SYRACUSE, NY — Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh on Wednesday released the Syracuse Housing Strategy, which his office describes 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, Walsh’s office said. It also includes programs like the Syracuse Land Bank and downtown-revitalization efforts.
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 70-page 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 in the announcement. “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.
Iti is available online at syracusehousingstudy.com.
The City’s department of neighborhood and business development will hold a community open house regarding the strategy on April 30 from 5:30-7 pm at the Northeast Community Center at 716 Hawley Ave. in Syracuse.
