Infrastructure needs, and government funding. Good after noon. Its great to join us about what they are docking to tackle the housing shortage. This also includes the housing initiative. The event today includes two timely discussions. For the first hour, we are talking too two leading policymakers from two different states with the same problem. A significant shortage of housing. Well explore what they are learn from one another and how they can be applied for the second part of the conversation. The ceo will interview governor tina kotex from oregon. They are straightening public safety, improve regulations and treat substance usage disorders. Its an Important Role to solve critical, social, economic, and environmental challenges. Also a terrific partner who works closely with governor and their team to come up with bipartisan solutions. Critical importance. Housing affordability. Its essential to the health and wellbeing of so many americans. For too many families its out of reach. The foremost issue is approximate mal ly 4 million units. They pegged the shortfall. This is a significant challenge we continue to face. Half of the renters spend 30 of more of their income on rent. For many of you living in d. C. We feel that everyday. Homelessness where rents are rising including places like montana. There are initial steps states are taking to contain rent, make buying home a reality, and reduce homelessness. In a growing number of states they look to the solutions and pass laws to enable more homes. To kick us off ill ask the team to lead a discussion with two guests. Ruth ann, the commissioner and ceo of new york state homes and christopher, montanas director of environmental quality. Please join me in welcoming the commissioner to the director and travis for the next panel. Thank you and welcome commissioner and director. Id like to thank both of you from traveling to washington d. C. To discuss what your states are doing to grapple with the housing crisis that was mentioned. Id like to welcome the 400 people registered for this event. Some here in the offices and d. C. And many are online. The participants are pretty wide ranging. We have state legislature. Regulator staff and many housing experts and advocates. The centerpiece of the efforts montana has enacted a set of policies left to locality. Counties, cities, unincorporated areas. Thats land usage planning and zoning. Statewide, zoning efforts have grown since 2019 when oregon was the first state to put socalled middle housing bill on the books. This deals with smaller more affordable units like accessory dwelling units that might be an apartment standing on the land of a Single Family home or duplex or basement apartment. Six permit duplexes on most residential lots. A dozen consider proposal to sanction similar lower cost form housing that have been stopped by the local panels. So, the focus of this discussion is to dig in with two experts from different states on the problems they are facing, the reasons they are recommending these problems and Evidence Based Solutions they are proposing. Just to make it interesting, its ward to identify two states that are more dissimilar than montana and new york. There are similarities. When it comes to geography, race and ethnicity. Yet, i have been struck by the similarityover the proposals coming out of both states and not the differences, under the leadership of montanas governor and director dorington leads. They recommended proposals enacted tabi the state legislature. Its a sweeping set of proposals and very similar. Not identical but similar to the specifics of proposals that the commissioner, which chief architect for new york governor kathy holkel. Id like to dig in for 45 minutes director, lets start off with a question ill ask both of you. Kick us off. If you could just set the scene for people. Talk about what the problems have been in your state. What the Evidence Based Solutions that you landed on that your task force landed on. What is the underline reason that you decided to go this right. Thank you for the invite to be here. The governor drafted an executive order to put together a set of recommendations. Not just for the legislature but to consider and implement changes. Lets go back a little bit. Lets look at the start of the housing problem. Its been a decade in the works however, what we saw through covid19 is people didnt want to livein an urban area. They could work remotely. Its been a guessive growth pattern. They need a provision for housing and those forced to live there are forced to pay a higher rate. Availability is un3 . This is history cool trend. Also unsustainable those trying to attract in the work force. With the executive order they were at a 27 panel. One was bipartisan. Two is multistake and three multigeographic. With the assembly of the group, we set an aggressive three month schedule. We delivered our first report that was recommendations for the legislature to consider we are going into the 23 section. Far in advanced to if you meanly die just. The second report was new and completed i easement the director of the deq. People were upset we were a barrier. This is a significant barrier. Alliance for the planning of housing. We got better in that very short period of time. All of the regulations maked in a variety of states and fully blocking housing. Absolutely. We made a sixers of recommendations. The approach we took at the beginning. I have the solution and almost no one does. They dont listen to the other party and housing i said, this is how well do this. We broke into groups. Work force and construction, financing and other well first fully identify the challenges allow for the defendant among 27 members for a variety of states. There is 100 or so. While i agree, housing is not the issue. What we allowed is for people to disagree with a set of recommendations and solution that say, while the report is published we have a housing issue. Thats not my favorite. We gained consensus that was just a relief. Okay, great, i dont have to agree with everything chris said. Its a requirement. We had communities that had disaster struck. You couldnt put a multifamily housing unit back in its place. We allowed for and planned for an investment of 20300 level. To buy down margin that would be spent. Buy down using infrastructure and investment the proinvitation of inbe fa structure treatedment lines and extensions. This is making great margins. A provision and mandate for growth policies. They had a basket of options. They completed growth policy. We allowed for adus and multifamily. Reduced the lot size and setback requirements and parking requirements. You reduce the cost. This is the state saying we are not placing parking requirements, lot size requirements on you. Thats not to say you might not do it any way. Uhhuh, absolutely. Okay. Commissioner, new york state has the legislature talked about your proposal last year. You all are still working it through. Tell us the major factors and problems that need to be addressed. Sure, thank you for having m. Our governor spent years going around the state and hearing so many places about housing affordability. There was a lot of houses but no job becoming governor and what can we do about this. Telling me what you need to do. It is a the Housing Agency in new york. Proposal through the session last year. We didnt arrive at the crisis today. We have really high rent growth and house price appreciate. We are creating jobs and data was baseline. We created 1. 2 million jobs and over 100,000 units of housing. We expect them to create dozens of housing and different organizes that looked at what we need for the next decade to accommodate growth. We need to double from the 400 thousands units of housing growth. Holy cow, how do we do that. There is a towards of policy elements in it. One of the big ones is how the growth target at the municipal level. Over 1500 units in the state of new york. Maybe in long island. They have zoning control. You can legalize accessory unit. By the train station you can do that. You have to grow and have options for young people that want to come back to the town they grew up in. We will recognize quire you to grow and put in a penalty mechanism. We didnt come up with a lot of ideas on our own. We looked at places doing these things, some for a long time and others more recently. We pulled from those they said dont do an incentive based system. They had consequences for expedited per wanting for localities that didnt grow. Thats the other pieces that we are bringing back to legislature this year from around whats in the nationality conversation around they drive production in the market rate. Thats what we were talking about last year and portions of it this year too. Thank you, ill turn to you to talk now about reaction. Locality, as i mentioned traditional zoning within their control. Getting reaction from them and the many stakeholder groups tenant groups and landlords. This will go to the director as well. If you had to look at the three biggest lessons in terms of talking to the public about this set of challenges and Building Support and dealing with opposition, what would you think . No one looks change. If you like it its somewhere else. They have always and will be. We try to do a few things. One we used a lot of data. Yes the government made up what should have happened. I think, nationally, people would agree on the problem. We are at a point now and crisis level where this nationally people talk about the pressures for low income families and middle income families and being able to stay stably housed. We agree on the problem which is part of step one. Getting to agree on the solution is partially rooting the conversation in data. We psyched a lot of data. Research about the growth which have more growth around new york city. We get to talk about that and the way it reflected. Data is great. Showing people what we are talking about. You certainly in towns and villages all over outside new york city people might shutter. You go to great places and the towns out of long island that rezoned they are super lively downtown. Hard to get a reservation. This is a cool place to live. This is driven by the fact they have three and 4 story buildings showing people what it is we are talking about. We get wordy in government and have 7,000 acronyms for what we are doing. Its not that. Go to this place and see what it looks like and that helps sell the conversation a bit to take some of the fear away of what we are talking about. I was going to give this example. In talking about the units, we had people say, oh, how many cars will there be if you put the dwelling unit in your yard. How many are there now. People can have one or four cars. Why we have to go immediately from, you know, an attic apartment or apartment over a garage. Traffic over cars. Not to mention public transit. In new york state its pretty decent. They go to a town that allow the units. It doesnt look that different from the town that doesnt allow them. So, i think our key lessons are showing people what it means and rooting our conversation and data. Understanding people are afraid of change and dont give up. You mentioned the sword. Ill have to ask you about it since you are wellpositioned to talk about it. Suburb. Growth has been limited in new york suburbs and this is a pattern we see around the country. There is generated support and opposition. Bipartisan in a lot of the country. Whats the unique concerns and solutions are in terms of id say a couple of things, one for some places its a bit of grow for your oar own success. So many young people would not to live there and work in the health field or tech field. They dont want to commute and cant afford anything through the market. I think the suburbs are slowly starting to absorb if they want to grow the next generation they need to provide some of that. The other way to talk about this topic is infrastructure, we have invested a lot of infrastructure, water and suer, roads, schools whatever the issue might be. Well continue to do that. We dont want infrastructure to be a barrier. We also know there needs to be more infrastructure to make sure they can handle growth and cant always pay for it themselves. With this we are more successful. Thank you. I was struck by the fact that in montana, you were able to get your city mayors, for the most part, environmental groups, your conservative think tanks on the same page when it came to the approaches that have been e. What would you say in terms of how you accomplished that. What would they be . One of the key wins at the beginning was to identify what we werent going to do. Through definitions, housing can take on so many different terms or groups or solution sets. We chose the Work Force Housing because it started the economic dialog. Those are challenging. We know this will trickle through and filter and ultimately, the market will respond and provide a better price point. So, i illustrated this through another example we had a Natural Disaster and snow event washed out and multiple communities were impacted. Housing was seriously harmed. Uhhuh. During the event, they said you are a housing guy. Why not help with this emergency housing provision. Thanks but no because its a different issue. Saying no helped us focus on adding supply where we need it and not within every definition of every solution thats a problem. Be aggressive with the timeline. There is no way well solve this problem. In four months we will have no solutions. Respectfully, i disagreed. We set an aggressive pace to provide solutions and we havent solved our housing problems. You provide incremental Housing Units. Gathering bipartisan support. They remain aggressive. Im saying also to those folks. Spread the message and ask and solicit. You arent the soul voice. Go with the community and association. Talk to other builders. You are not the sole voice to provide input. Excellent. Lets follow up for both of you. New voices, have you seen in this current wave of discussion about statewide zoning reform. Have you seen stakeholders come to the tablet or identified communities and voices that should be heard more than they are being now . So, well go backwards if you could, answer that. Ill get to the commissioner. Id say, within the high growth communities the voices are loud. There are stories. Its that simple. Within the community you have a housing need. It might be of lower scale. Scale doesnt matter. Three families it can be a major deal. It can alter the community. We are seeing double the approach in the county you can see high single digit loss in rural community. If you dont address some of that, especially as they are distant from existence and labor source. The focus i believe. The rural communities. Yeah, id say for us, the kind of yimby community has grown a lot. When they are shot down they are turned down by people who have access to the community. Those who would move into that. Not exclusively. They are priced out. Id like that opportunity. Planning board and have a vote. Id certainly be supportive. We see that across. It happened in new york city becauseover the land usage process. Throughout the state there are. There is a lot of environmental stuff that prevent housing from getting built and taking years to get there. For us, certainly, i think sort of extension of the yimby Community Topic by topic helped bring more people into the conversation to talk about access to housing. I think there has been sort of the systemic racism that exists in the new york city and new york statehousing ecosystem. Also has gotten a much bigger voice and people talking about access to well Resource Areas and not allowing the suburbs to continue what effect tiffly impacting the redlining. If you have a voucher. Its still brokers that are ramp peed they had not the been in the pro housing Pro Development conversation. Thats helping us and giving us wind and broadening the conversation. We have a great new bill called yes in gods backyard. Coming up in many states. Bringing it is coming up many states. We have long had Church Redevelopment and the rest of the state. Powerful engines for development this will give them more tools. A lot of religious institutions tend to be house rich, if you will. They have facilities, the cash poor. This helps them sustain themselves as well. What has been the broad discussion about tennis needs on zona jim landuse planning. We have a very Strong Campaign in new york city. By extension i think a little bit of new york state. Kind of hand in hand with the supply conversation. We have a little bit of context in new york city. We have 3 million Housing Units about a million of them are Home Ownership about 1 million are unregulated rental units in 1 million are regulated rental units. We have very heavy regulated and protects a lot of low income people. There is still a large amount that is unregulated. People are not generally looking at market rate luxury towers, they are looking at smaller three10 related units or even basement apartments are Owner Occupied three unit buildings. There is a real desire as we talk about supply from the tenant advocacy side to increase the protections in new york city and in new york state. I think for us that is part of the conversation. Trying to make very clear that supply is our number one path to success and we need people to stay focused on that. Not tenant protections and no supply or we will just continue to be a crisis level in new york city. Now we are getting to the lightning round of questions. Audience questions are coming soon. Get ready, folks. I will throw two items on the table and you can respond to both. I mentioned environmental regulations. Commissioner, this is something for this session. I am interested in how, in your views on whether and how regulations are being used in the housing context to block housing or whether they are being used for legitimate environmental purposes for the most part or if it is a mix. The director mentioned rural needs in montana. Manufactured housing is now being considered and has been for many years. An important source of lowcost housing. At first in rural areas and increasingly now in suburbs and urban areas. Maybe you could talk on main dash touch on manufacturing and how it could help in rural areas as well. It is amazing what a definition will create. Within statute, manufacturing homes receive both a social stigma, but also a provision for being on a concrete foundation in the financing that comes from that. A simple fix allowing for manufactured homes on a permanent foundation, that being considered a home for both financing and permitting is a big deal. I think we will see that for our session. On the environmental front i think he might have something to say. It goes back to what i sa