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Ahead of the Syracuse Housing Strategies Corp.’s first meeting on Monday, The Daily Orange has outlined the four parts of the Syracuse Housing Strategy. The strategy, authorized Sept. 3 by the Syracuse City Common Council, is Mayor Ben Walsh’s framework to address the city’s housing crisis and market and affordability gap.

Walsh and his administration originally published a draft of the strategy in April with the goal of “revitalizing” the city’s housing supply. The strategy is based on the Syracuse Housing Study — a one-year study which found that many of the city’s challenges, including the economy, are deeply rooted in residential conditions and patterns.

The strategy contains four main sections: understanding Syracuse’s market challenges, strategic work in key areas, intervention requirements and guidance for area selection.

Understanding Syracuse’s market challenges

The first part of the strategy summarizes the housing study’s findings, which include the existence of a market and affordability gap in the Syracuse housing market. The study also proposes potential methods to resolve the issues simultaneously.

The affordability gap represents the difference between average housing costs and the median household income in a given area. The market gap is the difference between these costs and what these households are willing to pay, according to the strategy.

According to the strategy, about one-third of all residential properties in Syracuse are in visible decline, which reinforces disinvestment. The strategy also shows how the market is more likely to produce and sustain healthy housing in areas where demand is higher due to anticipated investments.

The strategy also states that the housing needs in Syracuse outweigh the available resources to fill affordability gaps, therefore creating the housing crisis. The study found that the city’s rate of low-income households, not high housing costs, is the primary cause for these gaps.

To take on these issues, the strategy aims to use fractions of resources to tackle both gaps in different neighborhoods across Syracuse that require different needs.

Strategic work in key areas

The city has ongoing efforts in four areas to help strengthen the market. These areas include the restoration of Downtown Syracuse, execution of the Community Grid Vision Plan, redevelopment of East Adams Street and land banking and code enforcement activities.

The Community Grid Vision Plan is the enhancement of the city’s transportation systems, land use and housing developments and pedestrian accommodations following the removal of the Interstate-81 overpass. I-81 racially segregated Syracuse’s historic 15th Ward by physically separating it from the rest of the city in the 1960s.

Other sections of work include restoring historic buildings, increasing residential living downtown, redeveloping aging public housing and addressing code sections that influence property foreclosures.

The strategy will also invest in middle-income neighborhoods and stabilization of distressed areas. Middle-income areas offer an opportunity to leverage the current market potential through more investment, according to the strategy.

Within the middle-income and distressed areas, the strategy will take action in “clusters.” These clusters consist of asset clusters, areas that have room to strengthen the market, and legacy clusters, areas that show decline.

Intervention requirements

The strategy organizes intervention requirements into five stages: policy, planning and zoning, city-wide consistency, financial commitment and organizational capacity.

Related policy will accompany the Syracuse Comprehensive Plan, a land use strategy for environmental, social and economic sustainability development. The city plans to achieve consistency through deconcentrating poverty strengthening the city’s fiscal health.

The strategy also proposes financial commitments, including an annual adoption of a General Fund budget to contribute around $2 million to the Syracuse Housing Strategies Corp.

The final organizational capacity stage focuses on funding Syracuse’s neighborhoods and communities to ensure incentives for investing time, energy and money, according to the strategy.

Guidance for area selection

Guidance for area selection focuses on the asset and legacy clusters and breaks them down into where the city should prioritize funding. The investment selection process poses questions such as potential success after investment, success timeliness, opportunity costs and evidence of previous success.

The strategy includes plans to tackle this area selection process in three waves of work over 30 to 45 years. Each wave will work on two clusters from within the asset or legacy clusters for 10 to 15 years at a time.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article referred to the Syracuse Housing Strategies Corp. by its former name, the Syracuse Housing Trust Fund, in the Intervention Requirements section. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on September 22, 2024 at 9:29 pm

Contact Roxanne: rmboychu@syr.edu