussing housing housing policy at the city and state levels and among many other specifics, propose reforms to the state's environmental review requirements in order to speed up housing development and meet environmental goals by, for example, increasing living density and building more housing near mass transit and much more. So to break it all down and offer up their assessments and ideas, we've got two great experts with me today. Howard Slatkin is executive director of Citizens Housing and Planning Council and a former top official in the New York City Department, Department of City Planning. And Anne Marie Gray is executive director of Open New York and a former housing and planning official at New York City hall and elsewhere. Thank you both for being here. Anne Marie, how are you doing?
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Great, thanks.
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Thanks for taking the time. Howard, how are you doing?
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Great, thanks.
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All right. Glad to have you both back and together here on the show for the first time. All right, so we have a new administration here. We want to get into a whole lot of specifics in our conversation. But, but big picture here. The Mamdani administration is taking shape. Lots of appointments have been made. We're still waiting on some others. But Anne Marie, you were part of the transition committee and especially the Housing subcommittee within that. I imagine you're feeling good so far about the housing and planning appointments, though I don't know exactly how much they took your advice in full, but big picture thoughts here on the team that the new mayor is putting together, led by Deputy Mayor Leila Borzorg, who's in charge of housing and planning planning. What do you think of the team and what they need to do to be successful here coming in?
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Yeah, I, I'm, I'm really encouraged by some of the first appointments they've made. I'm a really big fan of Layla. I think she brings a real depth of experience and, you know, she's been at the middle in the center of City hall for For a long, for a while now. And you know, she has a really strong team under her. Her chief of staff was kind of the political architect of City of Yes, my number two, our policy director just went over there. So I feel really encouraged that I think there's this real recognition in this all of the above approach that really is a clear recognition that we have to build more housing of all kinds. And that's a core component of the approach. And it's, you know, it's some appointments that are continuing what is really, really exciting and frankly, rare momentum that we need to build more homes in every neighborhood as part of a comprehensive housing plan. So of course really eager to see some of the remaining appointments and, and sort of where the actual housing plan goes. But I think it's been really positive momentum to start and you know, and they've prior prioritized really leaning into the first projects to get expedited come the ballot measures, for example, they've leaned into some like new ideas about where we might build housing. So I'm encouraged and definitely watching closely, of course.
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And they're quickly doing at least different versions of this all of the above approach. They've got the rental ripoff hearings there. The mayor's made, you know, some initial appointments to the rent guidelines board. Maybe we'll get to some of that later. But then of course also, you know, pursuing efforts that will get into that would allow the city to build more housing as you got at trying to take advantage of the new playing field allowed by the zoning reforms of the Adams administration and much more. So a lot of interesting things happening there. Howard, your thoughts on appointments and, and the sort of the direction of the new administration here?
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Well, I think, you know, I'm going to say some, some things that share Anne Marie's optimistic outlook right now at this stage. I think Leila Bozerg is a, is a great person charged with housing planning leadership for the city. Her appreciation for not just having clear vision and bottom line goals for all of the city's activities on these fronts is combined with an appetite for getting into the specifics and working out the details because these are multi layered, thorny, complex issues that it's important to know where you're going, but it's also important to sweat the details and I think it's really important with the initiatives they launched. So for instance, things like the speed task force to expedite the process of new construction for housing and affordable housing around the city that requires attention to detail and the patience to work out issues And I think it's important to be able to do both. There's a lot of a theme in all this is walking and chewing gum. The ability to do more than one thing, to multitask is really important. I think the other, you know, the other appointments have also been heartening. I just want to say it's also a really great step to have a Department of Buildings commissioner, Ahmed Tigani, with such familiarity with housing issues, the day to day issues that housing that faces housing and the residents of housing. And also just the importance of not just the public safety function of dob, which is extraordinarily important, but also the role that it plays as an implementation agency for all of the city's housing goals. So it's really great to see them start off in that direction there.
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Yeah. And frankly, the Buildings Department being under that deputy mayor was not something that we've seen in the last couple administrations. And really echoing Howard's point that they both have a big picture direction of where we want to go. And these are people who will get into the weeds and will really figure out what the barriers are. And that's just absolutely essential for success.
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And we've got Deana Levy taking over at the Department of Housing and Preservation Development as commissioner, long track record in housing. And there's so much again there that's technical about financing housing and much more. And you've got Saidiya Sherman as the new City Planning Director. Howard, just say something. Given your vast experience at the Department of City Planning building off now, a lot of the work that you were involved with that then helped set the groundwork for the city of, yes, zoning changes, the neighborhood plans that were passed during the Adams years. Now you have a new City Planning director coming in. What do you see as sort of the keys for success at City Planning in terms of taking now all of the change of the last years, decades and also sort of implementing an all of the above approach, a concern about, you know, the need to continue to increase housing supply in the city and more. What, particularly at City Planning sort of needs to be in the, in the new mix for the Mamdani administration to be successful there, there.
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Well, I think the first thing about what's new and different at City Planning is the reforms to the city's land use review process that happened through the ballot initiatives, the ballot questions last fall. There is a greater ability to advance projects with some confidence through the process. And the importance of the conversation that happens at the City Planning Commission is greater even than it was before because that becomes kind of sometimes on a smaller project, that becomes the last step in the process, and that's where the final decision is made. And in other cases, it sort of book bookends the City Council's consideration. And there's this potential that an individual project could be appealed and brought back to by the Affordable Housing Appeals Board to a something that's closer to what the City Planning Commission approved. So I think it's really going to heighten the importance of the commission's deliberation and decisions on projects. I think it's a really important thing to me and I think it's a really important thing for the process that the City Planning Commission's role is one of the most public engaged roles that exists for any decision making body in the city, and that the land use review process, even the modified process that we have today, includes just such robust public input and debate that it's really important to have someone leading that conversation who understands how to engage with all the different communities around the city about a range of complicated subjects and work through some of the really thorny decisions that have to be made. So I think there's a real opportunity created by the charter revisions for impactful decisions and to really bring everyone else along through that process.
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If there's going to be one thing that each of you would point to that could really gum up the works here for the Mamdani administration on its all of the above housing agenda. And again, we need to see a housing plan. Deputy Mayor Bozorg said at a recent event hosted by the New York Housing Conference that we were all at that, you know, there'll be a housing plan from the Mamdani administration in the next few months. You know, that that timeline makes sense. You know, usually see these big plans from a new mayoral administration within the roughly first six months or so of an administration. So they're putting all that together now that they're actually in power and in the weeds here. But what, what risks are there? What could gum up the works or what could be a fatal flaw? Is there concern that maybe they're, they're trying to do too much? I don't know that either of you would actually ever do, would say that because you want so much to get done. But you know, what could really be a problem here? I mean, there's always the threat, obviously, especially under the Trump administration, of federal funding issues, but anything that you sort of forecast that's the biggest risk right now or pitfall. Howard, how do you think about, you know, sort of the new Administration getting its footing and trying to execute on a lot here on housing, that could trip things up.
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Well, I mean, first of all, I, I think it's important to, to, to walk into all these conversations with an optimistic perspective about what's possible and not to be naive about what the potential pitfalls are. But that's not the, that's not the way my, my brain is leading this conversation. I'll still answer your question.
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There are,
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there are. You know, one of the biggest risks I think that faces everything is the regulatory reforms and the initiatives to allow more things to happen. All still require finances to work and financial challenges. Whether it is the interest rate environment, whether it, you know, the things that are completely external to the city's control beyond, you know, the reach of local policy directly, things like the costs of construction, the cost of operating buildings, the cost of insurance. These are real limiting factors on the ability to build new housing as well as operate effectively and affordably, the housing that we have today. So I, I really see that as in, in many ways, the biggest headwind is that we could do so much more if we can keep the cost of everything we do down, right? We will be able to build more housing in the private market. We'll be able to subsidize more housing through city programs, city and state and federal programs, if every unit of that can, can, you know, be kept at a more moderate cost. So I think the binding levers to influence those issues is going to be a really important theme moving forward.
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And to your point, I mean, this is not something that the mayor himself or much of the team is, is naive about. In fact, they're actually taking a lot of this on. The question is, what are they going to actually have to show for it? What are these task forces going to come back with, what regulatory reforms are they actually going to be able to push through, how will the state help, etc. Etc. This is, this is clearly on the agenda. You know, the question is what kind of changes can actually be made? Anne Marie, have an answer to this question. What. What keeps you up at night? Or what could be a real tripwire for the new administration?
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Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I agree with Howard both in that I am a natural optimist. That's when I come to these conversations and, and the answer of the financing flags that Howard presented, for sure. I think the other two things that come to mind, one is just, you know, the federal environment and, you know, the constant something unrelated to state and local housing policy really being maybe not a Curveball, because there are a lot of people sort of already, you know, there's just a lot of tensions with what's going on nationally. And then also, you know, they have a big agenda and it. A lot of the big things that. That need to happen take a lot of. They take political capital, they take just the focus in City Hall. I think, you know, we're coming off of the last administration where there's not a huge, huge amount they point to getting done, except for in housing, where there's an enormous amount. Right. Like city of three, City of Yes. Text amendments, five rezonings, the ballot measures. I mean it. And so I think that making sure that housing. And I don't have any reason to think not, but, you know, there. There are a lot of competing priorities, making sure that housing stays at the top so that it really keeps being something that, you know, gets the political attention that it's just going to constantly need from the top level. Levels.
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Very interesting. All right, stick with you. Anne Marie, Keep us zoomed out here. You've been working on these issues a long time. We've seen a lot of the progress and the changes that we've been talking about here already, especially over these last several years, but also changes in the de Blasio years and prior. But where are we right now? Big picture reset for everybody in the cities, you know, sort of ability to. And approach to tackling the larger housing affordability availability crisis. The, you know, issue of needing to increase supply dramatically and the tools the city has to address it. We've already mentioned the major changes to the city zoning of City of Yes. For housing opportunity and other changes, the charter reforms that voters passed via the ballot questions in the fall that are going to speed up development and require housing growth in parts of the city that haven't really been approving or allowing much housing neighborhood rezonings.
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There's.
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There's a lot that's been happening. But where are we right now? How do you sort of capture that and think about where the city is and. And what needs to come next?
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Yeah, it's been an extremely exciting couple years to be, you know, be really involved in the work and, you know, in my case, really, really deeply at the center of so much of this. It's been really exciting and I think, you know, look at, you know, ultimately, I think that we are, and Howard knows this, you know, history better than anyone. Like, we are correcting for decades of underbuilding, decades of policy failures that have gotten us to this place both in terms of what the political incentives are for who approves, who has a say in improving housing. Just for some of the rules on the books that are, you know, range from exclusionary to just restrictive in a really common sense way that just hasn't been changed. Right. So. So it's been. And I think that the, the best testament to that is one, you know, the last couple years you have, you had the soho, Nooh and Gowanus rezonings that Howard I met working on in different roles that, that were finally saying no, even these types of neighborhoods need to, need to build housing. Then you saw City of Yes taking a citywide approach and really changing the narrative that like everywhere should add a little bit of housing and sort of getting out of kind of this routine that I think was definitely, you know, definitely really dominant in the Bloomberg admin, where you kind of have these couple areas of the city, you have a huge amount of density and everything else is kind of shrunk wrapped. Right. I think we're digging ourselves out of that in creative ways. I think the ballot measures are also enormous. And what, you know, on right the day after the election, you're coming out at a moment where there's a clear consensus, even from, you know, a democratic socialist mayor and the governor, a clear mandate from the last election that, that building more homes is no longer a controversial part of, at least in New York, sort of the Democratic Party platform and a mandate that like voters want the government to do everything possible to do this. So we're coming into this administration with so much such positive momentum in this space and such more alignment that you're also seeing elected officials of all stripes really, really standing up and saying this. So it's really, really exciting and we have a really long way to go, right. Getting the narrative change, the political alignment, the sense of consensus, the fact that this is now uncontroversially listed in all of these housing platforms is a really, really great first step. Rents are still soaring like crazy. Right. So of course we really have seen some actual changes at the city level. But again, that adds up to still a small portion of the number of units that we need to, we need to see to stabilize housing. You know, it's on the order of at least half a million. I think probably more like a million. It's closer. And so much of this is also driven by state policy. So I am also really focused and constantly thinking of over the next couple years especially how do we use this momentum to really, really see more momentum at the state. And this year we're seeing some and it's great, but there's just a lot more to go. And also, like, I don't know that national, you know, I kind of say often these days, like this is existential for the Democratic Party. Like we are New York, we are losing congressional seats, we are losing political power. Some of the way that the national math adds up for the next election is really scary. And this truly is because people who want to live here can't and are leaving. And it's also frankly, a moral imperative for people to be able to live in a place that has the rights and opportunities that New York works so hard to protect. So it's so interesting both sort of what we've seen locally and statewide. But it really is important of how essential this is for the national conversation as well.
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And you're making me think, of course, about the regional housing market and questions around the suburbs of New York City and who is and isn't building. And of course, when you talk about statewide population issues, there's definitely questions about whether the suburbs of the city are also developing housing to welcome people and make sure there's room for people who want to live in places outside the city. Howard, big picture. Any. Anything to add to that? Any different ways of thinking about it?
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Well, I, I would just say that, you know, we often focus on projects and proposals and this building or that site or this neighborhood and those things are important and those are kind of the bread and butter of, you know, planning and housing decisions on a day to day bas. But I think there's been a real welcome focus recently that in a lot of things that Anne Marie's described and that is really an opportunity that needs to continue to be pursued, to focus on process and program. Because it's one thing to do a thing, but it's another thing to kick off a process by which you're going to be able to do 100 things. Some of the things that have been tackled, things like charter reform, were about unpacking what's been wrong about the way we've been making decisions and why it's driving bad outcomes. And it's just immensely powerful to unpack that, to rewire things in a way that we think is still going to allow for the kind of conversation that needs to happen, but produce a better decision making process. I mean, I like to observe that we could contrast the process that we had for many years where, you know, I would call it a badly designed process when you can take even multiple parties to the process who agree, but it's hard to get them to collaborate because even there's even rivalry over who gets credit for making the decision. Right. The process was really set up in a lot of ways to pit people against each other in a rivalrous way, and it didn't orient itself toward collaborative decision making and advancing common goals. I think one of the things that's been really amazing to see about just the very early returns on the the charter revisions is that even people with vastly different views over what they would like to see come out of the land use process are coming to the table to figure out solutions and strategies that can address the concerns that they have, the concerns of their constituents. And it's just reoriented the process much more towards one that's about forging common solutions and striking a balance between the multiple perspectives that get voiced in the process. I think that the charter revisions really have given us a huge, gigantic step towards increasing our capacity to make decisions that are going to be beneficial to the city in the future and forcing
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B
people into some decisions that they may not be willingly going along with. Since, since you just talked so clearly about sort of changing the way decisions are made, I think that's a good time to jump to this proposal at the state level of reforms to the state Environmental Quality Review Act. CECRA S. Eqra Anne Marie, before you get into some of the specifics of some of the reform efforts you're really helping to champion that the governor has put forward here and is now being debated in the legislature and there will likely be some kind of compromise on reforms to the state Environmental Quality Review act in a state budget that we're expecting sometime around or after April 1st. Howard, you've done a lot of work in environmental review reform and environmental work at the Department of City Planning. Can you give a little sort of big picture background here on environmental review laws and, you know, sort of what we're talking about here? A lot of times people say, you know, some of these reviews are actually misnomers because they're not actually about what's good for the environment. But there's, you know, a lot of debate over. Over some of that. Give us a little big picture overview about what we're talking about here and where some of this comes from and how we should be thinking about it right now.
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C
Sure. Well, I. I will not disabuse you of that critique that environmental review is not, at this point in time, as it applies to New York City, really very much about the environment at all. Environmental review laws emerged from a lot of the environmental reforms from the 1970s. And I think it's really important to recognize some of the differences between the time they came out of and the things that they were trying to address and the challenges that we face today. These are laws that require discretionary actions of government, of local governments and others to go through a process of reviewing what are the expected outcomes of that, and how do those outcomes create what might be considered significant impacts. The more dense a project is, the more dramatic the kinds of changes it is aiming to achieve, the more potential there might exist for impacts. This framework really emerged out of a kind of sort of a natural resources protection orientation of the environmental movement. During the 1970s, it was really important to stop the government from drilling for oil in sensitive habitats, from knocking down forests to build subdivisions, and therefore, it was important to constrain the authority that government had to make those decisions without looking carefully at the implications. Right. That was the origin of environmental review. And, you know, it makes sense in that context. Well, when you apply it to urban growth in the early 21st century, it looks really different today. Natural resources protection is still very much an issue, and I don't want to discount that. But in New York City, the bigger issues are climate action and smart growth and environmental justice. And those kinds of considerations are not advanced by the traditional environmental review process. Really what they do is they make it harder to take significant action. And if, like I think, and I. I would venture. I would venture to say that Anne Marie thinks, if you think that, that what's needed from government right now for environment, for the environment, for housing, is more action, then environmental review is making that all more difficult, and it makes the status quo a preferred alternative to taking any kind of action action. Environmental review laws also allow a challenge of a, you know, once a decision goes to the. Well, let me pause for a second. Environmental review doesn't say you are or not allowed, are or are not allowed to take an action. It is a disclosure requirement. You're supposed to put that into the conversation so that decision makers can take into account this information when they make their choice, as the government process allows. Right. So an item going through the land use review process, the decision makers on the planning commission at the city council can read what's in the environmental review document and make their decision accordingly. It doesn't mean they can't say yes or they can't say no. That's still up to them. It's a disclosure requirement. Well, that process only.
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B
Only.
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C
Well, let me put it this way. The. The disclosure of environmental Review outcomes or the conclusions of environmental analysis is often very uninformative. A lot of projects don't have any impact whatsoever on the environment, but the amount of work it takes to produce that analysis can itself be a limiting factor in the ability to pursue a project and perhaps more importantly, the ability of third parties to challenge the decisions, the legitimately arrived at decisions of, of these decision making bodies, the City Planning Commission, the City Council, to challenge them on the grounds that the environmental review had some inaccuracy or defect in it has become a standard stalling tactic which is either used to undo a decision or to simply delay it for a long time. And delay can have extraordinarily significant financial impacts and itself can be a tool of stopping change from happening. So none of this is really about the environment, particularly because the outcomes we're talking about denser development near transit, building more housing in established settlements so that you don't have so much suburban sprawl or destruction of natural resources elsewhere. Those are all very environmentally sound policies, but the, the process that was built for this doesn't really adequately reflect it. So I think there are a lot of very persuasive arguments to revisit some of the structure of today's environmental review processes and look at how it can better align with our current priorities like smart growth, like climate action.
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B
So Anne Marie, what's on the agenda here? The governor has put forward some proposals. You're helping lead a coalition that is, is working to see some of this passed in the state budget that I was getting at. What sort of specifics are there that would in your view be a positive impact on ensuring that housing that is not going to have a negative impact on the environment and on surrounding areas can move through the process more quickly.
- [36:59]
A
Yeah, and thank you Howard for that excellent background. And actually one stat to add to what Howard said. The Citizens Budget Commission actually quantified how much the, how much cost the, the delay tied to seeker cause creates and it's the seeker process adds $82,000 to the cost of every single new apartment, not apartment building apartment in New York City. So and that gets passed on like it is just this process is literally driving up rents and also just kind of reiterating one thing that Howard said. Like, like one person can find one detail in what is thousands of pages of paperwork, hire a lawyer and stop a project. And they do. It's quite common. We see it a lot. So anyway, last couple years have actually seen more action around this across the country. Last year, California passed a Huge modernization of their environmental review laws. And, and it's seen as one. I mean it's a hard lift. So maybe it's not lower hanging fruit isn't the right word, but it is one really obvious thing that is getting in the way to start with. So last year actually the Senate passed a bill sponsored by Senator Rachel May and Assembly member Anna Kellis called the Sustainable Affordable Housing and Sprawl Prevention Act. So this is, you know, the Senate passed this and showing that there's the version of this reforms that make a lot of sense. And then this year when the govern released her executive budget and did her state of the state speech in early January, she made this one of the centerpieces which is really, really exciting. And us, our Open New York and RPA have been leading a broad coalition. We're now up to 40 plus groups I believe across the spectrum. Right. It's definitely a lot of housing groups. It also includes some environmental groups, includes business groups, includes just advocates across the spectrum really seeing why modernizing these rules makes a whole lot of sense. And then just earlier this week a version of the Senate bill was in the Senate one House budget, not in the assembly one House budget. But now, you know, we see this is will be a, you know, a major item on the negotiating table as they negotiate for the budget for April 1. Also important to point out this has actually been something that Mayor Mamdani has also put on his list as Albany priorities. I stood with him and the governor and the mayor and again, even just the moment where we're all everyone is really aligned that this makes a lot of sense is huge progress in and of itself. And now we have to pass it. And that's what the next couple of weeks are going to be about.
- [39:37]
B
More focused on housing here. But there's also elements of this that would sort of streamline, review and speed up processes around new clean energy efforts and even childcare facilities. Sort of trying to partly create, you know, fast track abilities for meeting some of the crises that have been identified and some of the ways that government and the private sector have been sort of moving too slowly. In part based on decision making, in part based on some of these roadblocks that can be in the way that some people again would argue are important process for making sure there's not too much steamrolling of the process. But clearly, as you're getting at and many experts are arguing is in need of some modernization and that that's what we're talking about here, not sort of a complete repeal Though there's some people who argue for that of the state environmental review in terms of what these changes would allow to move faster. What are we sort of talking about on housing and where particularly, of course, we're focused here on New York City, so we don't need to get into too much outside the city. But, but what are we talking about, you know, sort of being allowed here? This is, you know, sort of where the nitty gritty of some of the questions around reform come in is, well, what are you really allowing to move faster through the process? And should there be limits on that? And is, you know, I guess one of the ironies here that I know Howard, you know, was probably referring to is the question around, well, does it make sense the more dense the housing you have that that's better, you know, typically for the environment. So shouldn't that move faster? What are we, what are we talking about in here in terms of some of the specifics, Anne Marie, of what, what would, what would be allowed under the reforms that you're pushing?
- [41:33]
A
Sure. And actually just a point that you just made to really reiterate. And Howard said too, this is none of this changes zoning. This truly actually just changes a process and getting, taking away a reason to sue of projects that have already gone through the land use review process, already been approved in so many cases. So I think that's something really important. This is like people already want this to happen, and we're making it either faster or getting rid of ways that people kill those projects. So there are two different proposals out there. There's a governor's proposal and then the Senate bill and writ large, what they do is saying that there's a whole category of projects that we can say, move into what's called type 2 exemptions. Rather than go through the whole, like the, the full process, let's have something that's, that's way faster, that's way more streamlined because these are exactly the types of projects that we are not worried about there in like, you know, the most important environmental impacts that this law was originally designed for. And, and I, I do think the best examples here we're talking about like, yeah, infill housing, previously developed land, places close to transit, and you are just, just make that way faster and cut out these whole steps in the process. So there are some differences. You know, the, the Senate bill actually is just limited to housing. The governor's bill includes a slightly broader set of things. There are different unit thresholds in terms of how many units in a project moves into that other process. The we actually are more in favor of the way that the Senate version defines higher cutoffs, especially in upstate communities. I believe it was like up in most of the state it's 200 units and cities, it's 500. In New York City, it's a thousand. I can pull up exactly how that compares to the.
- [43:24]
B
It's all going to get negotiated.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah, exactly. It's all getting negotiated. The, the governor's version has a, has lower cutoffs. And there, you know, then there are some like there's slight differences of exempt projects. Like what, what do they still have to say? Right. Like they're, you know, know how do you make sure they're still lead or asbestos. Right. Like there's slight differences in exactly what, what still has to get covered. And also one other thing that we like about the Senate bill was the environmental review for all non exempt project is narrowed to remove a bunch of just kind of extraneous junk science like shadow analysis, certain socioeconomic character things that are, that are often fodder for lawsuits that don't actually tell us anything about the environment. And then there's, you know, there's some slight definitions. So writ large, we, we liked the Senate bill, we really liked the governor, we liked the governor's bill. We kind of feel like if they're now negotiating between both of them, you know, there's some tweaks that we feel strongly about. But writ large, if this is where we are and this stays at the top, like top priority, then they're going to land at something that is that, that is good. So happy to go into any more detail, but that's kind of writ large.
- [44:37]
B
I guess the political question and the negotiation question is if it didn't make it into the assembly, one House budget resolution, which is a very big statement of budget and policy priorities from the assembly, what is the likelihood of there being an agreement we see over and over again in Albany over the last bunch of years that very often the state Senate is, is sort of advancing things more quickly than the assembly and sometimes that is because it's a smaller House and a smaller conference, therefore, and they can, you know, discuss and negotiate and so forth a little bit faster than the larger assembly and assembly majority conference. But also, you know, there's been this assembly reticence at times that Speaker Hastie has articulated and others have articulated that they have a preference for not having too much policy in the budget that seems to be sort of hit or miss depending on what they're really prioritizing but there is an argument that is made that policy matters should be dealt with more outside the budget when they don't have as much or any fiscal impact. So anyway, with all that being said, do you have a sense from State assembly members that you've spoken with or the Speaker's office or maybe any other parties here that the assembly will get on board with some kind of compromise on, on reform here?
- [45:56]
A
Yeah, I mean we, we're up in Albany a lot. We're talking to members a lot. So are a lot of members of our coalition. We had a lot of, of good conversations with members of the assembly and a lot of them really do get why we have to find ways to build the kind of housing and green infrastructure and understand why the current version of secret blocks the goals. You know, it wasn't in the, in the one House budget. We are of course think it should needs to be at the top of the list of, of every House. But we're also, you know, we're only partially through the process. The way the, you know, they put back their proposals, we're extreme. Like the fact that it's in the Senate version means that this is already going to be a major item on negotiating table. And we know that we have partners in the assembly that agree. You know, that being said, this is starting what is a complicated and high stakes negotiation that includes a lot of things that are, you know, outside of the purview of our coalition. And you know, there's especially as we're talking about climate, there's a lot of other stuff going on with the climate law that that is a dynamic. There are other bills on the table that other stakeholders really care about. So what's, you know, at least from the advocate perspective, right now it's having as many people as possible really out there talking about why this has to a version of this has to pass. The details matter. But again the details are, the majority of the details are looking pretty good. But you know, it has to stay that way. It has to stay strong and it can't get traded away with other things that are on the table as, as kind of these houses go into a dark room and, and negotiations. Right.
- [47:28]
B
So Howard, how would a version of this. Let's assume for now and again anything could happen here. But, but a version of these reforms do get settled on say a little bit about how you foresee that. Then coinciding with these other changes we've been talking about the city of yes. Zoning amendments, the changes, the charter changes that voters pass that shift Some of the land use review processes and speed things up in the city and require growth in areas that have not been adding affordable housing and so forth. How would changes to these environmental review requirements and also the potential for litigation and other process that slows things down, how would that sort of add to the mix here in your view?
- [48:15]
C
Well, it would make the, it would address the issue of making the process more efficient and more timely. And that's really the core of it. There's nothing in the environmental review process that says thumbs up or thumbs down on a project. Right. It's a disclosure. It doesn't mean that the project will be approved or won't be approved, depending on what the outcomes of your environment or review are. It's about the size of the hill you have to climb before you can even get an answer to that question. And the, the, the, the change to the changes that are being contemplated would affect mostly smaller projects, not vast, enormous changes. And what they would do is they would allow decision makers to assess those proposals on their merits in a more timely fashion. That's really fundamentally what it would accomplish. And it aligns with certain other aspects of the charter revisions that we're focusing on. The fact that we have had relatively few, very few small rezonings for housing in the past several decades, in part because the process is such a bear and that it's not worth going through a massive, massive process in order to do something that's not that big. So, you know, it's not. These aren't the kinds of reforms that are going to result in big, big things so much as result in more small things. Mm.
- [49:39]
B
The. One of the, one of the sort of ways in which seemingly this ties in with discussion, and correct me if I'm wrong, here is the ongoing question. I know both, both of you and your organizations have, have been invested in this as well around Transit Oriented Development, which is one of the key, you know, ways in which you combine climate efforts, housing, transit, some of these big areas. Is there city of yes. For housing opportunity made some changes to allow more housing near mass transit. Didn't go as far as some people would have liked. How does this potentially coincide with Transit Oriented Development? Are there next steps on Transit Oriented Development that need to happen in coinciding with this type of effort or that would come next. Are there ways to think about, about sort of pairing more effort around this, or is that sort of a discussion for another time?
- [50:42]
C
Well, I think they are mutually reinforcing, right. In that they address this fundamental and really unhelpful bias that the environmental review process has against density. Right. If you were to build a thousand, you know, small homes individually in lots of different places out in the woods, you wouldn't be going through this process. But if you want to build a thousand units on top of a transit center in New York City, you would have to go through this process and you would have to go through all the additional cost and delay that it takes to get there. So just removing that anti, anti density bias in already developed urban areas is a huge benefit. And you don't have to put a thumb on the scale to achieve transit oriented growth in New York City. You just have to allow it in many cases. And this would be an important part of, of that.
- [51:33]
A
Yeah, I totally agree that it, you know, it, it changes the sort of status quo bias against, against transgender development. I, I think it's also important to remember that this is, this, this doesn't change zoning. Right. So the fact that, that it is still illegal to build a small apartment building near transist stop in Westchester doesn't change. Right. So this is, but this is a really important, it's a really important, just like baseline reform that needs to happen. It's a really important precursor that also builds the confidence that we can keep doing, but it is nowhere like it is not the end all be all of. We also have to year after year be doing things that make that allow us to do more comprehensive transit oriented development, for example, also via zoning tool. So it's an extremely important step. And I think seeing the consensus of all of these elected officials that are, it seems like the governor's on a good path to get reelected. Mamdani is just starting his administration. I think these are really, really important steps to keep the momentum going. But ultimately it's, you know, one of many steps to undo a lot of these rules that we were talking about earlier that have been kind of building up for decades.
- [52:42]
B
I saw another of your fellow housing experts, Alex Armlow itch had tweeted at some point that only seven states in the country apply environmental review to housing, which I thought was an interesting data point because we often, we very often in New York don't actually sort of look at what other states are doing. But you'd mentioned and there have been efforts in a variety of other states like California, to make reforms on some of these laws. Again, that often came out of the environmental movements of the seventies and so forth. All right, I don't want to keep you too much longer, but we got to get into some other priorities that each of your organizations have. And as you mentioned, the Mamdani administration has named environmental review reform at the state level as one of its top priorities for a state budget. Obviously, there's a whole bunch of fiscal things that are being discussed, and you can't go five minutes in the news right now without talking about the city, you know, hearing about the city budget and how the mayor is looking for increased taxes at the state level, increased aid from the state, etc. But beyond some of those fiscal questions, you know, he's talking about mayoral control of city schools being extended by the state and environmental review reform, among a couple of other top priorities. So getting into some other things that the mayor. Mayor either is or should be focused on. Howard, come take us through a couple. We won't be able to get to everything, but CHPC put forward recommendations for the new mayoral administration. You've got a lens that's really focused on something we discussed a little bit earlier, which is this idea of dealing with costs and something the mayor has talked about a little bit. Take us through some of your sort of recommendations for both a broader lens and also some of the specific specifics therein about how to tackle the housing crisis that we haven't discussed yet.
- [54:37]
C
Sure. And I'd say that in many ways, the costs of building and operating housing are kind of the next chapter of the battle to normalize housing once again, in that for many years we struggled with land use decisions and the approval of housing. And, and that if you asked people if they wanted more housing, they would say, well, sure, I want more housing. But if you ask people, do you want more housing here? They would say some people would say, some, a very specific group of people who live somewhere near that housing would say, actually, no, not there and not there and not there and not there. And so we had this impasse. I think, in a way, we have a similar challenge with costs, with the cost of building, with the cost of operating, and that those caused by. By myriad other factors. Sometimes they're caused by the accumulation of legislative mandates and compliance burdens that are applied to housing. Sometimes they're increased complexity of building codes and regulations that are never evaluated for their cost implications, but just sort of pile up slowly over time. And we ask ourselves, well, why are we spending so much money on building housing? Why does it cost something way too close to a million dollars to build a unit of affordable housing which is. Is not affordable? It's just, we're, we're just paying for it. It's not. There's nothing affordable about paying a million dollars to build a unit of housing. Right? Like that's, that's something that we really have to work on. I think it's really important that we take something like the city of yes approach here and not ask what can we do about this factor and this factor and this factor in isolation, but look at it holistically. Don't ask whether we can bring this cost or that cost down, but say, say we're going to bring costs down. How are we going to do it? Let's come up with the best set of ideas we have about the different measures that can reduce the cost of building housing in New York City, the costs of operating housing in New York City. And let's put together a package that's going to be coherent. And it's not that, you know, approving or disapproving one item in that package doesn't necessarily make or break it, but making it a better about bringing down the cost of housing makes it central to our affordability crisis. The city can never be affordable if we can't afford to keep the lights on and, and, and keep building, you know, keep taking out the trash and keeping buildings clean for people at a price that's not exorbitant.
- [57:08]
B
Are the discussions around scaffolding insurance rates? Are those on the right track? Are there, you know, sort of specifics that should be at the top of the list here in terms of bringing down some of those costs? Are there ways to sort of think about prioritizing, you know, shifting the cost of building and, and running housing in ways that would have the biggest impact?
- [57:36]
C
I think it's really about, you know, we talked earlier about the importance of sweating the details. Each one of these is its own kind of onion skin to sort of p. You know, the issues surrounding insurance are really multi layered, complex. They affect more than housing, but they really particularly affect housing. You know, they affect other parts of the country, but they really particularly affect New York. And we need to, you know, try a new sets of ideas. There are pilots. There are things that ideas that have been put into practice out there like the, you know, the insurance captive idea and ways of expanding access to low cost insurance for the operators of affordable housing in New York City. Those are all things that we need to continue to advance. I think there's also more regulatory and process reform contributions to be made to all those things. So for instance, you know, the liability requirements for, you know, for construction projects that impose costs that are many times higher, you know, the average construction site in New York City pays multiples of its, of the rate of insurance that they do in other states. It's just pure cost that we pay for building housing here in New York that doesn't exist elsewhere. It's not a huge mystery as to how to solve that. We just have been trying to pick off these items, these issues individually rather than putting together a package which is a compelling way of getting the cost of construction down by 10%, say by putting together several of these ideas and concepts. I'd say the same thing is true on the operating side. I mentioned insurance. Utility costs are really significant for affordable housing. Water bills are something that are a significant challenge for, for affordable housing in particular. You know, you're talking about, you know, you pay the same water rate as any other building but you don't have the revenue to support it the same way other buildings do. And unless we compensate people for that with other sort of sources of revenue and pushing money into buildings, then we have to really think about the equity of our, of our water aid structure and ways that we can rebalance that. This is true for, for all these different topics.
- [59:49]
B
I want to come back to you in a minute on some of the other ideas that are in your recommendations. But Anne Marie, let's come to you open. New York has a city policy agenda. Obviously you're very focused right now on getting the state environmental review reforms passed at the state level. But coming back to the city, what are a couple of things that you want to see as pillars of the the Mamdani administration housing plan on, you know, addressing the city's housing supply gap in ways that either haven't been done or haven't been done enough yet. I know one thing I touched on earlier was this continuing to increase transit oriented development. But perhaps beyond that, what are some other things in the open New York agenda here that you want to see the Mamdani administration really take on?
- [60:36]
A
Yeah, I mean we definitely, you know, we, we stood up the campaign for the ballot measures. So I think really, really following to make sure that you know, those, all of those measures really do turn into, turn into homes and you know, all of the follow up steps are, are, are executed well is something definitely at the top of our minds and we've already seen a couple projects move forward which is exciting I think definitely Transit Orient development just continues to be a theme at the city level and of course also at the state level. Like you know, it was a part of City of Yes, that was not as ambitious as it could have been and you know we also have a lot of conversations around the new IBX stations coming in. Just like sort of both new opportunities that haven't existed for decades and also just that it is still hard to build. You know, it's still. Our zoning does not allow for taller buildings right around transit. So you know, you know, parking mandates are still in place in a lot of places too. So there are definitely, there are a lot of different ways to sort of structure how you might tackle that. But I think that's just a, you know, New York City, we have an incredible transit network and just there's always more to do there. You know, we're also thinking a lot of creative ways to just keep building, you know, smaller scale and like mid density housing that is best for new home ownership opportunities. I still think there's a lot of work to do on that. You know, we, you know, there's excited to see sort of this like kind of the inventory task force of, of city on land. But one thing that was in our policy agenda of like as you think of like the priority of child care. We also, there's a lot of schools that are frankly in pretty bad condition and renovating those to also include housing and childcare. I think there's a lot of opportunities for that.
- [62:14]
B
I was interesting just to jump in for a sec. I was interested to see that in your agenda thinking about, you know, school redevelopment and also housing. And obviously there's been some experimentation with doing that with libraries and I know that the new city council speaker Julie Menon has talked about wanting to sort of accelerate that idea around building or rebuilding libraries with housing above them. That seems like a great, you know, sort of ground floor usage for a building is having a public library at the base. So it was interesting to see the question about schools as part of that thinking as well in your platform.
- [62:51]
A
Yeah, I think there's always this question in every admin, rightly so of like are we using our city owned property as best we can? And I think you know, schools, libraries, a lot of other facilities are, are always a question. Some of these haven't been redeveloped because of reasons, you know, that are hard. Right. We've gone through all of the easy projects but I, and I think I always, you know, that is in addition to we are not going to solve our housing crisis just with, just with building on city owned land. But it, there's always the real question of how to, how to make good use of that. Another thing in our agenda agenda is you know, I think it's really the, you know, President Reynoso did a whole sort of borough wide housing plan and has really leaned on that as the new appeals board is set up and the propositions and how I think the, the borough level of how we're thinking about planning and frankly fair housing and fair planning is, is like a, a more a newly empowered one that I think is really interesting to be to take things out of the hyperlocal. So we're definitely thinking a lot about that and it, it's less sort of the things that we are bread and but much echo. You know, building code reform, outdated requirements that add a lot of cost to projects is definitely something that you know, we've followed really closely in other states as well. And there's like you know, a lot of things where places where New York City is out of step that, that you know, we're also definitely following and interested in.
- [64:19]
B
All right, Howard, back to you. A couple other things you want to shout out. I know there's a lot in the CHPC recommendations and agenda we're not going to have be able to have a full conversation here about nycha. For example, some of the discussion around cost control certainly applies to all types of housing including a lot of the distressed rent stabilized housing stock in the city. That'll again be fodder for further conversation here especially as we get into rent guidelines board season. But anything else as, as Ann Marie was citing some of the open New York platform that you were thinking of of or just returning to the CHPC platform that you want to shout out?
- [64:59]
C
Yeah, I mean there are a lot of other opportunities to you know, for improvement that we can lean into. And I think one that's important to think about is the way is the lottery and marketing process for affordable housing. It's a pretty hot topic today because it's really well understood by now that we're not placing people in affordable housing nearly as quickly or as efficiently as we should should be. And we have done some research into how this is done in other places around the world and have some what we hope are productive suggestions for ways that the city can not just tinker with the details even though the details are important. You know, not just tinker with the details of how it runs its housing lottery processes, but really reconsider it and focus on the efficiency of the process and how you can have a process that better matches matches the preferences of residents with the apartments that are available at any point in time rather than you know, we're all familiar with the story of like there are, you know, a Hundred thousand, you know, applicants who said they were interested in this building. And there's, you know, 112 apartments. We all know that those that, you know, that is partly a reflection of the vast need for affordable housing that exists in the city. But the other thing is that we haven't really filtered the, those hundred, you know, those hundred thousand eligible applicants for who is most interested in living there rather than another neighborhood where they might be more interested in, in housing. And that's one of the reasons why the housing lottery takes so long is that, you know, a unit is offered to one qualified applicant. They don't select to, you know, to. They don't select that unit. And then it goes down to the next and the next and the next. And this process can really add up over time. And what it means is that we can spend, spend over a year filling a building that's a completed building with eligible affordable housing residents. There are more practical and timely ways to do this in a way that's very responsive to the priorities of residents. And I think it's, it's time that the city really can take some, some steps back and rethink the way that it's been doing this, to come up with a process, process that, that'll serve everyone better.
- [67:16]
B
All right, last question for each of you. Howard, let me stick with you. How should the Mamdani administration and the city council be thinking about the role of neighborhood plans and neighborhood rezonings as they think about their housing plan, about the next steps in increasing housing supply in particular, but also, again, those usually tie in with neighborhood and community development initiatives. You know, investments in sewer infrastructure, but also school seats and all sorts of things that, you know, people want to see come along with new housing. But how should, how should the Mamdani administration think about neighborhood plans and rezonings in their housing plan and the future steps here?
- [67:57]
C
Well, I think that. I'm not sure that they have to think about it in a vastly different way. I think that neighborhood rezonings do something that's completely different from what the city of yes. Reforms, you know, did. Those were about looking at how regulations that apply across the city work or don't work and, you know, ratcheting them up in modest ways so that there's a little bit more housing everywhere. But it wasn't about turning a low density place into a high density place or turning a medium density place into a low density place or any of those kinds of neighborhood changes. It wasn't about turning residential areas commercial or anything like that place based neighborhood planning is really, it really should be a bad place. And, you know, it should really be about reconsidering what the future of a neighborhood should look like, what the opportunities that exist there, what the needs that exist there. You know, what infrastructure and other facilities are needed to support the neighborhood that we'd like to see in the future. There are opportunities to do something, you know, really different at the local level than you could do in a kind of broad brush sweeping, you know, categorical historical zoning reform mode. So I think that it's really important to have those local deep dives to get really specific about what's important in any particular location. And I think it's going to be. There should be an opportunity to have those conversations and come to answers that work and advance a future vision that can be shared by a wide range of, of people.
- [69:33]
B
All right, thank you. And let you go on this, Anne Marie. When you were working in city government, this mother of all neighborhood rezonings, although it wouldn't technically, I don't think be a neighborhood rezoning, it was the Sunnyside Yard proposal was something that you worked on a bit or a lot and now is being, you know, sort of revisited by Mayor Mamdani and pitched to President Trump as something that the federal government could perhaps help fund at the city level to the tune of, you know, tens of billions of dollars perhaps to deck over the Sunnyside Yard rail yard in Queens and build a whole new neighborhood on top. Do you want to see that prioritized? How much value does that project have? Is it realistic to think about it? Just give us a couple minutes. Big picture on the Sunnyside Yard idea and how you view it now. Now in 2026, after Mayor de Blasio made it a centerpiece of one of his state of the city speeches a decade ago.
- [70:35]
A
Yeah, if, if I can, I would kind of do a combo answer to your last two questions. But I think that, like, I, I think that sort of definitely reiterating Howard's point that we've made so much progress on tools that apply everywhere. And one other that we haven't talked about yet is, you know, just this week, council approved a building in downtown Brooklyn with 1200 new homes that is using, taking advantage of the new high density districts allowed by the FAR cap, the 12 FAR cap being listed in city of yes. And I think that really making sure and then in this admin that we're really making good use of that in places that already have the infrastructure they need. Right. That is on top of like, you know, that's however many transit lines. I think you can do a lot more of that in Manhattan that we saw initial plans do in the last admin too. And I also think very much that larger changes and I'm excited to see today at the helm, the chair, Sherman at the helm to. To think about how we engage neighborhoods around. Around larger changes. I also think something we haven't mentioned in this conversation, that the focus on tenant protections is also really helpful for a lot of those conversations people. It. It's natural to be afraid of change in your neighborhood when you feel like you're being displaced. So I think this is where I think that all of the above approach of building new homes and tenant protections really make a lot of sense and excited to see how they lean into. Into that. On your question of Sunnyside Yards, which I think fits in a completely different category, right. This is like, this is the generational projects that often take a generation to. To realize that create new land or that kind of seize an opportunity that's been sitting there for a really long time, I think is actually a completely different category. You know, again, we are facing a really, really big housing crisis. This is housing shortage. It's like 500,000 units or more on the order of a million homes. So. So I'm all in favor. And we should be thinking about every different tool we use to get there, and some of that is the city creates new land. That's like a lot of the history of what we've done, and we've done really big things. So Sunnyside Yard is a project I worked on a couple jobs ago in the feasibility study and master plan phase. So it's like, it is an exceptionally complicated site. I think it's just not an exaggeration to really stress how complicated it is. And it requires. It's Amtrak, it's an mta, it's the city. So this is sort of a complicated structure of city, state, federal government, really working together. In a lot of years, a huge amount of money from the federal government could catalyze it in a way that has never been possible. And I think a lot of the work that is now being revisited six years later is a really interesting vision for how you would think about a new neighborhood that is in the particular place of Queens. And how do you think about what it looks like to build a new neighborhood in the 21st century in different ways that look different. Different. So I think there's a lot in there that's both really exciting. You know, we should always be talking about and exploring like the biggest ideas. But this one is really, really complicated and it needs to, you know, anything. Any next steps with it need to fit within a comprehensive housing plan that's also addressing things that would get built a lot faster. Right. Ultimately, we. People need housing as fast as possible. And so we need to be marking our success by how quickly we can do. Do that with a lot, in a lot of different ways.
- [73:49]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very interesting to think about, you know, all of what we've discussed throughout this hour and the, you know, interesting mega projects that are like, as you said, just a totally different category, you know, very interesting to think about. Howard, did you want to jump in on Sunnyside Yard real quick?
- [74:05]
C
Yeah, I mean, how, how could I not, really? I mean, you know, I talked earlier about the importance of being able to walk and chew gum and, you know, as, as Annemarie said, Sunnyside Yards is an exceptionally complicated physically, administratively, financially, you know, in, in every way. It's a project that has all those complexities. You know, it would be a matter of walking, chewing gum, and like writing the score to a symphony all at the same time. I think it's really important to not let it take you off your game with everything else that's important that's going on. To do something like Sunnyside Yards would require sustained commitment of resources and focus and all sorts of things that I will say have been in short supply at the federal level in, in recent days and would have to remain in place. You know, have to be really reliable and trustworthy. And so I think it's important to, you know, to, to be able to keep that kind of long term planning and long term thinking going, going, but not let it take you off your game with all the other things that you got to do in the meantime.
- [75:10]
A
Agreed.
- [75:12]
B
All right. A good point to end on. Howard Slacken is executive Director of Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Anne Marie Gray is executive Director of Open New York. If anyone has listened to this conversation and you want to get even more into the weeds on any of this, there are a lot more details we didn't even touch on in the plans that both organizations have put put forward in their recommendations and their agendas. So you can look on their websites for that. And they're all, you know, nicely presented and bulleted out in very specific format for exactly what kind of changes are being recommended or pursued here. So there's a lot more to find there. Howard Emory, thanks for all the time and thoughts and stay in touch.
- [75:48]
A
Thank you.