Some Westchester municipal officials want changes in Hochul’s housing plan

The eight members of the Housing Subcommittee of the Westchester Municipal Officials Association, with the support of the mayors or supervisors of 25 towns, villages and cities throughout Westchester, want changes in Gov. Hochul’s Housing Compact. Hochul has been pushing the plan that’s designed to create 800,000 new housing units throughout the state.

In a letter to Hochul, the subcommittee said that it believes “new housing in this region is critically important for the health of our communities” and added, “We support your desire to make progress on this issue.” The subcommittee then went on to state: “Unfortunately, we cannot support the Housing Compact in its current form. Without significant changes, it simply will not work.”

The subcommittee said that Hochul’s plan does not take into account the fact that different communities have different needs and that the “suburbs are not monolithic, nor are we merely satellites for New York City. Each of our municipalities has different housing needs and different obstacles to overcome, and no plan will be successful without taking into account the relevant local content.”

The subcommittee said that the mandate for new zoning that promotes transit-oriented development should be removed from Hochul’s housing plan. It argued that the mandate would force development that’s more dense than some communities could handle.

The subcommittee said that requirements for environmental review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act should be retained and streamlined, rather than eliminated for new housing as Hohul proposed. It also opposed requiring a so-called “fast-track” approval process for all new housing projects.

The subcommittee also said that Hochul’s plan did not propose enough funding to cover the costs of infrastructure improvements that would be needed to handle all of the new housing she is proposing.

“Expanding water and sewer systems, adding parking structures, evaluating and modifying traffic patterns, and adding bike lanes are just a few of the very expensive projects associated with the increase in housing,” the subcommittee wrote in its letter to Hochul.

The subcommittee included a list of officials specifically supporting its letter. Those 25 officials included Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, Peekskill Mayor Vivian McKenzie and Town of Rye Supervisor Gary Zuckerman. The names of the mayors of the county’s largest cities, Yonkers, White Plains, Mount Vernon and New Rochelle were not listed with others specifically expressing support of the subcommittee’s views.