Zoning reform is key to solving housing crisis
Like other municipalities across New York, Kingston is looking for housing answers. First-time homeowners struggle with home prices that have skyrocketed since 2021. Our “empty-nester” homeowners feel the strain as downsizing costs increase. Half of our renters
▶ Bartek Starodaj is director of housing initiatives for the city of Kingston, New York. are moderately or severely cost-burdened by their housing.
Those findings might not make you think of municipal zoning, long considered the bureaucratic backwater of local government, but they should.
In principle, the long-term solution to our state’s housing shortage is to build more housing. As momentum builds statewide for housing reform with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s announcement of a Statewide Housing Compact, lawmakers would do well to look to the experience of Kingston and other smaller municipalities from across the state that have enacted zoning reform — a resource-intensive, politically fraught, and worthwhile endeavor.
Our city has decided that setbacks, complex and outdated regulations, and prohibitions on multifamily development impact all of us by driving up housing costs. At a time when residents are struggling to make high rent or mortgage payments, it is incomprehensible that we would double down on zoning policies that deepen our affordability crisis.
Kingston, a diverse city of 24,000, will soon take action to reverse this trend by adopting an entirely new zoning code. The proposed reforms, developed with input from urban planning experts and residents who participated extensively in the process, find support from advocates across the political spectrum.
The resulting code resurrects community assets like neighborhood corner stores that promote walkability, community and economic vitality. These and other changes will encourage incremental, smaller types of mixed-use development, ensuring that future growth positively contributes to the city’s urban form.
But the most important zon
ing reforms are housing related. For example, the new code will legalize accessory dwelling units, a field-tested method of building that helps seniors who want to live near their loved ones. The code will make it easier to build duplexes and triplexes, options that are particularly attractive to young people and families just starting out.
The code also includes a mix of mandates and incentives to stimulate affordable-housing creation and streamline housing approval processes. These reforms will ensure that new housing projects will not be bogged down by yearslong administrative procedures and that the city of Kingston ultimately builds more housing of all types.
In addition, two additional features are critical to this zoning reform effort. The first, ending excessive parking mandates for new development, will increase housing affordability, support smallbusiness development, and protect our environment. Data from other New York municipalities that already have ended their parking mandates, including Buffalo, Hudson, and Saranac Lake, proves this. Recent analysis also shows that in New York City, reducing parking requirements led to the production of more affordable housing.
The second benefit, the introduction of short-term rental regulations, will limit the amount of whole-unit rentals to no more than 1 percent of the city’s total residences, thus ensuring that the overall impact on the city’s available housing from services like Airbnb will be negligible.
To be sure, zoning reform itself will not be enough to solve our housing crisis. But one lesson is clear: We need to entirely rethink the strategy for how many, where, and what types of homes we build. Zoning reform is effective, and all of New York’s municipalities must indeed shoulder the responsibility for being part of the solution.
I often wonder: Will my son or daughter be able to afford to live in Kingston or even in New York state if they choose to? On the current trajectory, that answer is uncertain, but what is certain is that Kingston will change. And as it does, our choices can ensure that our city evolves to meet the needs of tomorrow’s residents as well as today’s.