Reform the New York State Scaffold Law |
For the first time in a long time, New York is dreaming big. From building hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units to expanding our aging transit system, the ambitions of leaders like Gov. Hochul and Mayor Mamdani reflect a growing acceptance of the fact that to make New York the most affordable and dynamic economy it can be, we must embrace the promise of the abundance movement. But to do that meaningfully, we have to find ways to build more, build it faster, and build it cheaper without straining public budgets.
While there are many factors at play to blame for the skyrocketing cost of building in an economy the size of New York’s, one culprit looms above all others as not only massively influential, but also fixable: the Scaffold Law. And no, that’s not scaffolding law, which the city recently reformed, but an arcane state labor law that has exponentially inflated the cost of construction beyond reason for decades.
In short, whereas every other state in America relies on a comparative negligence model to determine liability for who is to........