Mayor Walsh rolls out Syracuse Housing Strategy

SYRACUSE — The Syracuse Housing Strategy is described as a “multi-year framework for improving housing conditions in the City of Syracuse.”  The strategy calls for “additive new work that builds on major initiatives” currently underway. They include the Resurgent Neighborhoods Initiative, the East Adams neighborhood redevelopment, and the community grid vision plan, the office of Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said in the April 24 announcement. It also includes programs like the Syracuse Land Bank and downtown-revitalization efforts. The Syracuse Housing Strategy is available online at syracusehousingstudy.com. Walsh’s office cites the strategy as indicating “almost 100% of the old way of doing community development will have to be shelved. Resistance to such change is to be expected. Without such change, Syracuse’s housing markets will not begin to truly recover nor get to a point where they are able to withstand the new and different demographic and other challenges headed Syracuse’s way.” The Syracuse Housing Strategy resulted from a two-part effort that included a housing study conducted between September 2022 and June 2023. It resulted in “many important findings” including two that “stand out above rest,” the city said. The city’s study found that much of the housing in Syracuse has been “neglected for decades.” Consequently, property values have stagnated (even accounting for recent price escalations) and the cost of catching up on deferred maintenance and improvements generally exceeds what properties are worth. This puts a great fiscal strain on city government, making it difficult to operate and provide a high quality of life for residents. This represents a market gap, per the city. The housing study also that despite significant degradation, housing is “still too expensive for many, making it very difficult for low-income households to succeed.” This represents an affordability gap. The 70-page Syracuse Housing Strategy plan recommends focusing the city’s housing resources on both stabilizing “distressed” neighborhoods to prevent further decline and investing in “middle” neighborhoods to leverage current and potential market demand for quality housing.  The Syracuse Housing Strategy proposes using a “cluster approach” to implement strategies in groupings of 30-50 contiguous city blocks with similar market conditions and neighborhood identities. “The Syracuse Housing Strategy is a smart framework to accomplish the massive challenge of revitalizing the city’s housing stock. It presents interventions that will breathe new life into city neighborhoods,” Walsh contended. “The strategy also recognizes we are doing a lot of things right already and encourages continued commitment to those neighborhood initiatives. It challenges us, though, to make difficult and disruptive choices to use the limited resources we have available in ways that will make more Syracuse neighborhoods attractive for new residents and private investment.” The Syracuse Housing Strategy was developed based on significant community and stakeholder input in conjunction with the czb, a planning firm based in Bath, Maine.  The City of Syracuse announcement also noted the housing strategy includes a foreword by “world-renowned” urbanist and city planner, Alan Mallach. “Too often, cities faced with limited resources, and neighborhood groups competing for their share of that modest pool, see the two strategies outlined in the report as a zero-sum proposition. Some argue that the city should focus entirely on strategies that build a stronger economy, while others argue that fairness dictates that the city should put its resources where the greatest needs exist, and let others manage on their own. Neither makes sense, because in the end neither approach leads to a healthy, sustainable city. As the report makes clear, Syracuse needs to find the balance between the two. I am confident that they will succeed in that effort,” Mallach said.