Syracuse residents will get their last chance Tuesday to weigh in on the city’s plan to address the lack of affordability and quality in its housing market. 

The strategy is based on a report commissioned by the city and completed by a consultant that found it would take $1 billion or more to fix the market’s affordability and quality. 

Neighborhood and Business Development deputy commissioner Michelle Sczpanski said the goal of the strategy is to spur investment in several of the city’s middle-income neighborhoods, securing them for the future and increasing the city’s struggling tax base. 

“All of our neighborhoods need investment and they are all starting in different places,” Sczpanski said. 

City officials and the Common Council will meet at City Hall to hear public comments Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. The council will likely vote Aug. 12 to codify the strategy. Advocates plan to pack the council chambers to comment on the plan’s lack of protections for Syracuse tenants, who they see as most affected by the city’s housing crisis.

The city’s plan will prioritize stabilizing middle-income neighborhoods that consultants czb LLC found to be teetering between prosperity and blight. By committing funds to homeowners who otherwise would not be able to spruce up their homes, the city believes it could increase the values of those homes and increase the city’s tax base. 

In 2025, during the first phase of the strategy, the city plans to commit $25 million to beautify and improve homes in two neighborhoods: Tipperary Hill and Salt Springs. The city has already secured $7.5 million to get the first phase underway.

A second phase would begin in 2027. The city would then begin to target the Elmwood neighborhood and a portion of Eastwood, near Interstate 690. Since the first draft of the housing strategy was released in April, the city has started evaluating whether to implement portions of the second phase beginning in 2025. That would include committing another $10 million for land acquisition and demolition in Eastwood and Elmwood. 

She added that the city selected those areas because middle-income neighborhoods are typically excluded from sizable pools of state and federal funds. This funding, Sczpanski said, is usually reserved for areas showing serious disinvestment.

“We are really trying to think about this as additive work that is supporting things we are already doing in more distressed areas,” she said.

How the plan would work

The proposed housing strategy would provide homeowners and rental property owners in middle income neighborhoods, like Tipp Hill and Salt Springs, with low-interest loans to work on their properties through the Syracuse Housing Trust Fund Corporation. The housing study identified 10 groups of middle income neighborhoods.

In the current housing market, the city and its consultants found homeowners and landlords don’t have enough of an incentive to pour money into their homes. Homeowners have not seen enough of an increase in property value from repairs to make them. 

Bruce Street off of Salt Springs Road. The City of Syracuse is finalizing a strategy to invest about $25 million in the Tipp Hill and the Salt Springs neighborhoods to secure them. It’ll pay for home loans, land acquisition and demolition as well as basic repairs. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

The city hopes that the influx of funding into middle income neighborhoods would incentivize owners to keep up with the conditions of their properties in the long run, and in turn potentially up the property values in their respective blocks. 

Funds would also go toward acquiring land and spurring development. 

Specific incentives include:

  • Small block grants with no income restrictions for exterior improvements around the neighborhood like overhauls to porches and fences, as well as landscaping, that help neighbors work on projects together.
  • Home improvement assistance funds in the forms of matching grants and loans that can convert to grants. 
  • Rental property assistance loans for landlords to maintain their properties at above-market standards. These can turn into grants if property owners freeze rents for a negotiated period of time.
  • Building and providing subsidies for infill housing. This type of construction typically takes the place of vacant lots and sites of demolished properties. 

The city would work through this plan in phases, aiming to stabilize two middle income neighborhoods at a time and boost the city’s tax base in the process.  

The work to stabilize these neighborhoods would unfold over 10 years, Sczpanski said. 

The city also plans to address the gap in quality housing in distressed neighborhoods, of which there are 13, according to the study’s findings, by intensifying property code enforcement and lead paint abatement efforts. The plan also calls for the acquisition, or in some cases of demolition, of problematic or vulnerable properties, and providing a pathway toward rehabilitation of the land.

Sczpanski said stabilizing these neighborhoods would take 15 years.

Challenges and criticism

While housing advocates believe the city’s plan is positive, they worry about residents in Syracuse’s most distressed neighborhoods. 

The strategy lays out a clear plan for middle-income neighborhoods but less so for areas with the city’s most concentrated poverty.  The plan admits that “rarely if ever will Syracuse be able to be both smart and fair at the same time.” 

Jocelyn Richards, a member of the Syracuse Tenants Union approves of the plan, but believes it doesn’t do enough to address short-term needs of tenants facing rising rents and eviction. 

“The city is looking at it from a lens of how to attract investment into properties, so they are picking neighborhoods that are not far gone,” Richards said. 

Sczpanski and the city said the city is already doing some work in those neighborhoods with help from the state and through federal programs. Those programs include the Low Income Housing Tax Credit for developers, funding for affordable housing, and other initiatives through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the State’s Department of Housing and Community Renewal.

South Wilbur Avenue in the Tipp Hill neighborhood. The City of Syracuse is finalizing a strategy to invest about $25 million in the Tipp Hill and the Salt Springs neighborhoods to secure them. It’ll pay for home loans, land acquisition and demolition as well as basic repairs. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

“We’re not saying that we’re stopping work in distressed Census tracts,” Sczpanski said. “We’re just saying that we need to do additive work in areas that are generally excluded from being able to benefit from those investments but are really not actually that much stronger in terms of their ability to get it done on their own.”

The program still needs to fill a funding gap of about $17.5 million to hit its $25 million goal. 

Syracuse Councilor Pat Hogan, who represents Tipp Hill and the council’s second district, said the city will need to scrape together the money anyway it can. He believes the city should try to leverage private investment, state funds, Syracuse Industrial Development Agency funding, and even federal money from the city’s American Rescue Plan Act. 

Hogan also noted the city has bonding capacity to shore up some of the plan’s costs.

“That is how critical this is,” Hogan said. “There is nothing that can change the dynamics of some of our neighborhoods like housing can.”

Reporting contributed by managing editor Chris Libonati.

read more of central current’s coverage

Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...

Anais Mejia is a freelance journalist covering economic justice in the region. She is focused on stories about housing in Syracuse, Interstate 81 and the redevelopment of public housing. Anais is currently...