Events
Hochul’s housing commissioner touts environmental review reforms at affordable housing event
The governor announced a preliminary budget deal at the same time City & State brought together stakeholders to discuss affordable housing policy.
New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas delivers the keynote speech at City & State’s Affordable Housing Summit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on May 7, 2026. Rita Thompson
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s newly announced (and mostly finished) state budget deal was the talk of City & State’s Affordable Housing Summit on Thursday.
“There’s a buzz in the air, the big news of the governor’s announcement,” said Edith Hsu-Chen, executive director of the New York City Department of City Planning.
RuthAnne Visnauskas, commissioner of the state Division of Homes and Community Renewal, delivered the summit’s keynote address, touting the governor’s newly announced changes to the State Environmental Quality Review Act, which will spare some housing developments from the extensive environmental review process.
“I think maybe a half an hour ago, the governor announced that we made a series of significant changes to SEQRA,” she said, “including exempting buildings in New York City in medium- and high-density districts that are up to 500 units, and then the rest of New York City up to 250 units. And then outside New York City, exempting multifamily residential development up to 300 units in urban areas outside New York City, and up to 100 units in non-urban areas.”
Visnauskas said the Hochul administration pushed through with the changes to SEQRA, despite concerns from some environmental activists, after finding that the full environmental review process had no impact on new housing developments – other than delaying them.
“This is taking a 1975 law into the 21st century. It still requires compliance with regulatory and permit requirements. You still have to do all the things you had to do before around water use and air quality and protection of natural resources,” she said. “It's really focused on housing projects that were subject to a law that, as we looked at thousands of them, there was never any significant impact found. And so why are we taking them through this same process?”
In addition to discussing the reforms to SEQRA, Visnauskas talked about Hochul’s initiatives to finance new housing construction and lower landlords’ insurance costs.
“There is no one thing that's going to get us out of the housing crisis,” she said, “and so we feel year after year, if we're going to stay on our sort of ‘build, build, build’ and supply agenda, we have to keep adding tools to the toolbox.”