On May 27, 2026, Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law reforms to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) that exempt many New York City residential developments from the lengthy environmental review process associated with applications to the Department of City Planning and other city agencies.

For the past 50 years, SEQRA required that discretionary land use actions, such as rezonings and special permits, include environmental analysis that could take more than 18 months to complete – even for relatively small projects. Now, discretionary land use actions that facilitate housing development in New York City are exempt from SEQRA, and therefore City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR), so long as:

• The development includes no more than 500 dwelling units in medium- and high-density zoning districts (R6 through R12 and their equivalents) or 250 dwelling units in low-density zoning districts (R1 through R5 and their equivalents);
• The development site is not located in a zoning district that does not allow residential use;
• The development would contain no more than 50,000 square feet of non-residential uses;
• The development site is connected to existing water and sewer systems;
• The development site is not located in the flood hazard area or coastal erosion hazard area;
• There has been previous disturbance at the development site, such as a previous building or other substantial alteration; and
• The development would not consist of a single-family home on a development site of half an acre or larger.

“Red tape and duplicative reviews have stopped New York from doing the very building that made us the envy of the world, making our housing more expensive and our infrastructure outdated – that ends today,” Governor Kathy Hochul said in a press release.

The new SEQRA reforms are a key step in fulfilling the Mamdani administration’s goal of reducing the pre-certification timeline for certain land use actions from two years to six months, as detailed in the SPEED report, released earlier this month and outlining efforts to accelerate housing production throughout the city. On May 28, 2026, the Department of City Planning alerted current applicants, via email, that staff have begun reviewing all pending applications to alert applicants if environmental review is no longer required for their project.