Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Delivers Remarks at the New York State Association for Affordable Housing's 27th Annual Conference

Governor Kathy Hochul today delivered remarks at the New York State Association for Affordable Housing's 27th annual conference and highlighted her "Let Them Build" agenda.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Carlina, there's no place I'd rather be than right here, right now. My friend Steve Weiss from Buffalo knows that's a reference from a Buffalo Bills coach a long time ago, but it's true. It's true. And I want to thank Carlina for her leadership of this organization, and I got to know her in her career as a public servant, and you cannot find a better person with a bigger heart to lead this effort into the future. So let's give Carlina - and all of you, congratulations - a round applause on 27 years of NYSAFAH.

And a leader is only as good as the team around her, and I want to give a special shoutout to RuthAnne Visnauskas, who has done an extraordinary job as the leader of our housing and community renewal effort. I will tell you, I just told her now, I get compliments about her literally by the hour, and I'm starting to get jealous because I don't get that for myself

But she's making such a profound difference in people's lives with a positivity and energy and a can-do spirit that makes me so proud to work with her. I want to give a special, extra special round applause to RuthAnne Visnauskas, the head of this whole effort. And you'll also be hearing from another partner in government, our Speaker, Julie Menin, in a couple of minutes. Julie's here with us today, and I thank her for her effort to focus on the city's - on affordable housing as well.

I love coming here because what all of you do is literally priceless. You dedicate your talent, your energy, your passion toward doing something that is so critically important to others. It's selfless, in that sense, that you're trying to do something where others have failed in the past, and that is to build more housing in this state. And for me, it's personal.

You can't not think about affordable housing when your parents used to live in a trailer park, and not a nice, fancy, wide body you might see in Florida. This is a rundown trailer park. The trailers were rusty. In the shadow of the Bethlehem Steel plant where my parents started married life. Then I came along. My brother lived there in a little tiny apartment - one bedroom, two kids. Then you go to little Cape Cod, and you get a little bigger house because there's six kids. Now there's eight of you, one bathroom, little bigger house.

I saw the progression of my parents' success and emergence from their early challenging years in the housing that they lived in. And ultimately, they were very successful. Education lifted them out of their circumstances. So that is my belief in what affordable housing means to people. It means you're getting somewhere, that you have a place to call home, that you have dignity and that you deserve this. And that is the feeling I've gotten from so many people, and the hugs and the tears that I've seen all over this state because of the work you're doing. From Buffalo to Long Island, the North Country and everything in between.

When I can go with someone the first time they're opening the door to affordable housing, Ruthanne's been at my side. We let them use the key, they open it and they just break down in tears because someone realized that they have value, that they matter, they deserve this. And that makes me so proud as Governor.

But also, I knew that there should be more. And one of the reasons when we think about why people ever leave our state, and we're losing - people that just want to stay here, they're born here, raised here. But now that it's time for them to have a home, we just didn't have the ambition, the fortitude to get through, as Carlina said, all those onerous regulations and red tape to get it done.

And often you might have a plan, an idea that a community wants, the elected officials want, that you want, but, of course, there's NIMBYism on steroids in this state. And that's what we're up against. When I first became Governor, I knew I could use the power of that office to put a spotlight on this issue, and I have.

Traveling all over the state since 2022, saying we need to build more housing. And we had a plan. It was an ambitious plan, wildly ambitious plan - not exactly embraced by many parts of the state. But what we did was we continued. We never gave up. And the following year, we pushed even more aggressive plans, and we were successful in changing and breaking down so many barriers to building all levels of housing, not just affordable, but all levels. And I'm proud of that.

The New York Times called it the most significant housing package in fifty years. But I'm not done yet, because I still go to corners of this state and I hear the stories of young people who say, "I just want to live close to my family. I want to have my own family. I want my parents to be able to babysit."

I get this. I don't want to have to leave. I don't want to have to go to New Jersey because they built more housing than we did, and that's why they would go to New Jersey. Well, that's not a slight on New Jersey. It really is not. It's just, it's the reality. New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania. When people talk about people leaving the state, the top five states, Florida and Texas - and you've got to explain that to yourselves why you want to go there. I don't know, maybe you like the governors better, I don't know. I didn't think so.

But people had more ambition in New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania because those are the other three states that New Yorkers are going to. Same weather, same kind of taxes. They went because they could have a home. It means everything to people, and that's the ambition we must have in the great state of New York. We cannot pale to other states. And I'm leaning hard into this, and working with RuthAnne, we announced my first year - $25 billion five-year plan to build 100,000 units. And you know what? I'm keeping score. We just announced we accomplished 22,000 in the past year. We're now at 81,000 units already. We are ahead of schedule, my friends. We will not just meet that goal. We will exceed that goal because of the work you're doing. All of you are involved in this.

Also, trying to get communities to stop their attitude of closing the doors to newcomers and new projects, even around transit-oriented development, the most logical idea you could ever think of. Instead of having parking lots next to train stations out through Long Island and Hudson Valley, why can't someone look at that parking lot and see homes and hope and families? I do. I do because it's lifeless most of the evening and mornings. It's just a parking lot. Build housing there. Let people have the ability to not even have to have a vehicle, not have to pay the high auto insurance, and that's another topic we took on this year. Your auto insurance rates are going to come down. Yes, indeed.

But why not have a home right there? You can have a little apartment building. First floor has got your donut shop or your bagel shop. Pick up the newspaper or, I guess you, no one reads the newspaper anymore. But just have a little sense of community in a building where there once was a lifeless parking lot. That's my vision for transit-oriented development. We need to do much more, but the projects I'm seeing are spectacular.

Our Pro-Housing Communities Initiative, you know what this is all about? People said, "We don't want to have any sticks. Give us more carrots." So I did a press conference, I held up a huge bag of carrots. I said, "Don't give me that bag of carrots where they're small and weird-looking, like you're not quite sure if they're real carrots or not. Give me a real big bunch of carrots." And I held it up. I said, "This is what carrots look like." I'm putting $750 million in resources for any community that steps up and says, "I will be a pro-housing community. I will build. I'll find a path forward, and I'll meet your goals, Governor." And we've done that. We have over 400 communities that have stood up and called themselves pro-housing communities. Those are the ones, like where I was yesterday on Long Island announcing for Valley Stream and Patchogue - you are entitled to part of this money because you showed me a plan that you're building more housing.

That's how you get it done, and we're making incredible success there. But lastly, one of the other battles of this year's Budget was realizing that we have laws on the books - SEQR - going back to 1975, when it was desperately needed. We did not have the federal and state laws to protect the environment that we should have had. But since then, SEQR has only been used as a barrier, a reason, a litigation tool for people to stop projects. Why do I know this? I spent 14 years on a town board. Not just on the town board, I was liaison to the planning board, the zoning board, the IDA, the environmental review board and the traffic safety board, where if you really wanted to stop a project, you tell them it's going to take five years to do the traffic study.

I knew how anything could stop, but I also knew how they could be green-lighted, and SEQR was used as a weapon. Yes, we're going to make sure we still have environmental protections, absolutely. But I also realize that two extra years of a project, two extra years, could be spent following state laws that are redundant, and also the additional cost. In the city, I was told it's $82,000 per unit of extra cost to comply with the state SEQR laws. I said, "If I can wipe that out with keeping environmental protections, we can unlock the ability for more housing to be built by every single one of you." This is what we just accomplished. I think you should give that a round of applause because that was a hard fight. That was hard fought.

But I'll continue to be the strongest advocate this state has ever seen, because I believe it. Because there's still people looking for that opportunity to get out of their parents' basement, or not have to share an apartment with five roommates, or to even get out of a trailer park like my parents were able to. I believe in the American dream for everyone, and that dream includes the dignity of a beautiful home, where you don't have to worry about safety. Your children can thrive. You can prosper in New York like I've had this vision for every single person who calls New York home.

With all of you here today, and the vision that we implement with your partnership, we can get this done. Let's build more housing. Are you with me? Let's build more. Let's build more housing. Thank you, NYSAFAH. Thank you very much for hosting me today.