Building in New York is famously complicated, expensive and burdensome, in part because of a maze of required reviews and permits.
Now Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing the state to adopt a different approach: getting out of the way.
In her budget proposal, Ms. Hochul called for changing the State Environmental Quality Review Act (known as SEQRA and pronounced see-kra) to expedite new housing projects and major infrastructure, saying that substantive reviews are already being done at the local level.
The plan threatens to put the governor, a Democrat, on a collision course with environmentalists, particularly as she seeks to convince state lawmakers to use the state budget to weaken and delay the state’s ambitious climate goals. But as Ms. Hochul enters the final stages of budget negotiations, she has won the support from mayors and leaders in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Yonkers and New York City.
When Ms. Hochul visited a construction site last month in New Rochelle — one of the few cities in the state that lowered average rents by increasing the housing supply — she insisted that she was “strongly” committed to protecting the environment. But she questioned whether the state had gone too far over time.
“Let’s layer on more and more and more,” she said of the state’s approach to regulation. “But you know what you did? You stifled growth.”
What is SEQRA?
When Gov. Hugh Carey put forth the act in 1975, the nation was just beginning to grapple with humanity’s effect on the environment. Clean air and water became bipartisan causes, and scientists had just discovered what was causing the hole in the ozone layer.
“Protection of the environment is not a luxury which can be put off until a happier time,” Mr. Carey warned.
SEQRA required government agencies to consider various environmental, social and economic effects before allowing most major housing, infrastructure or development projects to begin.
But in the more than 50 years since, the review has become a potent tool for shutting down unwanted building projects, with opponents of the construction often suing to force new reviews or cancel the project.
State officials estimate SEQRA adds an average of two years to construction timelines and an average of $82,000 in costs per home in New York City.
What is the governor proposing?
Under Ms. Hochul’s plan, a vast majority of new housing across the state would be exempt from SEQRA. Local regulations and permit requirements for zoning and air and water quality, among others, would remain in place.
Housing on forest or farmland would still require an environmental review, as would any disruption to land that had not previously been disturbed by construction. Projects near wetlands and those without sewage hookups would also be subject to SEQRA. And buildings over a certain size would also be subject to the law, with different size limits in New York City than in the rest of the state.
Is Hochul turning her back on the environment?
In the governor’s telling, this is about cutting red tape, not environmental protections. She said that her office had reviewed 1,000 state reviews and found that in an overwhelming majority of cases, concerns had already been addressed at the local level.
“You do it on the front end — all your permitting, your water, your sewer, your environmental impacts,” Ms. Hochul said, “and then the state requires you to do it all over again for two more years. Why?”
Michael Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said that the governor’s proposal had been largely well received. But he said many questions remained: Shouldn’t developers at least test soil for previous contamination? What counts as previously disturbed land? Should an upstate city of 200,000 have the same unit cap as a village of 200?
Still, he said, “most moderately sized housing projects do not have major environmental impacts, so being able to build them faster and cheaper would be a good thing.”
What’s all this about abundance?
After Donald J. Trump won the 2024 presidential election, some Democrats began to push the concept of abundance, a notion coined in a 2025 book by the New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and the journalist Derek Thompson. The idea is that Democrats’ belief in regulation had turned them into the party of no, turning off voters. The authors cited California and New York as examples where housing crises resulted from overwrought environmental reviews.
A few months later, California moved to roll back its landmark environmental law, which had by then transformed from a symbol of preservation into a scapegoat for the state’s housing and homelessness crises. Those changes exempt high-density projects from environmental review, so long as they are not on environmentally sensitive or hazardous sites. The proposal was nonetheless blasted by some climate activists as the “worst bill” in 25 years.
New York’s proposed changes go further, exempting a much broader category of housing from environmental review requirements, including lower-density private developments.
How likely is this to happen?
The governor will need to convince Democrats in the State Legislature to change the law. That’s not necessarily such a heavy lift: Just about everyone agrees on the need for new housing.
Still, the State Senate has proposed an alternate plan that would tie SEQRA exemption to density, making it easier to build around cities but not in rural areas and smaller towns. The State Assembly has also put forth its own plan.
Ms. Hochul is aware of how she failed in 2023 to compel local governments to build housing. The governor’s current plan is deferential to local governments — in fact, it places nearly all of the authority for approving or denying a development in their hands by, for example, allowing local rulings on water and air quality to be final.
For communities that are eager to build, this change would allow them to do so. But it would do little to create new housing in places where communities are resistant, regardless of the need.
Benjamin Oreskes contributed reporting.
Grace Ashford covers New York government and politics for The Times.
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