Hochul's housing plan needs more and bigger sticks to compel action

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Housing Compact addresses the desperate statewide need for new housing stock. But critics, including the State Senate and Assembly majorities, are wrong in proposing the plan needs more carrots and fewer sticks. She needs more, bigger sticks if she hopes to win this fight.

She also needs more data. Towns and villages claim the number of houses built has been undercounted. Fine. Make it mandatory to submit the necessary data, but don’t delay the plan for it. Set housing-creation goals, and modify the goals in two years if the data doesn’t support them. If towns don’t send the data, increase their quota until they do.

Offer the carrot of a lookback: If a town has been building homes, it should get credit by having its quota reduced. The reason for keeping simple numerical quotas is twofold: It eliminates the possibility of data manipulation (the home is either there or it isn’t), and it eliminates loopholes.

Some local elected officials say their communities are “not appropriate” for this type of development. “Not appropriate” is a vague term that should have no part in the debate. What is true is that many of the transit-oriented development areas do not have the appropriate infrastructure, such as sewers. The state should identify those areas, put up the money for sewers, and start the three-year clock from when the sewers are complete.

Critics also are right that the governor’s offer of $250 million in incentives is woefully inadequate. It’s been known for decades that a 2-mile stretch of Route 110 in Huntington Station needs sewers, but those two miles are projected to cost $66 million, and they will certainly cost more. If the governor is serious, she needs to be planning on something north of $2.5 billion statewide. Leaning on counties to make the sewer approval process faster would be another useful carrot.

Admirably, Huntington Town has had a 20% minimum affordable component for many years, double the state’s 10%. Less admirably, this requirement has a lot of loopholes. Build your apartments on a golf course, or without requesting an increase in density, and you don’t need an affordable component. One glaring loophole in the governor’s plan is that it contains no mandate for affordable housing. She should set 20% as the minimum affordable component in every complex — period.

Hochul’s plan is admirably vague on what approach towns and villages have to take to meet their quotas. It essentially says that “you must build this many homes and if you do it in the specified time frame, we’ll butt out.” The only time the state gets involved with sticks is when a town does not build enough housing. Arguing that this is a state takeover of local control essentially admits that localities have no plans to build enough housing.

Affordable housing projects in Yonkers and at Matinecock Court in East Northport have shown the value of big sticks. Huntington lost its U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Matinecock Court, yet more than 40 years later it is still not built, for lack of a big enough stick. When Yonkers tried the same tactics to keep affordable houses from being built in the 1980s, the judge imposed a fine of $100/day that doubled every day until the city complied. Yonkers calculated it would be bankrupt in 18 days, and changed the necessary rules quickly. That’s a stick.

It’s true, there are not enough carrots in Hochul’s plan. But it also needs more and bigger sticks.

n THIS GUEST ESSAY reflects the views of Roger Weaving Jr., vice president of the Huntington Township Housing Coalition.