MICHAEL WILLIAMS
Staff Writer
Photo by Mike Bird | Provided by Pexels
On Thursday, April 20, New York State governor Kathy Hochul announced that her plan to build 800,000 new homes and help New Yorkers pay the rent has been scratched from the budget. As we know, Hochul gets a good amount of her campaign money from real estate developers to run for governor.
This plan to build 800,000 new homes is a boon to her donors and her husband’s company, Delaware North, who got many insider projects on Buffalo’s new stadium. But the plan to build 800,000 homes is a good one for New York. Average house prices are still up in suburban areas around New York City, and building more houses will lead to lower costs.
This is great news and a great sign of economic success. More houses lead to better schools, better economic development and the benefits of urbanizing where you live. However, Governor Hochul laid down.
This new 800,000 houses program was always going to be a boon for private real estate investors to build new toys and luxury homes in suburbs around New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany. But sadly, the ugliness of NIMBYism reared its head.
NIMBY (not in my backyard) is the movement of families to limit zoning to keep suburban neighbors or stop new construction in their areas to keep market prices higher for homes in the area.
You have to have sympathy for these families. The value of your house is deeply tied to your net worth, and more housing construction in an area can tank that price.
However, these are some of the richest areas in New York State, where protestors occupy town board meetings and block new construction to save million-dollar homes and flats from decreasing in value.
The ultimate cost of NIMBYism?
A dying middle class and generation Z/millennial class that struggles with fulfilling their goals and dreams that those very same families set up for them.
Our generation cannot afford to make a down payment. NIMBYs inflate housing prices too much, causing the renting market to congest and many new college graduates opting for the family bedroom and not their own place. Think of housing as a cycle.
Most people start as renters, then get married and save for a down payment or save for an individual to buy something. You want to buy something to build your financial worth. Everyone becomes a renter, and then a buyer, but not enough people can become buyers because there is not enough housing stock. By building 800,000 new homes, you expand the market, creating more supply for young couples wanting homes, which would lead to fewer people renting and lower prices. It’s simple supply-side economics to lower costs.
Why did Hochul decide to let the policy fail?
Many democratic mayors of rich Long Island towns opposed the proposal. Mayor of Bellerose, New York, Kenneth Moore, said, “We don’t want to change the laws and we don’t want housing.” Just flat-out telling people he could not give a shit about you. No corrupt village mayor bribed by the wealthy in his town would dare support this idea.
The failure to enact this policy will set back the state, and lead to thousands of people losing their lives because they have no place to call home. Twenty-three percent of Americans pay half or more of their monthly salary in rent, with higher numbers in New York. This proposal could have led to housing policy and ensured that everyone in New York could afford the rent. New York could have led.
Instead, when the going gets tough, Hochul caves to the NIMBYs and the rich. She gives up to the traditionally white, Long Island parents who are more concerned about their personal wealth than helping the state address the problem of people dying deaths of despair and our generation who cannot afford to leave Mom’s basement even after doing everything we were told we needed to do to get ahead. It is a real shame Hochul stayed silent while people suffered, again.