Housing Package Fails to Pass: Albany’s Brazen Contempt for the People of New York on Full Display

When I was in my first year in law school, a professor once remarked the mark of a great lawyer is not the number of adversaries outplayed, but rather the deals successfully navigated across the finish line. A successful transaction involves compromise and often a whiff of disappointment in the outcome by both parties. As an aside, readers interested in negotiation should consider the book “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury and not so much the “The Art of the Deal” credited to Donald J. Trump but written entirely by Tony Schwartz. New York state officials would be well served to heed the advice of the aforementioned law school professor and the lessons from “Getting to Yes” as much is at stake for New Yorkers who are paying the price for their leaders’ political pandering, gross ineptitude, and resolute intransigence.

The latest shenanigans from Albany involved a potential deal to protect millions of New York renters, including those of free-market apartments, from outrageously high rent increases and extending the 421a project completion deadline beyond June 2026 so those projects grandfathered into 421a actually get built (some 32,000 units are at risk without the extension). Unsurprisingly, the legislative session ended without any new housing legislation but a whole lot of finger-pointing. The Assembly Speaker, Carl Heastie, and Senate President, Andrea Stewart-Cousins together claimed that lawmakers had reached a “consensus” on many of the housing proposals but that they “could not come to an agreement with the governor.” The problem with this assertion by the Democratic lawmakers (and they know this) is that bills—to be passed into law—must first be introduced at the House Senate or Assembly level, approved by both houses and reconciled for any differing language before landing on the governor’s desk. Heastie and Stewart-Cousins failed to introduce any proposals let alone get any legislation passed.

Now, it is true that Governor Hochul lacks any meaningful political gravitas having barely eked out a victory over a weak opponent in Lee Zeldin but she did put forth several ideas on how to tackle New York’s housing crisis in her annual budget (none of them original but all designed to encourage more housing for New Yorkers). Some of those ideas included incentivizing developers to build with favorable tax benefits akin to 421a, converting office space to residential buildings, and modifying zoning regulations to allow for taller, denser residential complexes. Lawmakers pushed back on all of these proposals as a victory for none seems to be an easier path forward than explaining the advantages of a negotiated deal to their constituents.

Ironically, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie is not without some housing controversy of his own. In 1999, Heastie was able to hold onto a home that his mother purchased with money embezzled from a nonprofit charity where she worked (she wrote checks to herself from the nonprofit and used some of these ill-gotten gains to buy the home). Though Mr. Heastie was instructed by a judge to sell the home and relinquish the proceeds from the sale to his mother’s former employee—through an unusual string of legal lapses in the court system or something more nefarious as suggested in a 2015 NY Times article—Mr. Heastie was able to keep the home, sell it for a profit of nearly $200,000 and use the money to buy a more expensive home. So much for Mr. Heastie’s vow to bring accountability and integrity back to the statehouse.

With the most recent legislative session over, and no housing legislation passed, what next? It seems we wait until January 2024 when legislators re-convene and hope for cooler, more rational heads to prevail. Of course, Governor Hochul has the legal authority to call a “special” session that would require lawmakers to return from break and address any specific housing issues she raises. But, does she have the political power to corral the troops and get something done? Who’s to say, but in the interim, the housing supply crisis “continues to worsen” as New Yorkers experience “escalating rents, increased homelessness, and a continued deterioration of the city’s rental housing stock,” according to the President of the Real Estate Board of New York, James Whelen.