Michael Guest

Michael Barrett is CEO of Habitat for Humanity of New York State, whose mission is to bring people together to build homes, communities and hope.

New Yorkers across Upstate New York face big problems every day: soaring utility rates, crumbling infrastructure, aging roads and bridges and, in particular, rising rents and home costs. At Habitat for Humanity of New York State, we see this every day — not just for the low- and moderate-income families that we serve, but for all families who wish to live and work in communities throughout Upstate New York. Thankfully, there are real, actionable steps the state legislature can take right now to lower costs and make housing more readily attainable. One of the most important is modernizing the State Environmental Quality Review Act — SEQRA.

When SEQRA was adopted in the early 1970s, it addressed a different set of problems: unchecked highways slicing through neighborhoods, smokestack industries belching pollution, large-scale projects that called for new and necessary environmental review. That was the right law for the moment. But laws should evolve as problems change, and SEQRA has not kept pace with the scale and shape of today’s housing challenges.

Instead, SEQRA has become a legal choke point that too often stops progress, leading to excessive delays in construction and rising costs on projects like rooftop and community solar, battery storage, grid upgrades and, perhaps most notably, affordable housing construction. Too often, SEQRA has become the factor that makes critical infrastructure either more expensive or altogether unviable.

For Habitat, this is not an abstract policy debate. SEQRA delays directly affect our ability to build and rehabilitate homes for low- and moderate-income families. And homeownership matters — unlike rentals, home ownership stabilizes communities and represents the single most powerful driver of generational wealth for people at all income levels. This is an objective supported by both progressives and conservatives alike. A family that owns their home is much more tethered to their community, invested in their neighborhood, knowing that they are not only invested in their community but building equity for their children and grandchildren. Rent support is good; it is a Band-Aid without much adhesive. Homeownership is the cure.

Modernizing SEQRA doesn’t mean gutting environmental review. It means making it smarter and more efficient. It means preserving careful scrutiny for projects with genuinely significant environmental impacts while streamlining routine or clearly beneficial projects — particularly those that advance the state’s climate goals and address urgent housing shortages. It also means preventing a small number of wealthy or well-resourced opponents from weaponizing the process to block projects that entire communities need and support.

If SEQRA modernization sounds like a popular idea, that’s because it is. Polling shows that New Yorkers across the state, urban, suburban and Upstate, support sensible reform. Majorities back making it easier to build affordable housing, upgrade infrastructure, and expand clean energy. New Yorkers understand that this is a win-win.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed SEQRA modernization in her State of the State and her budget. That is the right call, and the state legislature must follow through by including it in the upcoming budget. Already, the New York state Senate has put it in their One-House-Budget Bill. Now as negotiations continue, it’s imperative that this is included in the final budget.

At Habitat for Humanity of New York State, we believe that everyone deserves a decent place to live, and that government has a responsibility to remove the barriers that make that harder to achieve. SEQRA modernization will protect the environment, speed the delivery of clean energy and climate infrastructure, and, most importantly, help us build more homes for the families who need them most. There is no marker more inextricably linked to the American dream than homeownership. It would be a tragedy to let an outdated law stand between New York families and that dream.

Now is the time. The legislature should act.