Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) spoke about her administration's housing efforts and celebrated the construction, restoration and preservation of housing in New York.
00:00Thank you for joining us here in Gowanus as I was able to welcome a brand new
00:05tenant here. I just wrapped up a tour of all of this beautiful place, part of
00:11the wharf, and it's 585 Union Street. What we have here are, because of our
00:16efforts last year, over 200 plus affordable units, or units, and 50 are
00:21affordable, and nearly 5,000 affordable commercial space. And what excites me so
00:27much about projects like these is it's breathing new life into buildings and
00:31neighborhoods here in Gowanus. I mean this building itself had been a place where
00:36they manufactured caskets. So you think about breathing new life in here and
00:40bringing people in and families and you know just saw someone with a stroller a
00:44little while ago. It's it's just really makes you feel so hopeful that all
00:48neighborhoods have great potential and it was not going to happen but for us
00:53stepping in well over a year ago and saying we have to have more ambition
00:59when it comes to building affordable housing and having units like these and
01:04projects like these which are under the old 421A program which has 30% of
01:10buildings are affordable and the rest are market rates. So what you have are people
01:14ordinarily never be able to afford a place like this with wonderful amenities. It's
01:18got a rooftop pool it's got a you know a yoga center a place where they can work
01:23out and just talking to the new resident I invited in who welcomed me to her home
01:28Naya she was just so proud to be able to have this beautiful new space for her and
01:33her son and welcome her little one-year-old granddaughter over so everywhere
01:37you walk it's a reminder of why we need to take on special interest take on
01:42nimbyism and say this community is now revitalized there's thousands of people
01:48living here and bringing as I said new life back to it so this is the kind of
01:52progress we're talking about. I set an ambitious goal to have over 100,000
01:57affordable housing units in five years I'm really proud to announce that with
02:02years to go you're at 65,000 ahead of schedule so we're very excited about that
02:07and we launched a housing dashboard so people could track our progress and hold
02:11us accountable so we're going to continue on our relentless mission to
02:15build more housing I'm proud to be joined here today by the Commissioner of
02:19Housing Community Renewal Ruth Ann Visnoskas who's been the architect of much of
02:23this vision I want to thank her for her leadership all across the state as well.
02:26All right we're going to do on-topic questions. Anyone got a question about housing?
02:31Yes here in this one building yes but this is part of a larger complex known as the
02:39wharf and I invite all of you to go to the rooftop and get a panoramic view of
02:44everything that is happening here as part of our project I think it's over 8,500
02:49units overall maybe 5,300 and we launched this because it had all been jammed up you
02:56know 421A expired this would have been dead and I said that's not acceptable the
03:02legislature refused at the time to renew 421A I was able to force through an
03:08extension for six years and as a result this poem is available to people who
03:14never thought they'd have this opportunity of living in a beautiful
03:17space like this so that's what it's all about having the drive change and fight
03:21all the obstacles that are in our way and that's exactly why we're in this space
03:24today so really proud of that long very long for the the affordable housing I
03:35don't know how many are on this list if you happen to know but they just told me
03:39there's thousands on it and it's gonna take a long time this building will be
03:43filled up so wait list is not helpful here we need to build more housing we need
03:48to be aggressive in building more housing and you'll see that all over this
03:51neighborhood and all these units that are coming we're dead and that's so
03:56important to recognize it just by forcing this to happen we have this
04:00opportunity for thousands of people to call this area home but we're not done
04:03here we get to do this all over the city and all over the state because so many
04:07people all ages young families seniors who want to have the dignity of a
04:12really beautiful place and they instead of having a four-story walk up where
04:16they're getting around and it's hard for them they can come into a place like this
04:19it is an elevator what a difference that makes and physical therapy in the pool
04:23so all ages benefit from this but the wait lists are sadly so long we start
04:28building more housing we're going to drive those wait lists down
04:32you know some of these are being acquired by developers like this one so
04:40there's there's commercial space on the first floor it's brand new that's going to
04:44be filled but some of the older buildings you know these developers are acquiring
04:49them and bringing up housing on top of retail on the first floor which is
04:53important but no this area has got a ways to go but putting down the flag saying
04:58this is a place where people of all ages and all income levels can live this is a
05:03again this is a mixed building it's it's market rate as well as affordable
05:07housing which is really ingenious where people who otherwise would never have
05:11access to this have this available because of our state program and our
05:15aggressive position to make sure that this continued this program continued
05:18despite the legislature letting it lapse
05:20seems a little off-topic but are you gonna let this one go Avi I just like this lesson okay okay no I've been I'm I'm I'm setting up a meeting very soon with Amtrak to go over you
05:43know the opportunities this is an important project it has to get done you
05:50cannot let it go any longer without the essential repairs especially after all the
05:54damage from Sandy but we're trying to do the best we can to minimize the impact on
05:59on riders I have some other ideas and we also think that they should find a pathway to
06:05get in through Grand Central they can add more cars to all the trains we think that
06:10would help make it easier as well but unfortunately at the path they're going
06:14they're not open to those ideas but I'm willing to sit down and see how far we
