Governor Hochul Delivers Remarks at New York Real Estate Chamber Emerging Leaders and Markets Conference

Good morning, everyone. I happened to be speaking to Craig a few days ago and he said, "Can you come down to this incredible gathering of leaders in our state?" And I said, "We got a little bit of business called the session going on in Albany, but if there's any way I can get out of there as things are wrapping up, I thought of a great opportunity just to see this gathering."

And Craig, thank you for your leadership. Leadership is an overused word sometimes, but it really means is that you have a vision and people follow. And that's what's behind this organization, people who understand that we are stronger together. One voice speaking out to further policies that are good for everyone, but particularly people from communities that have been overlooked for far too long. So, to Craig Livingston, let's give him a round of applause.

I know you have some of my friends who are board members. We have Don Peebles and Cheryl McKissack Daniel. Thank you for your friendship to me personally. Inez Dickens, we've been all over your district so many times. You are a fighter, and I look forward to working with you for many years to come in perhaps a different place, in a different place. I know we just heard from our soon to be Speaker, I'll just call him Speaker now. Why not Speaker Hakeem Jeffries?

Because the path to his ascension is Speaker in a place that I once served in the Democratic minority, which is not as fun as the majority when I was there a decade ago -- it goes through New York and we're all going to pull together to make sure we do everything we can to help make history, but to continue the influence that we have in Washington with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. If we can get another Brooklynite. What's with Brooklyn? All these people from Brooklyn running the country. Brooklyn is running the country. Hakeem Jeffries. I'm okay with that. It's all good. It's all good.

So, I look forward -- and I also just saw Mayor Adams had joined us as well, and many of you were there and we announced our 'New New York' panel, the results back in December. We sat together and we also did a housing conference together showing that we are joined together at the hip in terms of bringing back the City and not just bringing it back to where we were because that seems not quite bold enough for us. Let's take it to a whole new level. And that's what we're talking about. And all of you in this room have an important part of it.

Members of my team are here. Our extraordinary leader of the New York State Department of Homes and Community Renewal, RuthAnne Visnauskas. Let's give her a huge round of applause. Cat McCadden Benjamin, who I know is her Chief of Staff, but you'll have her on a panel very shortly. And she is one of my top advisors as well. And also, my Chief of Staff Stacy Lynch is here as well. Let's give a round of applause to Stacy Lynch.

So, it's no surprise that the real estate industry, development world, lack diversity, let's just call it right out. The gathering here in this room is not reflective of the masses outside these doors, but that doesn't have to be a permanent state of affairs. You call out a problem, you work toward a solution and that's when you get the change that's needed.

Now, I know that sometimes change takes a while. I will tell you it was 1965 when my 30-year-old father and mother were activists up in Buffalo. What were they involved in? They're protesting everything, by the way. That's why I have that activist spirit to me.

But they're part of a brand-new organization called Housing Opportunities Made Equal - brand new. And their effort was to integrate the white suburbs of Buffalo working-class, blue-collar communities where my grandfather and my dad had worked at the steel plant. But they saw an injustice back then, and as young people, they went door to door asking people's attitudes in white neighborhoods about bringing Black families into the community.

Now you can imagine what the poll results showed. It was not saying, "Come on in, everybody," but there was enough hope that they felt that this was a path. And one of the results of the study said that everybody believed, the majority of people believed, that in 10 years, which would've been 1975, our country would've been fully integrated.

Hello. That has not happened and the opportunities for minority and women-owned businesses have not been what they should be across this country. And that's why here as Governor, we have an opportunity to say, "No more." And I'm really proud of the fact with an intentional plan, outreach, breaking down barriers, opening doors, that New York State for the last two years has been number one in the nation in terms of MWBE participation, almost 31 percent.

And that is a record for our State. It is ambitious. But I'm telling you, that's not what we're topping out because there's so much more we can do together. I want to open up the doors. I want young people to see the people in this room and say, "That's the path I can be on." And we have to continue reaching out to them saying, "There's great jobs and opportunities," whether you're working at JFK and working on infrastructure projects that'll transform how we get around the subways, the Gateway Tunnel, whether you're working in building office space where people are going to come and have jobs whether or not you're building housing.

Because my friends, as I said here back in December and in my State of the State, we have a housing crisis that is among the worst in the nation. We'd love to be the best. This is one area we are among the worst. Because guess what? We simply did not build enough housing.

Supply and demand, real simple, prices go up, we all know about the prices going up, when the supply is down. The answer is deal with the supply side. And that's exactly what we proposed in our budget with our Housing Compact, which you all heard about. We worked hard, we worked very hard, and I thank my team for in a short time, trying to build support in the legislature to allow for office conversions, because my friends, we are continuing to see Midtown Manhattan and places that were once robust and 24/7, no longer.

So, do we sit back and lament that, or do we say there's an opportunity here? Why can't we change the laws and make it easier to convert office buildings into, how about residential? Why not make 24-7 communities? Conversions are expensive. There needs to be incentives to make that happen, but these are the ideas we proposed.

Allowing there to be a difference in the floor-to-ceiling ratios shouldn't be a radical concept, apparently it is, but we're going to work on that as well. 421-a, we want more affordable housing built. That plan has been in place since the 1970s. We need that back. There were so many projects that were wayside, stopped. Since that law lapsed one year ago, there have been almost zero permits sought for more housing. That's not how you get out of a crisis. That takes you into a deeper crisis. It takes you darker into that hole, and somehow people aren't recognizing that.

So, the urgency is there. We had a plan to work on the suburbs to encourage every single community to say, "You need to build more. You need to open up your doors, especially around the train stations." There are so many train stations in the metropolitan New York area where it's an empty parking lot at the end of the day. Tumbleweed blowing through it.

What I'm saying - I can see life in that space, I can see small businesses, diverse little restaurants and business owners and coffee shops and just opening up space for people to gather. And then how about some housing? And maybe even parking above it. You can do it all. The models are there. And somehow that was resisted so strongly that it was going to change the character of every community next to a train station. So, we have to overcome people's perceptions of what we are trying to do.

I need your help. I'm a fighter from the very beginning. You don't come from the streets of Buffalo politics without being a fighter, and I'm ready to take it on. But I need an army with me, and that's why I'm calling on all of you. What I'm calling on you to do is when we leave this room here today, work with us.

This is what I talked to Craig about. Work with us. Help us find the messaging to get to the legislators and to the communities, to let them understand we have to start building. Because otherwise our young people are going to keep leaving. We lost over 200,000 Black and Brown families. We have to get them back.

We have to stop more from leaving. And the reason they leave, they're not saying it's the New York State taxes. They're saying they can't afford housing. They can't buy a house. They can't even afford their rent. And that to me is a tragedy because a home is a basic human right. It should not be so far out of reach for people that it's just a distant dream that maybe their kids or grandkids will realize, but it's out of reach for them.

That is not the New York I want to be leading. We could be bolder than that. We have to pull together and there is time to do this now. We had a setback. We knew that. But you dust yourselves off and you get right back in the arena, because that's what we're going to do. And I thank all of you.

I thank all of you for helping me find ways to build more housing and on the commercial side, elevate opportunities for Black economic empowerment, because that's what's been missing for so long here. And I believe when we unleash those forces, there is no stopping us, my friends. And I'm so excited to answer this next chapter with all of you.

Looks like I forgot something. I know Ruth Hassel-Thompson is here and I want to acknowledge her. A former Senator and also part of my administration. And she got a little - her head's getting a little big these days. You know why? Because we just announced a few months ago that there's going to be her name very prominently on an overpass in her community. So, you're going to see that.

Thank you.

So, when you're as cool as Ruth Hassel-Thompson, and you've done as much as you have, and she has an extraordinary life, she is one of my role models as I look forward to this fight because she is a fighter as well, and she reminds me that nothing that's important of consequence, no movements start without some bloodshed in the beginning.

And that's where we are right now. Okay. We're ready dust off, pick up and march forward. And I thank all of you for listening, but also, more importantly, thanks for being part of the army. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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