New York's housing permitting process is so slow and redundant that it costs developers roughly $200,000 per acre in delays alone, according to a new research brief published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in 2025. The report finds that even when a housing project complies with all local zoning rules, gaining approval can take years because of the state's extensive, repetitive permitting process. As a result, New York now builds homes more slowly than California, the state's population has flatlined, and it risks losing economic dynamism and political power.
Construction timelines in the northeastern United States have risen sharply over the past 25 years, according to Census Bureau data cited in the report. Developers seeking to build multifamily housing in New York typically navigate multiple overlapping reviews—rezoning, subdivision approval, site plan review, variances, and county review—each requiring public hearings and often taking months. The state's unique State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process adds another layer: consultants estimated that completing an environmental assessment form for an apartment complex takes four to 12 months. When a project triggers a full environmental impact statement, the process can stretch years longer. About one in 20 housing units completed in New York faces a lawsuit during the approval process. In one case cited by the report, a lawsuit in Troy forced the city to reverse approval for 240 apartments, delaying the project 27 months and likely killing it. An assisted living facility in Huntington was held up for six years by lawsuits and appeals without finding any substantive environmental issue.
The authors write that New York's procedural requirements allow municipalities to "grind an undesired project to a halt," but are not flexible enough to fast-track welcome applications. According to the report, SEQR's broad definition of "environment" includes subjective considerations like "the impairment of the character or quality of important historical, archeological, architectural, or aesthetic resources or of existing community or neighborhood character" and even "the encouraging or attracting of a large number of people to a place." The report notes that these criteria are "out of step with contemporary environmentalists who prioritize addressing climate change and favor compact, energy-efficient cities." One criterion essentially says that "people are pollution," the authors observe. The research was based on interviews with 24 experts across New York—including planners, developers, attorneys, and code enforcement officers—conducted in large and small communities statewide, though not in New York City.
The report explains that New York's permitting delays stem from three overlapping problems: redundant reviews by multiple government bodies, discretionary approval processes that invite litigation, and changing political leadership that can reverse course mid-project. Interviewees described cases where developers bent over backward to enable housing construction, often relying on tax breaks and payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements to make projects financially viable. But lining up all potential funding sources can take years and must typically be completed before beginning local approvals. If approvals were quicker and more certain, the report argues, these tax breaks wouldn't be needed as often and municipalities would raise more revenue from new construction. Even minor projects face obstacles: most new housing in New York requires at least one variance, reflecting rules written too tightly to allow viable construction. The New York State Department of Transportation was singled out by some interviewees as particularly slow, with one office-to-residential conversion on a state highway waiting more than a year for approval despite reducing traffic and not altering the existing driveway.
The legislature recently exempted many housing projects from SEQR—construction of up to 100 dwellings on previously disturbed land, or up to 300 in urban areas, now skips environmental review—but the report recommends going further. Suggested reforms include allowing small subdivisions and site plans to be reviewed administratively by municipal staff rather than volunteer boards, eliminating county review for variances and small projects, imposing strict deadlines on state agency responses, expanding SEQR exemptions to cover variances and special permits, and requiring lawsuits to be accompanied by expert opinions alleging actual harm. The report also calls for extending building permit durations, allowing developers to hire third-party inspectors, and refocusing SEQR on core environmental priorities by removing topics like community character that "do not pertain to water, air, and land." Bringing construction and approval timelines back to reasonable durations would lower the price at which new housing reaches the market, the authors conclude, but doing so requires simplifying processes, reducing redundancies, and ensuring quick turnaround.