New York State to Loosen Environmental Rules to Speed Up Homebuilding

Review process can add two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to housing projects

By Rebecca Picciotto of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"New York is preparing to loosen its environmental law to make it faster and cheaper to build housing in the state, the latest government effort to tackle high housing costs as affordability becomes a centerpiece of this election year.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday proposed new reforms to exempt the majority of housing projects from the State Environmental Quality Review Act, or Seqra. State lawmakers would need to approve the reforms.

The more than 50-year-old law requires new developments to undergo lengthy environmental reviews that can add an average of two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs.

“For too long, burdensome red tape has stood in the way of progress localities want to see, making it too hard to deliver critical housing and infrastructure,” Hochul said in a statement. 

Hochul is the latest Democrat to roll back environmental protections, long a bedrock issue on the left, in favor of building more homes. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted similar housing exemptions to his state’s environmental-review law."

"These reviews can increase project costs by 11% to 16%"

"Some projects get stuck in Seqra lawsuits for as long as eight years."

"Sometimes, Seqra lawsuits are filed against green-energy projects meant to improve New York’s environmental sustainability."

"over the past decade, more than 1,000 housing projects in New York endured these expensive reviews despite having zero significant environmental impacts."