In the 2023 budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul attempted to include several game-changing ideas for advancing affordable housing in New York State. The most significant element was a so-called "builder's remedy" law that would allow builders to bypass local zoning limits in municipalities that failed to amend their zoning codes to allow a specific level of new housing development each year. We explored New York's attempt in our July 23, 2023 column, "N.Y. Looked Seriously at Builder's Remedy Law to Address Affordable Housing Shortage," and noted that New Jersey, Massachusetts, and a few other states have successfully embraced similar laws to force municipalities to accommodate new housing. The N.Y. legislature removed it from the budget when certain legislators, mostly from suburban districts, objected.

In the 2024 budget, the governor turned her attention to a more modest goal: getting state agencies and public authorities to facilitate housing development on state-owned land. In 2023, the governor ordered all agencies to identify land in their portfolios that could be made available for housing development. Pursuant to this initiative, "Redevelopment of Underutilized Sites for Housing," the governor will allocate millions of dollars to capital improvements on state-owned sites to spur private development and create 15,000 new housing units. However, 15,000 units will not, by themselves, make a big dent in a state that is short 500,000 to 800,000 units of housing. The governor's program will, however, pilot a potentially transformational approach to expanding housing in the face of municipal-level resistance: using state-controlled entities to bypass local zoning limits and encourage developers to build housing on state land.