Build, Baby, Build!

Last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul introduced a plan to "build, baby, build" new housing. The Empire State, like other parts of the nation, has heavy demand and limited supply of homes, which has sent prices soaring. Hochul's plan would have required a set- percentage increase in housing in every jurisdiction. If local planning boards balked, the state would step in and fast- track building permits. The idea was to add 800,000 homes over the next decade. Long story short: the proposal failed. Politically the initiative stumbled not because of rural haters of big government but because of progressive suburbanites, who stressed they were all for affordable housing so long as it was built in, say, Utica. Hochul's plan exposed the ugliness and hypocrisy of NIMBYism and initiated some refreshingly honest evaluation of zoning run amok.