Grains of Salt (v32): Housing Stability

Grains of Salt

A local elected official with whom I'm connected on social media started a great conversation yesterday morning, about  some of the government programs that work to renovate older homes in cities like Buffalo and Syracuse.

In some cases, according to an article in The Buffalo News, renovations can cost several hundred thousand dollars on homes that end up getting sold for less than a quarter of the cost of fixing them. There are multiple drivers of the high costs of renovation, including getting old houses in compliance with building codes; asbestos and lead abatement; a limited number of contractors to do the work (Buffalo seems to have only three), and dealing with rehabs in historic districts, among others.

Buffalo is not alone - we have some of those same issues here in Syracuse. I live next door to a home that was extensively and beautifully renovated through programs and grants under the auspices of the Greater Syracuse Land Bank (GSLB), something I've talked about before. This house was a little different than some; it was the only one in the neighborhood needing this level of help, so it got a full home makeover and only then was sold, at market value. In other cases owners can purchase houses at a very low cost, promising to renovate them; sometimes, there are multiple houses on a street or in a neighborhood are all owned by the GSLB.

There are currently over 900 properties in the GSLB inventory including empty lots, demolition candidates, and single or multi-family homes needing some level of renovation. And that's just what's been turned over to them -- it doesn't represent the entire stock of properties in Syracuse that need help - or need to be demolished. And, it doesn't touch on another issue that's having an impact on our city: housing stability.

I admit I hadn't given much thought to 'housing stability' until I had the chance to vote on initiatives for Syracuse's Innovation Team, or I-Team, to tackle under new Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh's administration. Housing stability, which finished second in the public vote, was chosen after consultation with the Mayor and the Common Council. Doing something about sidewalks was the winner of the public vote, but that's more transactional than transformational, and is being looked at separately.

So what is housing instability and how does it impact a city? Here's how the I-Team describes it.

...the high frequency of forced moves that our residents endure. Many of these moves are forced by poor housing quality, unstable neighborhood conditions, and high costs of housing in relation to income.  All of these conditions can contribute to doubling up and overcrowding in housing units, chronic homelessness, and a high rate of unplanned residential mobility. Frequent moves have damaging financial and health impacts on our residents and neighborhoods, especially on our school-aged children.

Some of the recent numbers on this are quite alarming:

• 25% of city residents move at least once per year, higher than in other upstate cities and more than double the national average (2011-2015)
• 21% of those under 17 years of age live in a different house than they did a year ago (2011-2015)
• over 54% of renters are paying more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities(2015)
• some 11,000 people lose their homes due to eviction each year (2017)
• one in 10 students in the Syracuse City School District were homeless (2016)

Clearly, these problems are complex and there's no magic wand that will fix them, just as there's no magic wand that will restore the city's available housing stock to the quality needed to foster strong neighborhoods and increase the attractiveness of the city, helping to grow our tax base and to maintain or even expand city services. 

The hope is that the I-Team and their partners will be able to come up with ideas that will help us start tackling the housing instability issue incrementally, whether it's by focusing on particular census tracts, or through how we handle landlords who aren't consistently providing safe housing to their tenants, and more.

And, equally important, hopefully other politicians will join my social media friend in talking about these issues in as many venues and methods as possible. Throwing something out on social media can be fraught with all kinds of negative possibilities, but it also can spark an intelligent, respectful conversation, which is what we managed to do on the housing topic. The more of these we have, the better.