New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to spend $100 million in part to provide down-payment assistance to first-time homebuyers in an effort she said would help residents "afford the essentials of life."
The money, part of a broad proposal, would also go toward building starter homes in New York where they are needed the most. The plans were among several Hochul pitched Tuesday to address housing affordability, landing at a time when everyday New Yorkers say it's becoming increasingly too expensive to live in the Empire State.
"Housing is the No. 1 driver of our affordability crisis," Hochul, a Democrat, said Tuesday during her 2025 State of the State address in Albany, the state capital. "And the only way to decrease housing costs is to increase supply. We need to build, and build, and build some more."
State officials have said for some time there's a dire need for more housing, particularly for low- and middle-income households. New York needs to build 800,000 additional housing units over the next decade to meet population demand, a 2022 estimate from the Regional Planning Association found.
To be sure, building more homes — in New York and nationwide — can prove to be much easier said than done. Construction companies today face rising costs of building supplies — including lumber, steel and concrete — as well as a skilled labor shortage. In some parts of the nation, local zoning laws prevent developers from erecting multifamily buildings or tiny homes on existing residential land.
From the Homes.com blog: Your Homebuying Budget: How Much House Can I Afford?
Halfway to goal
Even so, the governor said Tuesday that state officials are halfway to, and ahead of schedule on, a goal she set in 2022 during her first State of the State address to build 100,000 units in the state across a five-year span.
"A stable home is the foundation for a stable life," Hochul said during her speech. "But for far too many New Yorkers, it’s a dream that feels impossibly out of reach. And I’m not the first one to say this, but the rent is too damn high. And that goes for people’s mortgages as well."
Hochul, who is up for reelection in 2026, also proposed creating a new state government position — a housing development ombudsman. The person hired for this job would work with developers that need local government paperwork before building to "streamline approvals and get shovels in the ground sooner," Hochul said.
In what Hochul described as a national first, she proposed banning private equity firms from being able to bid on homes for the first 75 days on the market. Blocking private equity firms would "ensure single and two-family homes remain available for the families they were built for," the governor said.
"We’ve all seen it — a young family finds the home they’ve been searching for; they scrape together every dollar they have, and then they lose out to an all-cash offer from a faceless, nameless corporation with no connection to the community," Hochul said. "Corporate landlords co-opt our housing stock for short-term rentals or even worse they just let homes sit vacant while the values soar."
The plans need to be approved by the state legislature to take effect.
Hochul said her administration also wants to ban landlords and property management companies from using computer algorithms to set rents. Such software "inflates rents and costs tenants nationally $3.8 billion a year," the governor said.
