New York's permitting SPEED

New York took two big steps on housing permitting this week. After weeks of late-budget deadlock, Governor Hochul’s SEQRA modernization is reportedly final with bill text coming next week. The deal reportedly exempts NYC housing projects up to 500 units in medium/high-density districts and 250 in low-density areas, with smaller carveouts upstate. On the city side, the mayor launched the SPEED Task Force report. Originally scheduled to arrive after a final Albany budget, the report is explicit that its headline pre-certification cut — slashing ULURP rezoning pre-cert from two years to six months — is contingent on the state SEQRA carveout actually landing. Beyond SEQRA-enabled reform, SPEED promises: five months trimmed from new-construction permitting, five months from office-to-residential conversion permitting and lease-up, and a ground-up rewrite of the affordable housing lottery that takes median time-to-move-in from 210 days to under 100. All told, the report projects two years off the timeline for projects requiring rezoning and eight months off all affordable housing — backed by $14M in the executive budget and ~96 new agency hires where capacity actually binds the expected flood of streamlined housing permit applications. With Evan Soltas’s LA permitting work implying each year saved is likely worth ~8% in construction costs, that’s the stacked feasibility shift needed to help turn theoretical zoned capacity into actual homes.