Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Rallies for Let Them Build Agenda as Support Grows Across the State

Governor Kathy Hochul today rallied with local leaders to highlight her “Let Them Build” agenda, a series of landmark reforms to speed up housing and infrastructure development and lower costs as part of her 2026 State of the State. This initiative will spur a series of common sense reforms to New York’s State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and executive actions to expedite critical projects that have been consistently found to not have significant environmental impacts, but for too long have been caught up in red tape and subject to lengthy delays. Together, these actions will make it easier to build the housing and infrastructure that localities want. The Governor’s proposal has now secured the backing of the New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC), the New York State Association of Towns (NYAOT), and the New York State Conference of Mayors (NYCOM), along with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and dozens of other local elected officials from communities across New York.

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:

Good morning, good morning. First of all, I want to welcome all of you to this extraordinary space. You may not know this about me, given my height. Okay, let's put it out there I'm a little vertically challenged, but I actually like to play basketball. I picked it up last year. I'm getting good and I played right here and I'm not going to say I had too many dunks, but the kids gave me a t-shirt and said I was doing pretty damn good. So this is an extraordinary space. This is an extraordinary place and I want to thank everyone who's part of this Major Owen Center.

The State invested over $10 million to make this be a phenomenal gathering space. And with the pool and the fields and the basketball courts — i'm so proud that this is what government can do when they're working with local developers and people that care deeply about the community as well as the elected officials.

So I want to thank our host Jamela Black, the managing director here but also thank you — thank you. And also a great partner on the journey we're embarking on as I reveal my remarks about our next step to make New York more affordable, and I want to thank an extraordinary partner that is our very own Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

We also have Annemarie Gray the Executive Director of Open New York and knows a lot of our advocates here. And I'm surrounded by Borough Presidents. See, these are all the big shots in town here, right? We have our very own Antonio Reynoso, our host here. All the way from Queens we have Donovan Richards. Manhattan, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, I know that because I've worked with you a long time. Great to see Brad here. Vanessa Gibson in the house. Vanessa Gibson — the grand entrance. So the Bronx is in the house. But also members of my cabinet, RuthAnne Visnauskas, the leader of our effort to make New York more affordable. And I want to thank her for what she does to build affordable housing. She's well known in every corner of the state — RuthAnne. And Hope Knight, the President and CEO of Empire State Development. I want to thank her for all she has done for us — building, building, building.

So there's a lot of people here who believe in a simple concept and that is building, right? I mean did you ever play Legos when you're a kid? I love Legos — I like to build things. And so I think about the ambition that we had here in the State of New York where people would build, they dream great dreams, they do crazy things — like how we can connect New York City to Lake Erie by digging a ditch across the State. I mean a crazy Governor did that. We kind of have a reputation for being a little out there sometimes. This was 200 years ago, they built the Erie Canal. We had ambition, we had vision, we had audacity — and then we built the Empire State Building in one year during the depression.

This is what we're capable of here in the State of New York. And so we've always been the doers, the dreamers, the people who just do things when others say it can't be done. But I'm going to tell you this, somewhere along the way we got buried — buried by bureaucracy. People decided that all these rules are more important than getting the job done and making progress. And I want to say this, you know who's paying the price today? Because he lost that ambition, too afraid to power through the challenges and the obstacles. Working families today are now paying the price, literally a higher price to live in this great State. And we have a housing crisis that's not a newsflash, you all heard this before, right? Because we lack that ambition and boldness to build.

Now as a result, rents are too high because homes are too scarce. And so one of the key elements to solve this is to build more housing units in every corner of our state — it’s that simple. It's that simple, it's not complicated, my friends. Now for too long, even projects that everyone agrees should be built, or whether it's desperately needed housing, childcare centers. We need more childcare centers, don't we Mr. Mayor? Because we're going to give every child is shot at universal child care. We're getting that done. We need clean water infrastructure, we need more parks.

These are often projects that communities want and you know what happens? They get stuck for years in environmental reviews that ultimately find nothing wrong in the first place. And here's the truth that nobody wants to admit. Right now in the great State of New York, it takes 56 percent longer to build a project here than in other States. That's wasted months, it's even years of delay. You’ve got to ask who even wants to build, right? If you're a developer, you can go anywhere. Higher rents, fewer homes, fewer good paying jobs and here's what the red tape really costs. In the city of New York, building a single unit — and I'm not talking about a single family home. I'm talking about a single unit in a building. It costs $82,000 more because of all the regulations and the red tape that are required, and it shows up in higher rents. Now let me tell you how I operate as a Governor. I believe one of the most important questions an executive can and must ask is why?

Why is it that way? I'm constantly challenging the status quo and asking why things are being done the way they are. And sometimes the answer is, well we've always done it that way. You know what I say to that wrong answer. Don't tell me that, my staff will tell. I say this at every meeting, “Don't tell me that.” My job is to pressure test and find out the underlying premises whether or not the reason for a policy in the first place. Does it still hold or has something become redundant, obsolete. I ask questions like, “Why do we feel still following State liquor authority laws that were put in place to deal with the prohibition?” Things have changed a little bit since 1921 — we changed them. I asked when I found out that we're still teaching our kids the wrong way to instruct literacy. What their following had been debunked decades before, and we were still teaching our kids that way. And I said, why are we doing that? Guess what we don't anymore.

And I'll just wrap up with one of my personal favorites. Whose idea was to let kids have cell phones in school in the first place? Moms, dads? What was somebody thinking? Like it's bad for their mental health, it hindered them. So why do we allow that in the first place and we don't do that anymore. So this is what I do every day. Show me a policy, a plan, and I'm going to say, why are we doing it that way, and why is it taking so damn long? Because I'm very impatient. Oh, you need to know me — I don't wait for anyone. And so when I ask why New York is so far behind in building. I learned that SEQRA — State environmental review laws that were passed there were 50 years ago at a time when the environment was in deep trouble.

We didn't have laws on the books to stop the pollution of air and water. Guess why I know this? I lived next to a toxic lake known as Lake Erie as a child. We could watch the steel plant dumping look like molten lava into the water by night, and nobody questioned it. You know why? It was 20,000 jobs, including my dad's and my grandpa's. And I literally thought the sky was supposed to be orange when I was growing up because you went through this billowing smoke that came out of the steel plants and the sky was literary orange. So things were really bad, is what I'm trying to say. And you needed to do something perhaps back in the 1970s — 1975 when the EPA was formed.

All this was essential but now the pendulum has swung so far that we have those reviews in place. But we're requiring that you literally do it over twice. You have to meet standards, pass inspections and tests before you can apply. But then we say, okay now you've done this, let's make you do it all over again so we can comply with the law that's been there since 1975.

So it's duplicative, it adds years of review and really it creates a disincentive to build it all like. You have to have a lot of fortitude and a lot of money to want to build under these circumstances. So needless to say, the status quo has failed miserably. So now, my friends, we're setting out to change it. I say it's time to end the red tape and the delays and end having communities struggle while good projects that everyone wants sit in regulatory purgatory — I would actually say regulatory Hell. Okay, I'm a Catholic, we believe in the different levels here, but it's hell. So if a community wants a project and that's, make sure you sound the alarm. If a community wants a project and they say yes to housing, and they say yes to clean energy, and they say yes to parks, they say yes to childcare also desperately needed by parents. Then I say this, Let them build. Let them build.

And this is music to the ears of so many elected officials who have been thrusted local leaders across the State, including Mayor Mamdani who's standing with us right now, along with mayors of every major city, the association. Do you know how rare it is to get the Association of Mayors, Cities, Towns, Villages and Counties to agree with something that Albany wants to do? This is rather earth shaking. They're saying give us the tools, cut the red tape and let us get to work. Now I have to say this over and over because you're going to hear out to the contrary. We're not rolling back environmental protections — not with the world I grew up in my friends, we're not going backwards.

We're not eliminating local review permits or approvals. And we're not saying anything goes. What we are saying, and I'll repeat it. When a community says yes, they know that it'll not impact the government, that the State is going to step out of the way and let them go forward and build. And right here in New York City, we can significantly speed up construction of housing units up to 250 citywide.

But in areas that are medium and higher density, up to 500 units without having to go through this redundant review. And of course they have to comply with preliminary environmental regulations, State and local law permitting. None of that's changing, but my reformers will be a game changer and send a strong message to communities and developers alike. We are open for business and just like all the other challenges I approach, as I mentioned, I approach this one with urgency. I am impatient as our New Yorkers, we cannot wait anymore. And those who oppose us, who want to keep the status quo. You explain that to the family living in a homeless shelter, waiting for a home. You explain your opposition to the young couple who wanted to start a family here in New York, but can't.

And you say that to the men and women represented by labor. Those joining us from 32BJ today, 32BJ in the house. And they want to get ready to work. So the time for talk is over, let's modernize our systems. Let's help local governments navigate the progress process. I'll wrap up by saying this, four years ago I said, we're going to start building again. And we delivered the most significant housing deal in 50 years now. It was hard, it was an epic battle, but we got it done.

We rescued 71,000 homes, unlocked 80,000 with the City of Yes. 15,000 homes on State sites and open the door for 350,000 homes statewide. That's what it looks like when you say, we're not waiting anymore, we're powering ahead. But we're not done, not even close because we want to help these communities and we'll be their allies. And finally after 50 years of waiting, we're saying now is the time to build.

Thank you very much, everybody. Let's get to work.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce a strong ally as we work to find ways to make New York more affordable. Whether it's affordable childcare. It's affordable housing, and making sure our streets are safe. Let me introduce our great mayor, Mayor Mandani