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Q&A
Commissioner Savino on the impact of regulatory complexity on housing construction costs
0:47:51
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74 sec
Commissioner Diane Savino returns to the issue of housing affordability, emphasizing that while increasing supply is key, the city's own complex rules and lengthy processes significantly drive up construction costs.
She points out that factors like land and construction material costs are largely outside the city's control, making it crucial to streamline the aspects it can influence, such as regulatory hurdles.
This complexity makes it harder to achieve desired affordability levels in new housing projects.
- Savino argues that current processes for ULURP, permitting, and HPD approvals add substantial expense to building housing.
- She recalls debates on the 485x program where demands for deep affordability clashed with the economic realities of high development costs.
- The city's primary leverage for reducing housing costs lies in simplifying its own regulations and timelines, not in controlling market-driven land or material prices.
Diane Savino
0:47:51
And I just wanna if we go back to affordability right.
0:47:54
We talk about affordability and how we wanna get to a place where we have we bring down the cost of housing, because we are increasing the supply.
0:48:02
Everybody gets that.
0:48:03
What we forget, though, is because of the very complicated rules we have in place, whether it's the EULER process or the extended process for permitting or HBD fine whatever it happens to be, we make housing way more expensive to build.
0:48:15
And then we went through this last year when we were seeking changes to the four eighty five x program in Albany, where we had members who said, well, I'll support a law that says you have a % affordable units at the lowest possible income level.
0:48:27
And we were just like, this is simple math.
0:48:29
It doesn't work.
0:48:30
The price of land is not going down.
0:48:32
The cost of construction is not coming down.
0:48:35
The only thing that we can control is how long it takes and the complicated rules and regulations that you have to go through to build a bathroom in a city park.
0:48:45
That we can do something about.
0:48:47
We can't control the cost of land.
0:48:49
Insurance is another issue that we have we struggle with.
Grace C. Bonilla
0:48:52
That could be other question that I had for the staff, if at all possible.
0:48:56
If we could look at the cities that have used public land to build and what it has done to those neighborhoods from an affordability perspective.