Her house in order: Gov. Hochul says the right things about housing; now she needs to follow through

Gov. Hochul is pledging to drive down the cost of living in New York with a coordinated strategy to goose housing production. We applaud her commitment as did those who heard her Thursday speech, but we’re withholding the standing ovation for when she turns that rhetoric into action. Families live in homes, not blueprints.

In morally compelling remarks, Hochul decried the high cost of living as a “crisis” that “could potentially block families from achieving their dreams or forcing them to go elsewhere to achieve them.” We agree, except for the “potentially.” She rightly called it “morally reprehensible” that, though the state has many jobs to offer, New Jersey and Connecticut are outpacing our suburbs in housing production. She promised a “bold and audacious” agenda to target zoning policies and other obstacles to generating more apartments and houses. Consider the expectations set.

Now what? In the budget she negotiated in 2022, Hochul had some such ideas. One would’ve allowed the widespread creation of accessory dwelling units, sometimes called granny flats, where single-family zoning now prevails. Another would’ve allowed developers to build high-density housing near suburban transit hubs.

In Albany, the budget is where a governor wields maximum leverage on policy. In this case, when opposition reared its head, she backed down — perhaps because it was an election year and she didn’t want the fight, perhaps because she cared too much about pushing through the massively subsidized Buffalo Bills stadium in three yards and a cloud of dust.

Credit to her, she heard our pleas and is ready to try, try again. Hochul must go back at the provisions she dropped this year. She should adapt the best laws from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s like minded crusade in California. She should target policies that drive up the cost of construction here, especially in the city, including the Scaffold Law, which holds owners and developers wholly liable for height-related injuries even when they’re hardly at fault.

Put on your hard hat, governor, sit in the crane cabin and swing that wrecking ball.