New York Construction Report staff writer
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday rallied with local leaders to promote her proposed “Let Them Build” agenda, reforms aimed at accelerating housing and infrastructure projects by streamlining the state’s environmental review process.
Speaking at the Major Owens Community Center in Brooklyn, Hochul said projects in New York take significantly longer to complete than in other states, driving up costs and worsening the state’s housing shortage.
“And here’s the truth that nobody wants to admit. Right now in the great State of New York, it takes 56 percent longer to build a project here than in other States,” she said. “That’s wasted months, it’s even years of delay.”
The proposal would reform the State Environmental Quality Review Act, commonly known as SEQRA, to eliminate what she described as duplicative reviews for projects that have already been found not to have significant environmental impacts.
Hochul said the changes would make it easier to build housing, child care centers, clean energy projects and other infrastructure that communities support, while maintaining core environmental protections.
“We’re not rolling back environmental protections,” she said. “We’re not eliminating local review permits or approvals. And we’re not saying anything goes.”
Instead, she said, the state should step aside when localities have approved projects.
“If a community wants a project and they say yes to housing, and they say yes to clean energy, and they say yes to parks, they say yes to childcare also desperately needed by parents, then I say this, Let them build. Let them build.”
According to Hochul, regulatory delays add to the cost of construction, including an estimated $82,000 per unit in New York City. She linked the delays to rising rents, fewer available homes and stalled job creation.
“Higher rents, fewer homes, fewer good paying jobs — and here’s what the red tape really costs,” she said.
Hochul said the state’s current environmental review framework, enacted roughly 50 years ago, was necessary at a time when pollution controls were limited. But she argued the process has since become redundant and burdensome, requiring projects to undergo similar reviews multiple times.
“The status quo has failed miserably,” she said. “It’s time to end the red tape and the delays and end having communities struggle while good projects that everyone wants sit in regulatory purgatory.”
The proposal has received backing from the New York State Association of Counties, the New York State Association of Towns, the New York State Conference of Mayors and Zohran Mamdani, along with other local elected officials, according to the governor’s office.
Hochul pointed to recent housing agreements she said have unlocked tens of thousands of units statewide, but said more work is needed.
“After 50 years of waiting, we’re saying now is the time to build,” she said.
