Hochul's housing plan should take a gentler, incentivized approach

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s housing plan will not have the effect of “liberating Long Island to be the best that it can be,” as she was quoted in Newsday. Rather, it will forgo state environmental laws, bind Long Island to unrealistic housing goals, and take away the ability for local communities to make their own zoning decisions, instead giving that power to a super zoning board in Albany. This plan will be detrimental to New York’s suburbs, particularly on Long Island.

Rather than removing self-determination from local communities and using the state’s authority to force development, Hochul should attempt a softer approach to incentivize housing development to diversify Long Island’s housing stock. Brookhaven Town, for example, has a Commercial Redevelopment District, a zoning district created to revitalize underutilized commercial shopping centers, bowling alleys, and health club properties. The district establishes a maximum residential housing unit base density requirement of 10 housing units per acre. This maximum base density can be increased if the property meets certain requirements — if it is within 2,000 feet of mass transit, able to utilize an existing sewage treatment plant, incorporates LEED construction methods, has been specifically targeted for redevelopment, etc. Programs like this are what is needed.

Also, the transit-oriented development, or TOD, provisions of the governor’s plan go too far. TOD zones will encompass a half-mile radius from rail or subway stations. The new plan will establish a tier system to determine residential housing requirements based on proximity to New York City. Tier 1 zones, located in or within 15 miles of NYC, will be required to have a minimum residential housing density of 50 units per acre. For some areas of Long Island, such as Cold Spring Harbor, this would require four- to five-story buildings, which are not in keeping with the surrounding area.

Further, Long Island affordable housing developers asked the governor last year for about $100 million to incentivize construction. Instead of helping Long Islanders achieve their housing goals, Hochul only provided around $3 million in funding, while simultaneously claiming that our communities are not doing enough.

The threat of population growth outpacing water and sewer infrastructure is greatly increased by Hochul’s proposed super zoning board. If a local municipality votes against an affordable housing project, the applicant can appeal to the new board in Albany, where a panel of bureaucrats will have final say. This is an assault on home rule, the principle that local governments have sovereignty over local affairs and the foundational bedrock of New York’s structure of government.

If the governor is truly interested in addressing the housing problem on Long Island, a softer, incentivized, bottom-up approach will yield better results.