Governor Hochul: “Cities can fail if we simply embrace the status quo and fail to look to the future. Sheer magnitude and concentration of people and economic power does not insulate any city from periods of decline. Skyrocketing housing costs, overcrowded roads, inefficient mass transit and vulnerability to catastrophic shocks like climate change and pandemics, can all push people out of cities and deter others from ever coming.”
Hochul: "When we fail to address rising housing costs, overpacked streets, grueling commutes and concerns over climate change, we risk losing the very people who make our cities great. But here’s the good news: we know how to solve these problems. When government, civic, and business leaders work together — marshal their resources, make big investments and take on the tough problems — we can make cities more livable, more affordable, and more resilient. We can build more housing, unclog our roadways, reimagine mass transit, clean up our air and fortify our cities from major storms and pandemics."
Governor Kathy Hochul delivered keynote remarks at the Global Economic Summit.
Thank you, Ambassador Cronin, for that great introduction. Bruce Springsteen played for 80,000 people in Croke Park last night, so I guess that makes this the second biggest Irish American homecoming of the week.
As a proud daughter of Kerry, it’s the honor of a lifetime to return here as Governor of the great State of New York. For a few reasons, this is a full circle moment. 2024 marks 100 years since the U.S. and Ireland officially established diplomatic relations. The cultural and economic ties that bind us have only strengthened over the last century.
Today, Ireland is one of the 10 largest investors in the U.S. economy. Irish-bred companies like Applegreen, Siren, Prodigy Learning, and Capella have all put down roots in New York State, while New York-based corporations like Regeneron, Pfizer, PepsiCo, and IBM have all established a presence here in Ireland.
As Governor, I’m always looking for new opportunities to expand and bolster partnerships between Ireland and New York State, but of course my relationship to Ireland runs much deeper than business.
More than a century ago, both my grandparents left Kerry with nothing but lint in their pockets and fire in their bellies. I can picture them now — just kids at the time, looking off the coast at the vast expanse of ocean trying to imagine the new world awaiting on the other side.
From the migrant farms of South Dakota to domestic servitude in Chicago, to a steel plant just outside of Buffalo, New York, they would fight and claw for their own little piece of the American dream. Along the way, they never lost connection to their Irish roots.
In their home, a picture of Jesus Christ hung directly next to a picture of John F. Kennedy — our first Irish American President. The lesson to me, was clear: compassionate service to the poor and less fortunate, which our Irish Catholicism calls for, can and should be pursued through bold political action.
These are the values that still guide me today. Though my grandparents both grew up here, they actually met for the first time 3,500 miles away in Chicago. One of the great American cities.
Their story is not uncommon. Because for generations, people in search of a better life have found their way to cities. Cities are perhaps humanity’s greatest invention. They are engines of connection, opportunity, creativity, and wealth. At their best, cities break down cultural and class barriers and bring us closer to one another.
Today, I’ll outline my vision for building cities that are more affordable, more livable and more resilient. It’s a bold vision that challenges conventional wisdom and confronts long-festering issues other leaders have ignored. Because the truth is: cities can fail if we simply embrace the status quo and fail to look to the future.
Sheer magnitude and concentration of people and economic power does not insulate any city from periods of decline. Skyrocketing housing costs, overcrowded roads, inefficient mass transit and vulnerability to catastrophic shocks like climate change and pandemics, can all push people out of cities and deter others from ever coming.
Great people leave, the workforce weakens, businesses pack up, tax revenue dries up, public services are cut, and crime rises. It’s a devastating domino effect.
New York State is home to one of the most iconic cities — you may have heard of it — and robust economies in the world. I want to keep it that way, which means we need to build and maintain a strong foundation.
As long as we make housing affordable, public transit is seamless and reliable, and protect cities from the next big storm or the next pandemic, that foundation will be solid, and smart, hungry people will continue to bring their talents to cities.
They’ll work for the best companies, pursue their wildest dreams, and change the world. Now, we all remember 2020. Typically, bustling streets — eerily empty and quiet. Restaurants, businesses, and offices shuttered. Cities, of course, came roaring back, because people who are drawn to cities are tough.
They were never going to trade the camaraderie and connection that only cities can offer for full-time remote work in the country. But that doesn’t mean we can get complacent.
That’s why I’m doing everything in my power to ensure we never have to go through that experience again. In New York, we set aside $750 million to build a new, state-of-the-art public health lab at the University at Albany — a short drive from our State Capitol.
It’s going to give our scientists and public health experts a world-class space to undertake groundbreaking research and boost our preparedness for future public health crises.
While cities have mounted an incredible comeback, the reality is they’ve become far too expensive to live in. The driving force is a housing crisis that plagues cities worldwide. In a recent study of 200 cities around the globe, 90 percent were found to be unaffordable, with the average home costing more than three times the average income.
Around 11 million Americans spend more than half their income on rent. This crisis is magnified in metropolitan areas where there is still tremendous demand to live, but not nearly enough housing being built to meet that demand.
The politics vary from place to place, but the housing crisis really boils down to the same, core issue in every city and major metropolitan area: a privileged few who wield enormous influence benefit from the scarcity of housing options. They build powerful coalitions, pay lobbyists, and elect leaders who establish onerous zoning and building restrictions that bring housing production to a standstill. While those who’ve already bought in watch their property values rise. Rents and mortgages spin out of control for everyone else. People are priced out of the communities where they grew up.
At the same time, people from rural and suburban areas who want nothing more than to experience urban life, decide that it’s just too costly and pick a different route.
This poses a real threat to the future of cities, which have always relied on a rich mix of natives and newcomers. Consequently, leaders must find the political courage to take on entrenched interests and champion new housing development.
We must make the case that when people can no longer afford to live in Dublin, London, Hong Kong, or New York to chase their dreams, then cities will lose their vitality — the very thing that makes them great.
I’ve been fighting this battle for the last two years. For decades, no New York Governor would touch this. Taking on our housing shortage was considered a fool’s errand at best. But it’s hard to court new business or keep your smartest graduates when people can’t afford a decent home.
So, in my first year as Governor, I proposed a bold plan to build more housing. Our first try actually didn’t work. But to quote the great James Joyce, “The longest way around is the shortest way home.” Progress at scale takes time. So, we kept at it.
It turns out we had some dug-in politicians who needed carrots to go with the stick. So, I held a press conference — actually holding a bunch of carrots — and said, “Come talk to me.”
I said, “If we continue down this path people will leave. Our State will lose its essence and that will be our legacy. Do we really want to be the generation that sits idle while our State is slowly sapped of its spirit and soul?”
We traveled from community to community making this very argument, steadily changing hearts and minds, and ultimately, brokering a landmark housing deal with the state legislature. This hadn’t been done in 50 years.
The deal includes tax incentives for builders to kickstart new housing construction and lifts the burdensome, bureaucratic red tape that has prevented New York City from building new housing in Manhattan since the 1960s.
It also makes it easier to convert empty office towers into affordable homes. Set aside $650 million in state funding for communities that commit to building more housing and enacts a slew of new measures to protect tenants from price gouging, housing discrimination, and unfair evictions.
The cities that will survive and thrive in the coming decades will have to become more affordable. The best way to do that — the best way to keep and draw great people and to enhance your workforce — is to build, build, build.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they just kept building year after year. That’s what cities need to do and they need to start now!
Once they can afford a respectable home, current and prospective city dwellers' next concern is quality of life. Making cities more livable starts with getting more cars off the roads, reducing pollution, and making significant investments in our public transit systems.
Walk around many major cities and it won’t take long to encounter frustrated drivers caught in traffic jams, cars spewing exhaust on overpacked streets. We determined that the average New York City driver spends 102 hours a year stuck in traffic. Those hours add up to more than four days of your life – every year.
That’s four days sitting behind the wheel of a car instead of sitting by your kid’s bedside, reading them a book, sitting around the dinner table or reconnecting with a friend.
There has to be a better way. So, starting next month, New York City will become the first city in the U.S. to implement congestion pricing. We’ll charge people $15 every time they drive into New York’s Central Business District.
London, Milan, Stockholm, and Singapore have all implemented similar plans with great success. In New York City, the idea stalled for 60 years until we got it done earlier this year.
It took a long time because people feared backlash from drivers set in their ways. But, much like with housing, if we’re serious about making cities more livable, we must get over that.
We estimate congestion pricing will reduce the volume of vehicles in Manhattan’s central business district by 17 percent. Fewer cars mean less gridlock, traffic and pollution. Fewer cars means safer streets, cleaner air and more room to maneuver for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Congestion pricing will generate $1 billion every year, which will then fund large-scale projects that make public transit faster and more accessible. That’s key because we’ll never change people’s habits if we don’t offer safe, reliable alternatives to driving that work for everyone.
That means filling transit deserts that typically exist in poorer neighborhoods. In New York City, we’re rehabbing an old 14-mile freight line and turning it into a commuter rail service that will serve approximately 40 million riders a year.
When it’s done, the Interborough Express will link Brooklyn and Queens — New York’s most populous and largest boroughs, respectively, turning a 70-minute bus ride into a 40-minute train ride. That’s life-changing for people.
A similar project is underway in Harlem, where we’re extending our Second Avenue Subway and making life easier for 240,000 commuters each day. When cities invest in transformational transit projects in historically neglected communities, we connect people to school and job opportunities that were previously out of reach.
In that way, expanded train service or an extra subway stop can actually change the trajectory of someone’s life. That’s powerful. That’s what cities are meant to do.
Mass transit must also be built to withstand these so-called once-in-100-year storms, which now happen almost every year. Dense, coastal cities are particularly vulnerable. More than a decade ago, Superstorm Sandy inflicted significant damage to two 110-year-old subway tunnels that run under the Hudson River.
If either tunnel ever became impassable, our City would screech to a halt. In cities like New York, resiliency often means building redundancy. So, after more than a decade of starts and stops, we’ve finally begun work on the long-awaited Gateway Tunnel expanding the rail connection between New Jersey and New York City beneath the Hudson River.
At $16 billion, it’s one of the largest infrastructure projects ever in the United States. We’ve also just created a resiliency roadmap to defend our tunnels and train lines from flooding and extreme heat. We’ll raise steps and street vents to keep stormwater from streaming into subways, invest in drainage and pumping equipment and elevate bus depots and subway yards so essential equipment is protected from floodwaters.
This is urgent work, because if people lack confidence in our ability to manage the impact of these extreme storms, they’ll move somewhere else. As cities build resiliency for themselves, they must also take a leading role in slowing and mitigating the long-term effects of climate change.
Transitioning the world to clean energy will require creative solutions from our cities’ most brilliant minds. In New York, we’re converting an old fossil fuel site into a state-of-the-art clean energy facility.
When it’s complete, hydroelectric energy will flow from Quebec, through an underground transmission line, to the Champlain Hudson Power Express. “CHPE” as we call it, will power one million New York City homes and reduce harmful emissions by 37 million metric tons. It’s the equivalent to taking half a million cars off our roads.
While hydropower will soon travel 339 miles underground from Canada 35 miles off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, a brand-new offshore wind farm is already generating enough clean energy to power 70,000 homes on Long Island. It’s the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the United States.
We’re taking a similarly cutting-edge approach to how we construct new buildings. In 2026, we’ll become the first state in the U.S. to require nearly all new buildings to run on electric heat, instead of harmful fossil fuels. Older structures — including the iconic Empire State Building — are getting retrofitted and slicing their emissions in half.
I know there are a lot of sustainability leads and chief impact officers in the audience today. You’re doing essential work steering your companies to protect our planet. However, we know not all organizations share your level of commitment. So state and city governments must compel them to do their part.
In New York, we do this through a program called Cap-and-Invest. We set a cap on statewide climate pollution. Every year, we set the cap lower to align with our aggressive climate goals.
Major polluters must pay to emit greenhouse gasses. That revenue is then reinvested in clean energy projects with a focus on lifting up communities that have borne the brunt of environmental pollution.
We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it. Because of their density, geography, and reliance on mass transit systems, the threat is more profound and more existential for major cities.
Yet, when cities build stronger, climate-resilient infrastructure, they give people faith that they can handle these increasingly frequent extreme storms. And when they make massive investments in clean energy, they can chart a cleaner, more sustainable path forward for the rest of the world.
Shakespeare said, "What is a city but its people?” That was true in his time and it’s true in ours.
Everything we love about cities — the energy and character, the opportunities to climb and connect, to explore and celebrate — it’s all built on keeping and attracting an abundance of talented, spirited, competitive people.
When we fail to address rising housing costs, overpacked streets, grueling commutes and concerns over climate change, we risk losing the very people who make our cities great. But here’s the good news: we know how to solve these problems.
When government, civic, and business leaders work together — marshal their resources, make big investments and take on the tough problems — we can make cities more livable, more affordable, and more resilient. We can build more housing, unclog our roadways, reimagine mass transit, clean up our air and fortify our cities from major storms and pandemics.
And my friends, when we do that. The people will take care of the rest. They will keep coming to cities, to work and play, to learn and grow, to put their genius and talents to work and to come together to celebrate our shared humanity. So, I say, let’s get to work!
As we say in New York, Excelsior! That’s our motto. I think about it daily. Ever upward!
Thank you.
