Building the Era: New York Lets Them Build
This spotlight is the fourth in Next American Era’s “Building the Era” series – a monthly look at governance that strengthens communities, fuels innovation, and expands economic opportunity for Americans across the country.
The Problem
For nearly 50 years, well-intended New York laws haven’t always kept pace with the state’s evolving needs, making it harder to build the housing New Yorkers need, and to open and run the small businesses that keep its neighborhoods alive. In both cases the pattern is the same: rules written for a different era that, over time, have created unnecessary costs and delays for people trying to build, invest, and create opportunity.
For construction, the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), passed in 1975, subjects nearly every housing and infrastructure project in the state through the same demanding review that 50 years ago served as a legitimate environmental safeguard, but today is often just a source of costly delay.
For New York City’s small businesses – the restaurants, bodegas, barbershops and child care providers that employ approximately one million people – the accumulated maze of permits, fees, and paperwork has made many of them think of city government as an obstacle, not a partner.
The numbers tell the story:
SEQRA reviews add roughly $82,000 per unit to the cost of building housing in New York City alone – up to $8 million for a 100-unit building before a single shovel hits the ground.
Projects can be delayed by up to two years simply waiting on environmental review, even when the project itself – a mid-rise apartment building on a parking lot, a sewer upgrade, a neighborhood park – has no meaningful environmental impact at all.
Of the city’s roughly 180,000 small businesses, only 9% of owners report ever receiving the Business Owner Bill of Rights the city is required to hand them.
For everyday New Yorkers, this shows up as higher rent and housing costs due to less housing supply, infrastructure deteriorating while awaiting long-needed improvements, and storefronts that take too long and cost too much to open.
The Solution
New York just answered both problems at once – and within weeks of each other.
On July 20, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the “OPEN (Overhauling, Procedures and Expanding Navigation) for Small Business” – a package of more than 50 regulatory reforms built directly out of the city’s survey of 500-plus business owners. And just weeks prior, as part of her FY2026-27 State Budget signed May 27, Governor Kathy Hochul enacted the "Let Them Build" agenda, the first major overhaul of SEQRA since it was written.
Neither effort throws out the protections underneath, they simply narrow the rules to where they belong:
Out with the duplicates: Let them Build lets housing on previously disturbed land skip full SEQRA review – up to 500 units in denser NYC zoning districts, scaling down to 20 in unzoned areas – plus water, sewer, park and school projects. OPEN scraps duplicative approvals for small businesses, like the second permit needed to serve ice cream, or the separate license a bodega needs to sell fruit outside its own door.
Cutting costs and paperwork: Dropping SEQRA review eliminates much of the $82,000 per-unit cost and up to two years of delay. OPEN zeroes out DEP registration fees for cooking equipment and food trucks for a year, and moves barber shop permit renewals to every three years.
Real deadlines and support: Let Them Build gives agencies 120 days to rule on an exemption and one year to finish a full review where one’s still required, with court relief if they miss. OPEN adds a one-stop city concierge with a single case manager per new business and a permanent taskforce to continue finding fixes.
As Governor Hochul put it: “Red tape and duplicative reviews have stopped New York from doing the very building that made us the envy of the world… that ends today.” Mayor Mamdani framed the city’s version the same way, with the goal of every owner being “treated as someone government works for, not around.”
The Bottom Line
New York is doing the right thing twice over. And, it’s coming at a time when the mayor and governor announced on July 28 that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority projects have finished early and under budget – a major development for area residents.
Ultimately, Albany modernized a 50-year-old law so it actually works for the era it operates in, and City Hall cut the redundant permits and fees weighing on small businesses. Neither move sacrifices the protections underneath.
For everyday New Yorkers, that means a housing supply that can actually keep up with demand and a city that makes it easier – not harder – to open a business and keep it running.
New York is proving that modernizing a law isn't the same as abandoning its purpose. That’s pragmatic, solutions-oriented governance – and a model other high-cost states and cities can follow.