Maria Regina College at 1024 Court St. in Syracuse. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

Vacant structure fires in 2024 reflected and exacerbated the City of Syracuse’s housing crisis, according to a new report from City Auditor Alex Marion.

The auditor on Thursday released a report on last year’s vacant house fires, and the conditions that facilitated them. 

“Following the Fire” is the result of work dating back to the beginning of 2024, when the auditor’s office first set out to determine the cause of vacant property fires in Syracuse. 

Twenty-five vacant structure fires last year cost the City of Syracuse more than $1 million in damages and labor, according to the report. Those 25 fires in vacant structures represented 30% of the 87 total structure fires in 2024.

The cost of those fires is physical, too; each of the 25 vacant property fires drew, on average, 49 fire personnel and took more than three hours to clear. In two separate instances last year, firefighters were forced to fight fires on vacant structures on back-to-back nights. The auditor’s office estimates the vacant structure fires cost the Syracuse Fire Department $250,000 in man hours and resources.

Those fires were sometimes caused by homeless people who lit smaller fires to stay warm. 

The auditor’s report found that these fires exacerbated the same housing crisis which led to homeless people seeking shelter in vacant properties in the first place. The fires often occurred in structures intended for future housing projects after redevelopment.

“Each one of these fires is putting a hit in our ability to house people, which is a tragic irony, because many of these fires stem from unhoused people looking for shelter, because we don’t have enough housing for people in this community of various income levels,” Marion said. “And then these houses burned down, and it further reduces our ability to provide housing for people who live here.”

Vacant structure fires are the most serious incidents that firefighters contend with, according to the report, and require significant personnel and resources to quell. These fires also occurred primarily in structures whose owners had long neglected their properties.

The auditor’s office found that a quantifiable pattern of neglect emerged from an analysis of the 25 fires. That included: 

  • Outstanding property taxes and water charges
  • Open and inactive code violations
  • Legal charges from the Bureau of Administrative Adjudication

Despite these similarities, the chronic issues plaguing these 25 vacant structures – none of which were listed on the city’s vacant property registry – went largely unaddressed until the properties burned.

Marion said that by compiling and analyzing a list of properties with these issues, including tax delinquencies, water shut offs, open code violations and more, his office has created a predictive model for vacant structure fires in Syracuse.

“You could put them all in a document, put them all in a big spreadsheet, put them in a database, and you could figure out where the next 50 vacant fires are going to be with some high degree of accuracy,” Marion said.

The March 2025 fire at the historic Maria Regina campus was a dramatic depiction of the consequences of property neglect and ensuing vacant structure fires. 

The Maria Regina fire was larger in scope, response, and damage, but Marion said the fire had the same root causes as the 2024 vacant structure fires. 

“The recipe was still there,” Marion said. “It just happened to be on the biggest stage, with the biggest spotlight.”

In August 2024, a less destructive incident at Maria Regina preceded its demolition. A rubbish fire ignited in the campus’ gymnasium and caused one of the building’s rooftops to catch fire. 

That fire was extinguished in 15 minutes, according to the report, but it foreshadowed a far more destructive fire seven months later. 

In March, the campus again caught fire, causing far greater damage and leading to the demolition of the main building out of the Maria Regina campus.

In an interview with Central Current, Marion called the destructive Maria Regina fire a “big exemplar of the problems that really plague a lot of the rest of the city, just on a smaller scale.”

Marion said that he hopes the city takes steps to prevent future vacant structure fires from happening at all.

The report included recommended actions the city could take to flag properties that are beginning to foster the necessary conditions for a vacant structure fire.

Those recommendations included:

  • Implementing an “early warning system” to keep various city departments abreast of developments (such as a code violation or outstanding water charge) that indicate a property is trending toward a potential future vacant structure fire
  • Changing the way the city secures vacant properties, to prevent homeless people from entering the vacant structures and setting fires for warmth
  • Posting clearer signage that denotes properties are vacant and dangerous 
  • Implementing a “blighted property registry,” akin to that in Washington, D.C., so that the city of Syracuse doesn’t have to rely on negligent landlords to self-report when their properties are vacant

Marion thinks the city could have done more to prevent vacant structure fires like the one that razed the Maria Regina campus — such as bolstering the property’s security — and hopes his report’s recommendations may help prevent future vacant structure fires.

The city auditor also called on the city to hold chronically negligent landlords to account when a fire occurs on one of their properties.

“We all know that Syracuse has a slum lord problem. So many of the folks who own these properties that burn down… own other properties that have problems,” Marion said. “We should adopt a procedure where, if you’re the owner of one property that is vacant and has a fire, the rest of your portfolio must be inspected by Code Enforcement for potential fire hazards.”

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...