Hochul’s Housing Compact Gets Squashed

Governor Kathy Hochul’s Housing Compact plan, as mentioned on the front page of the March 23 issue of The Rockaway Times, has been squashed.

On April 20, the Belle Harbor Property Owners Association shared the news from Paul Graziano, an urban planner who spoke about the matter at their March meeting, that the Housing Compact was dead in the state budget negotiations.

The BHPOA warned that similar issues may pop up in further legislation in New York City, so they told neighbors to remain vigilant. “But we take our hats off to every citizen who called or emailed elected officials, wrote letters to the editor, and attended meetings/rallies against the Housing Compact,” a BHPOA newsletter read.

Councilwoman Joann Ariola also released a statement on the matter saying, “The news that the governor’s housing plan has been dropped from the budget discussions in Albany should bring a sigh of relief to New York’s homeowners. The plan would have effectively destroyed residential communities across the state as we know them, empowering developers to bypass local zoning laws to build multi­family buildings in neighborhoods otherwise zoned for single­ and two­family homes.”

“Furthermore, the governor’s plan also would have brought in the so­called ‘Good Cause’ legislation, which handcuffs landlords and restricts their ability to remove disruptive tenants. Landlords in New York are already getting the short end of the stick, and this would have only further limited the tools available to them when they need to deal with unwelcome and unruly tenants.”