Environmental Review Makes Building Impossible. New York's Gov. Has a Fix.

The governor’s proposed reforms will speed up new construction—if the state legislature cooperates.

Courtesy Steve Pfost/Newsday RM/Getty.

The nationwide movement against regulatory barriers to building housing has reached Albany. For the first time since a catastrophic attempt at reform in 2023, Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed legislation that would speed up the approval of new housing developments.

Last time, Hochul proposed to override localities’ much-coveted powers to enact their own zoning laws restricting new housing. Those powers remain sacrosanct in her new proposal. Instead, Hochul is proposing reforms to the state’s environmental-review requirements.

If passed, these changes would mean communities that want new housing would be able to get it faster, and with less administrative expense. The only question is whether the state legislature will play along.

Environmental review is a process of disclosure of potential effects from discretionary actions by state government agencies. Those actions include zoning changes. Current New York State regulations exempt the construction of one-, two-, and three-family homes from environmental review. That facilitates suburban sprawl, but in the housing-supply-deficient New York City metropolitan area, not much undeveloped land remains over which to sprawl. The city and region need denser types of housing, particularly apartment buildings.

Rezoning to allow apartment buildings triggers State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR, or, in New York City, CEQR). Under this complex process, applicants fill out a “short” form that, in fact, could have hundreds of pages of attachments. The relevant approving agency then determines whether the project could cause significant environmental impacts, a process that typically takes about a year. If a potential adverse impact is identified, then an Environmental Impact Statement is required. That takes between one and two years and produces a statement that can total thousands of pages.

Hochul’s proposal recognizes that constructing denser housing in already-urbanized areas should not trigger the concerns the state’s environmental review process is intended to address. It builds on the “Green Fast Track” for new housing that the city instituted in 2024. Created under the city’s constrained legal authority, the “fast track” is a helpful but limited shortcut. The governor’s new legislation would significantly expand the kinds of new housing exempted from environmental review. In New York City, the governor’s proposal would exclude buildings with up to 500 units in medium- and high-density districts (locally defined) and 250 units in other districts. Nonresidential space would also be excluded up to 50,000 square feet in all areas. Flood zones remain excluded.

In municipalities outside New York City, the governor’s proposal would exclude from environmental review projects with up to 100 units, provided that the site is “previously disturbed” and connected to existing water and sewer service. The proposal also excludes some non-residential space.

If the legislature passes Hochul’s proposal, it will save applicants considerable time and expense, in turn making more projects economically feasible. That will reinforce the success of the New York City Charter changes enacted by referendum last November, which shortened the time the city takes to review certain zoning changes. The combined new rules would mean a zoning change for a new apartment building might get approved in a few months—something that has been unthinkable for decades.

New York City and other pro-housing local governments are likely to support Hochul’s reforms. Support will also come from real-estate interests and housing-friendly nonprofit groups such as Open New York and the Regional Plan Association.

Opposition will likely come from anti-development local governments, as well as community and environmental groups that view the cost and delays built into the current process as a useful tool. These forces will find considerable sympathy in the legislature. Democratic supermajorities in both houses have shown little urgency in addressing the downstate region’s housing-supply crisis.

It’s possible that legislators, not wanting to be seen as purely anti-housing, will load up Hochul’s straightforward proposal with additional conditions, such as affordable-housing requirements and prevailing-wage provisions, that make it less promising and preserve the SEQR/CEQR roadblock in many cases. Hochul’s proposal would leave such policy considerations to local governments.

Perhaps this year will be different, and the legislature will be uncharacteristically helpful. Let’s hope that members comprehend that dense new housing is an environmentally benign solution to the problem of housing the state’s population. Maintaining a byzantine and expensive paper-pushing exercise just because it gums up the workings of government would be a sad situation indeed.