Positive Steps to Lower Housing Costs

1. 1.  Reduce barriers to new development:
   
   1. a.  Increase Town Supervisors terms to 4 years.
      
      1. i.  Efforts to make upzoning changes are hampered by the 2 year election cycle. It takes a year + to develop zoning change proposals and at that point Supervisors are facing reelection and the inevitable strong resistance by small vocal groups inevitably halts the progress. Many of our local elections are decided on this issue.

1. 2.  Support the Governor’s proposal to exempt residential development of 10,000 sq or less from the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
   
   1. a.  SEQRA is the weapon of choice of opponents to kill projects . This change will eliminate 90% of the legal actions that opponents use to delay and kill projects.
   2. b.  Residential projects just involve people, not objectionable industrial processes and should not be subject to a high level of environmental review.
   3. c.  Local municipalities  in New York State don’t have to wait for State action on this; They  already has the power to exempt any residential project that would increase the population within its borders by less than 1% by making such development proposals Type II actions, thereby exempt from SEQRA review.

1. 3.  Eliminate the Special Use Permit process for residential projects. If it’s an allowed use, its allowed, period. The Special Use Permit process subjects residential projects to protracted reviews and approvals and provides additional opportunities for residential project opponents to challenge in court adding cost and time, sometimes enough to snuff out the project.

1. 4.  Housing shortages are primarily a blue state problem. Like California, New York must come to the painful realization that local home rule and existing local Planning & Zoning processes are a major cause of the current housing shortage. New York needs to adopt a “Builders Remedy” to force action on residential development. Local Town, Planning & Zoning Boards must have a time limit in which to render a decision, otherwise the State will take over the approval process. Our governor proposed this 2 years ago and it should be resurrected and passed.

1. 5.  Multifamily development is the most effective way to build housing quickly. It is more efficient cost wise, time and land wise. Municipalities need to incentivize multifamily construction, by among other things, leveling the tax rate on multifamily building to that of single-family buildings. Multifamily buildings are taxed at 150% of single-family houses. The higher tax rate makes it harder for multifamily development to pencil out.

1. 6.  Renters wide up paying for the higher taxes in higher rents, immediate relief is available to existing renters through leveling out the tax rate. Most renters don’t realize that over $100 of there rent is real estate taxes each month.

1. 7.  Recent tax abatement incentives available to upstate communities, i.e., 421F & 421P, are ineffective because while a municipality can grant this tax benefit, it is meaningless unless the School District does so as well. This is because 80% of the real estate tax are the school taxes. To make this effective the legislation should be amended such that if a municipality grants this tax benefit in return for affordable housing set asides, then it must extend to the corresponding school district.

1. 8.  All multifamily development should be given as of right IDA tax benefits to lower the cost of construction and PILOTs to lower rents in the resulting units.

1. 9.  The Governor should reverse the recent wet land rules implemented by the Department of Environmental Protection. These rules have made 1 million otherwise developable acres across the State unavailable for housing development. The State in tis regard is going in the opposite direction of what it should be. i.e., making it easier to build, not harder.

1. 10. 4-unit housing buildings should be as of right in any residential zone area.

1. 11.  Municipalities should avoid disincentives to housing development by declining to send negative signals to private investors, i.e.,  adopting rent regulations i.e., rent control or Good Cause Eviction legislation. Investors are free to decide where to invest and they will avoid areas with an unfriendly political environment. Private investors weigh this heavily in their investment decisions, and these private investors are more important now than ever as the Federal funding that has underwritten almost 100% of recent housing development is about come an end.

In the example of Kingston, who has taken 2 steps forward with adopting progressive zoning, but then took 4 steps backward in adopting rent control and Good Cause Eviction. As an example, a new proposal for multi family housing in mid town Kingston was supposed be rentals, will now be condominiums as investors want no part of rentals in Kingston.