We will call this meeting to order.

This meeting is with the neighborhood preservation committee and the Greater Syracuse Land Bank.

I have with me Councillor Hogan, Councillor Gethers, Councillor Nave, and Councillor Codwell, myself, Congress Jones Rouser, and the land bank staff, Caitlin Wright, Luke Doherty's here, and a few others and MPD.

So we're going to start this meeting.

We just want to have a quick update on some of your budget items from this year.

And also give us an update on your future development proposals as well as the lease of the land that's being leased on to I-81.

Okay.

So that's just a start.

Okay.

Thank you for having us.

I appreciate the opportunity to share with all of you and with the public what it is that we're up to.

Every October, this is good timing, actually, because every October we adopt our budget for the four coming years.

And before we do that, we kind of true up our current year budget against what our year-end projections are.

So our budget for 2025 was initially drafted back in October of 24.

That was shortly after the city had adopted its new tax foreclosure law.

And so we were expecting the volume of foreclosures to increase significantly over the course of 2025, and we expected more sales.

We typically do between a million and a million and a half in sales each year.

And generally speaking, that covers about half of our operating costs.

So it costs about $2 million a year to keep the land bank running.

So that has a net zero effect on our budget.

And generally speaking, we raise about half of that through sales proceeds and a minimal amount through rent.

I'll talk about rent in a minute.

And we have a bit of a rainy day fund that we often have to dip into a small amount.

It was 18, and then it was a year, and now we're at nine months as we keep having a drawdown on that.

But so in our budget last year, when we thought the volume of foreclosures was going to be increasing, we figured that would mean we'd have more sales.

Um so that shows us running about 150,000 deficit, but that includes all of the financial support that we got from the city for 25 and 26.

We were able to book it all in this calendar year because our fiscal year is the calendar year and yours is off by six months.

Yeah.

Um so that would mean we won't be booking any income from the city for the first six months of 26.

We were able to roll that all forward into this year to help.

Um, and then we got 250,000 from the county this year.

So that's a million dollars of support from the city and the county.

And if it weren't for that, we'd be running a 1.1 million dollar deficit for the year, and we'd be out of business pretty quickly.

So that's our our budget situation right now, and I'm hoping that the volume of foreclosures will uh increase in the coming year, mostly so that we have more choices for buyers to look at.

Um there's a couple reasons for that.

So, one, we spend a lot of time working on site assembly.

Um, you'll see on that map over there uh we put together a lot of sites for new construction.

The pink ones are all sites where home headquarters either has built already or they're about to build.

Uh the blue ones are all under contract with Habitat for Humanity, and they have an application into the state for the state's block by block program.

At the very bottom of the map there, you'll see some in orange.

That's a joint effort between the Syracuse South Side Community Growth Foundation that Chetty is funding and REDAV CNY.

Um so they also have a block by block application in, and they're planning to build 10 single family homes.

Those will all be sold to owner occupants.

Um a whole bunch of these were are mostly for sale to owner occupants.

At the corner of Beard and Midland and Calvin and Midland, you'll see there's a very light green color.

Um that's all where Housing Visions has already put in new construction of two family homes.

And this is the process we go through where we start picking up almost a checkerboard of tax foreclosures, and we do demolitions and we do lot line adjustments to move the lines around to make them large enough to build on.

And unfortunately, that process is pretty slow, and so people in the community can't see that I'm moving lines around on a map, you know, you just don't see it in real life.

And uh it takes us years to do that site assembly and the demolitions that are needed to make them shovel ready sites.

Um over there where home headquarters had done a bunch of new builds on Woodland and Baker and Garfield.

Uh, in the eight years leading up to that, we spent a ton of money from grants on demolitions.

We went out and bought a um Freddie Mac foreclosure.

Um we got a couple of other properties donated to us by banks.

Um, and then we you know chip away at it putting together these building lots so that when they're ready to go apply to New York State for funding, they can say we have a signed contract with the land bank, we have the site control that we need for these lots, and that's critical to get that money back here to Syracuse.

Um when I say that we want to see more foreclosures, that's what we're looking at for vacant lots is making shovel ready sites for new construction.

Uh, and we're doing that with home headquarters and housing visions, but also with Jubilee homes.

Walt Dixie's here.

Um, a tiny home for good does the same thing, and I mentioned habitat and redev CNY.

So there's a lot of folks in town that look to us for those shovel ready sites so they can have a signed contract to bring that money home.

What are the purple sites?

Uh the purple sites are ones that we don't necessarily have a specific buyer lined up for yet, but we're working on making them shovel ready so that then when somebody like Jubilee or home headquarters or housing visions comes to us, that'll be available for them.

Um you'll notice one of those big purple sites is on the 100 block of West Brighton.

Um there we recently acquired probably six structures in a row there.

The one in the worst condition was demoed pretty quickly, and I know they're coming back for the rest before the end of this calendar year.

Um, and then we'll have a pretty big chunk of contiguous land, and that is zoned multifamily.

Most of the properties we get are zoned for one or two family homes, and it's hard to make the numbers work on those, as you know.

Um, but it's a good opportunity for us to have something that's zoned multifamily, so you could hypothetically put an apartment building in there with a lot more units.

Um, as you know, we're experiencing a housing crisis, and we want to try to get as many new units online as we possibly can.

Um we're eager to get those shovel ready sites together.

We're also eager to demolish as many blighted properties as we can if it needs to be demolished, why not do it sooner rather than later?

And so if there are demolition candidates on the seasable list, we'd love to see them come our way sooner rather than later.

It also puts us in a good position when we go apply to the state for a land bank initiative dollars.

We have brought home more LBI funding than any other land bank in New York State because we go out and we proactively acquire these properties.

A lot of land banks wait until they have the grant in hand, and then they might go out and acquire five or six lots and build new houses.

We can constantly show New York State that we have shovel ready projects and that there is a great need because we proactively acquire properties.

We've demolished almost 700 structures so far since the land bank was created and reduced the number of building vacant buildings in the city of Syracuse by about 40%.

We obviously still have a long ways to go, but we want to keep going as fast as we can because right now New York State has a lot of money available for land banks and for affordable housing in general, and we want to kind of capitalize on that moment.

So vacant lots, demolition candidates, and then vacant buildings that are not demolition candidates are the ones that we would be listing for sale when I say that our buyers are frustrated and they want more choices.

We'd like to have more rehab candidates listed for sale at any given time so that we have more options for local buyers.

We vet them to make sure that they have the skills and the financing needed to do the rehab.

But we have a lot of great repeat buyers that are local investors, and that enables them to either operate that as a rental or flip it to an owner-occupant and create uh an option for a home buyer.

Um, you know, a lot of our homes are in rough shape, as you know, and uh a lot of buyers just really don't have the time or the money to deal with a gut renovation like what our homes require.

So when we can partner with flippers like that, it puts more move and ready stuff out there for folks that really want a move and ready option.

Um around the uh new development, the modular homes.

Give us a little bit more history on how that came about, how it's proposed to happen, and um again remind us who the organizations that should be working with.

So um New York State Homes and Community Renewal or HCR just released an application called Move In New York, and they're using money that was in last year's state budget for starter homes to fund that.

Uh, and that's following up a pilot program that we participated in this past year.

So HCR partnered with three land banks.

We were one of three selected to build a pilot home.

Um they did an RFP and selected Champion homes to be the builder.

So we hired Champion.

We and they have two divisions.

There's a division that does the installations in the field, and then they've got the factory where the homes are built.

And these are manufactured homes.

Um we purchased the home from Champion for 105,000, and then we paid the Champion install division another 175 on top of that to pour the foundation, build a one-car garage on site, put in a new city sidewalk and a driveway, and do all the utility hookups.

So that home needed a brand new sewer lateral, water lateral, um, and we hooked up natural gas as well and electric.

So, all in, it's about 285,000 or 280,000 uh to develop this house.

Yes.

And uh the finished product appraised at 250.

It's a single-story home with three bedrooms and two full baths, just about 1,500 square feet.

So that's very comparable to what home headquarters is building right now: three bedrooms, two baths, about that much square footage, except this is a one-story home and they're building two-story homes.

Um, in order to make this work, um, these homes can be put on a full basement, but to keep that 280 budget number, um, we all of the pilot participants put them on slabs.

So it's on a concrete slab.

It arrives in two parts, they back it on to the slab, join them together, and then set them down on concrete pillars.

And then if you were in a mobile home park, you might see a house like that have a metal skirt around it.

But of course, we want these to fit in as much as possible with all of the neighboring homes.

Um, so we built a skirt around it that's three blocks of concrete block.

So it's about two and a half feet high, and then parged it with smooth concrete.

So when you walk up to that house, it looks just like all the other neighboring houses on the block that are raised about two and a half feet up on their basement walls.

Yeah, but there is no basement to access.

So, because of that, that's why we built the one car garage.

We wouldn't normally do a garage with uh new affordable housing, but I felt like they needed the storage.

Okay.

So uh now that we've successfully done this pilot, HCR is encouraging us to apply for funding to build at least 60 more of these in Syracuse.

Um I'm not sure if we'll be using Champion again or not, but we would be applying for the grant funding.

We would be the quote unquote developer, but we would hire a manufactured home builder to produce all of these and install them.

In the end, there's very little work for the developer to do.

The company does almost everything and they act as RGC.

And was there one or two that you did already?

We've only done one at 139 Maxwell, and the buyer uh we have a buyer under contract.

Um we will be scheduling some sort of ribbon cutting event there that we'll let you know about.

But I'd also like to walk you guys through it if you want to see it, um, because we are going to be applying for funds to build a lot more of these.

Yeah.

But right now, New York State is encouraging groups like us to apply for the money.

They're also soliciting proposals from manufacturers.

So I think in this next round, there will be multiple manufacturers participating that we can choose from.

And I'm hopeful that that means there will be multiple models to choose from, so the all 60 won't look the same.

We want some variety.

Um, and this home is very nice layout, but it requires at least a 48 foot wide lot to fit.

And I'm hoping for some narrower options in the next go round because we have a whole bunch of lots that are exactly 40 feet wide.

Um, and I really need to find a design that will fit on those because we don't we we spend a lot of time on resubs creating bigger lots, but it's not always feasible.

Sometimes I have a 40 foot lot in between two nice, well-maintained tax current owner occupied homes.

There is no room to add more land.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um so I'm really hoping for a narrower model that we can make fit on a standard lot.

Okay.

Um and so again, is this is solely your development or is this would just be us.

So we're gonna be the applicant for Move In New York.

Um that's not to say that there can't be more than one applicant in the city of Syracuse.

I'm not sure if there might be other groups thinking of applying.

Um, but I will plan on partnering with uh smaller nonprofits on the ground to help with sales.

Um so when it comes time to advertising these homes, finding qualified buyers.

Um there are quite a few nonprofits in town that have count housing counselors on staff, and we want to utilize their skills uh and see if they can help us find appropriate buyers for these houses.

Okay.

So you said it's 280 to complete, 250 was the appraisal.

Was that the listing price as well?

We listed it at 175.

So this one they wanted us to sell to a home buyer between 70 and 90 percent of area median income.

I think on the pilot, the cap is going to be at 80 percent of area median income.

So that really dictates what's the maximum we can charge because we have to back into a um mortgage amount where their monthly mortgage taxes, insurance, and maintenance don't exceed 30% of their gross monthly income.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Any questions on that?

Caitlin had question on demolition.

Uh, do you are the city bids?

Money set up bids for demolitions.

Do you go to the lowest bidder or someone who is maybe has more back on doing this?

Well, we almost always go to the lowest bidder, and it's in the instances where we don't, it's not necessarily that we think one is more qualified or more experienced than the other.

It's just about how much volume they can do.

So each demolition company can typically do two houses a week.

And if we get to a point where we're nearing the end of a grant contract, we need to spend our money quickly, and I know we've got to get 30 houses down in a short period of time.

We'll try to spread that work out between multiple contractors just so that we can get it all done faster.

Okay.

But generally speaking, it goes to the lowest bidder.

Okay.

Okay.

Now that project we talked about, the move in New York, uh, the crossmod homes, those are manufactured homes, and manufactured homes are built to the HUD code, and they are only ever single story.

Um, so that's kind of a real niche product.

And I think there are probably a lot of buyers that want single-story living for mobility reasons.

Maybe you're getting older, you want to make sure you have a first-floor bedroom.

Um, so I think there are buyers that will want those.

But we are also interested in two-story houses.

You know, we went through our whole inventory of building lots, and we specifically looked for ones that are on a block where there are other single-story homes so that these will fit in.

Um, but we have a lot of blocks where everything is two-story.

And if I were to plop one of these down, it would stick out like a sore thumb.

Um, so we are also working on some modular home options that would be two stories, similar size.

Um, but we haven't gotten the numbers to quite work yet.

We had a call two weeks ago with Jubilee, uh, who is partnering with us on this project on the nearwest side, and Bill Lake Homes is a modular manufacturer and then the architect and a local installer.

And what we're trying to do is figure out you know, how can we tweak the design to make those numbers work either under the state's um affordable homeownership opportunity program, AHOP, or the block by block program that Habitat and um read F CNY are applying for.

Um so we'll see if we can make those numbers work, and we're planning to partner with Jubilee.

Um I will email you all a map of the nearwest side showing you what we're looking at.

But uh home headquarters has a block by block application already awarded, and they're gonna build 13 houses all on Merriman.

We kind of want to do a mix of the two.

35 sites at least that we're working on with Jubilee.

So as soon as we get those numbers figured out, we'll be able to put in an application.

Because we do have a little bit of a fund balance, we're able to spend money on a lot of that pre-development work that Jubilee and the smaller nonprofits wouldn't necessarily be able to do.

So paying the architects and putting those designs together.

And then in the end, we have an agreement with them where we've kind of split up the labor.

You know, our insurance is covering it.

Like I said, we're fronting the money for the pre-development stuff.

They are finding buyers and selling these homes, and they have a construction manager on staff that's playing a big role in supervising the construction.

So we split up the work between the two of us, and then in the end, split the developers' fee.

And we're looking to do something similar with Tucker Missionary Baptist Church.

So we got a lot of vacant lots early on over on Oakwood and Leon and uh East Kennedy Street.

And we knew right away that we were gonna have to work with the church because it was kind of a checkerboard of properties.

They own their church, obviously, and then a lot of vacant land on the surrounding block, and their lots and our lots are all mixed together.

And so we had a conversation with them many years ago at this point, probably before COVID, and uh said, look, it it appears that we're gonna have to work together if we want to get something built in this area, and we'd like to work with you.

And so we've been coming up with some plans.

Um you asked about the lots that we're leasing for 81.

Um, this is a map that I have that we can share if you want to take one and pass it down.

Um that kind of shows how our lots and their lots are all mixed up together.

And uh the land over there was really overgrown, a lot of dead trees and diseased trees and that kind of brushy undergrowth, and it was creating a lot of places for people to hide and be not be so visible, you know.

And uh also we're having a lot of problems with illegal dumping over there.

And this company approached us and the church and said that they were interested in clearing all that land, getting rid of the diseased and dead trees and all the shrubbery and leveling it.

So not only was it all overgrown, but the ground itself was very uneven.

So they're paying us both a little bit of rent, but more importantly, they've cleared and leveled that site so that when they're done in two and a half years, those sites will be ready for new houses.

Um and in the meantime, the church says that they're obviously not having any more problems with illegal dumping of trash.

The contractor has those sites fenced so that people can't dump trash there.

Um so we're grateful that they've kind of taken the first step so that we can follow behind them and put houses.

And similarly to what we're doing with Jubilee, we would front all the money for the pre-development costs and the engineering.

Um, and then in their case, the church doesn't have the development experience that Jubilee has.

So they would be doing a lot less in the division of labor, but we would split the developer's fee with them based on how much land we're each contributing to the project.

So our land and their land is the equity contribution to the project.

Okay, that's the equity.

And they would help us try to find buyers from their congregation.

Oh, from the congregation.

That's who we would want to heavily market it to, and if we can't find enough buyers, then we'll obviously broaden our circle, but uh that's where we'd like to start.

Okay.

And back to the um the ones where Chetty and we'll be doing so.

I know you were talking about at that time you were talking about the two um the two-story properties, but a lot of that area is like the smaller.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um as far as I know, redev CNY is planning on using some modular designs that we got done.

Um, we applied for a grant jointly with a tiny home for good a while back to get some of those modular homes designed.

Yeah.

And the ones that they liked were the Avery and the Cadwell.

These are the two designs.

So I think this is what they're planning to build.

Um a mix of those, but they're trying to uh get their site install costs down as well.

They're having the same numbers problem that I'm having on the nearwest side.

Okay, okay.

Um the ones that Habitat will be building are two-story homes.

Also modular, but we didn't design those.

Okay.

I want to talk about rents and the um go into some brown fill stuff.

Yeah.

But I don't want to couple questions.

Okay.

So this was good.

Um, Caitlin, thank you for breaking this down to how it's going to be um what we're gonna do next step.

But can you first tell me how many vacant lots do maybe now?

Oh, at least 600, I would say.

Does that sound right?

Yeah.

More than half of our inventory is vacant land now.

And do is a lot of them like connected to each other?

Are they buildable?

Let's put it like that.

About half of them you could consider buildable, but many of those are the 40 foot lots, like I mentioned.

And when home headquarters approaches us, they want at least 55 feet.

And Jubilee generally wants at least 45.

Um so they're legally buildable, but nobody's knocking down my door to build on them.

So they're in between it, not for it, okay.

Yeah.

Um there are some folks that are building on 40 foot lots.

You know, a tiny home for good has no problem fitting their tinier models on there.

Um we'd like, like I said, to find some additional models that will fit nicely because there are so many 40 foot lots in our inventory.

So with you, um, I know this is new to you guys, and you guys built the one on Mac, so I did go by and see it.

I haven't had a chance to go inside it.

Um, and I have saw some of the other module houses that they are building, like outside near Pennsylvania, the two ones.

So with this being said, how does this affect what other resources are you gonna need?

Is there gonna be some resources that's gonna come back to the city to say, hey, we're building this?

Yes, we are um working out where else do you find there's gonna be trouble?

Because we know as we're building and things happen, yeah.

Where else do you see that it's gonna be needed?

Well, so on the Move in New York program to copy what we did at 139 Maxwell, we know that the state is gonna be able to fully fund whatever subsidies needed on those.

So that's gonna be easy for us to move forward with on the block by block and the AHOP program.

Like I said, we're having a bit of a math problem right now.

We cannot figure out how to make the numbers work to build those without any other source of subsidy.

Um we're trying to trim costs to get that house cheaper to build.

Um, but we may ultimately end up having to come ask the city for some help either through home or CDBG.

Um, potentially through an AHC application.

Um, so we're figuring that out now.

Um, but I ideally we'd rather not because we know that the allocation that the city gets from the feds is shrinking every year, and we don't want to put any further strain on that.

Um so that's the puzzle we're trying to solve.

So that was my own that was my only concern.

I think one of the things is we know that we have a housing crisis here in the city, and we know we need more, but we know with building, I'm I haven't seen a house build yet where there hasn't been an issue coming back.

And and with you guys having a deficit, which is not that I'm not throwing shade, but I'm glad, right?

Because I love the fact that I'm hoping people are paying their taxes.

I know you're saying you you were hoping to get more housing, but I'm hoping you don't because I want people to pay taxes because I want people to stay in their homes.

Well, and I wanted to address that.

Yeah.

So I mentioned earlier we want vacant lots, we want demolition candidates, we want vacant houses to sell.

I don't really want occupied homes.

I completely agree with you.

I want those people to pay their taxes and to be successful homeowners.

If it comes to us, there's a problem.

Um so unfortunately, we do occasionally get occupied properties, and if a tenant living in the home at the time of foreclosure wants to buy, they get the first opportunity to purchase.

We've had some great success stories where we're able to take those tenants and turn them into homeowners.

Um, but yeah, every occupied property we get takes a lot of staff time to handle.

Um and our focus is to get vacant and abandoned properties back into productive use.

That's our mission.

I love that that part that made me smile.

But so with that saying, um, as we move forward, and I'm glad you know that um counselor rouser came up with you know, making sure we have a meeting, having these conversations, right?

Because I know it's new to you guys building, right?

I know you're working with other developers and people have built, but we know that the city is already at a deficit.

We know moving forward, we don't know what's gonna happen, right?

So step into a situation and not knowing or not thinking about what's next, is my really concern saying let's have these conversations now, let's be transparent, let's say, hey, if we're gonna build, this might be it, right?

Because we don't know where CDBG is, yeah, we don't know what our budget's gonna be in the reserve, right?

So we can't talk.

So having those conversations ahead of time before we start it, you know, putting that in.

And my second question would be um on a basis of you said 175, 150 houses 250.

What is a person's income have to be?

Well, 70 to 90 percent of AMI was the goal for max well, and it depends on how many people you have in your household.

Do you want to see I'm gonna find that for you?

I'll find it.

It's for the people.

Um, just one moment here.

Yeah.

Average.

And I do understand it goes by people in the homes, and we're trying to get families in homes, so we understand that.

Uh got a table here.

So depending on how many people are in the household for 90% of AMI and a family of one, it would be 65,000.

If you have a spouse and a couple of kids, a family of four, the cap is 93,000.

And this was for 90% AMI.

Our targets for the big batch of moving in New York will probably be a little lower.

Um, but I believe they said they want us to average 80, and we can go up to 100.

So some lower, some higher.

Um that uh will all of the properties be for sale.

Yes, none, no rentals.

They all have to be owner occupied.

Okay, okay.

All right.

Um, so we got to ramp up our helping people get buyer ready.

Yes, absolutely.

Um now is the time to start putting together that pipeline of potential buyers.

Um tell folks to definitely visit home headquarters home buyer education center.

Um getting that class under their belt is important.

Um talking to lenders about getting pre-approved.

Yeah, and they may find that they need to start working on improving their credit score a little bit.

Um, and there's time to do that.

Okay.

Um, and it looks like majority of these are South Side in some Southwest.

Yeah, this map is a little bit outdated too.

Um, and I will email you, like I said, the map of the nearwest side.

So what we're working on with Jubilee is all surrounding that Merriman Street that home headquarters is working on.

So that's all near West Side properties, and I'll send you that map.

Okay.

So I'm just speaking for my my counselor over here, uh, deserves nothing for Northside.

Well, right now we do have Northside properties, so um, we don't have the exact addresses picked out yet for that move in New York application, but we should be submitting that later this month, and so we're narrowing down the sites now.

We are looking uh for north side lots, but like I said, they need to be at least 48 feet wide.

And they need to be relatively level so they can back the truck up onto that slab foundation.

So if it's a steep slope, it's not gonna work.

And unfortunately, most of the land that we have on the north side is narrow and sloped.

Yeah, okay.

But we are looking.

Yeah, I I know like one property on Butternut Street.

Um it's a shell now, and I don't think it's gonna be anything going by the land bank.

It really it's a it's a shell.

It's over uh by uh the 1500 block right before you get the butternut circle.

And uh and it and it's a shame though, because we've got a lot of buildings that could be reusable, and then we have to go to process of season protects as well.

So I I know uh there's an issue, but I did want to say that we had a neighborhood meeting in Sweden Street, and I was very glad how prompt you were in and uh we got this house on Highland Street, right to the land bank.

So they were happy about that.

I'm glad to hear that.

Are we going to Crowley?

No, there was some vacant lots.

Oh, there may be an opportunity there on Crowley, yeah.

Um we do have some vacant land over there already.

I feel like maybe these are a little bit too short.

Um, most of the homes over there are at least two-story, but um, I mean, we'll we'll get something built there.

Any buildable lot we have in our inventory right now is a priority because like I said, we're having an extraordinary housing shortage, and New York State is putting more money towards affordable housing than ever, so we need to capitalize on that opportunity.

One other question about the um the lot on Oakwood.

Um, and I mentioned it to Um Tucker, I am a member there, but I am speaking for the constituents that the community has questions about what's going on, and then the trucks come in, and then now there's a fence and those things.

Yeah, so I would urge that some way you guys get out there, even um Kim Thigger name that lives right across the street, who's been here 67 years in the house.

She's like, what's going on?

Like they she sits in between where Dunbar's backyard is.

Um, and she's like, what's going on?

And then so it'd be nice, so especially if they're gonna be there two and a half years that we let the community know that there's gonna be trucks coming in and out of what's going on, especially the neighbors in those neighborhoods.

Absolutely.

And and also that I believe the trucks are supposed to take specific routes and that they need to stay on those routes.

Okay.

Um, I think they have been going off the route.

I'll check on that.

Don't know if it's specifically that crew, but um, we've had a lot of traffic on Garfield, that shouldn't be happening.

So yeah, we could get a flyer out to all of the homeowners in that area letting them know exactly what the plan is.

Yeah, yeah, because they've actually reached out and they don't know.

Um Miss Sylvia, that's her name.

Okay, it lives right across the street.

She's been here forever, and she didn't know what was going on.

And I also want to say when this construction company first approached us, I was very hesitant to sign a lease at all.

Um, and they were interested in those um assemblages of land where we own some and the church owns some.

And I said, I'm not sure the neighbors are gonna want it, and I'm not sure the church is gonna want it.

Um, but they convinced the church first, and so we kind of followed their lead.

Um church needs a lot of things.

Yeah, I'm not just saying you're seeing time, but um too.

They need to go and let the community know they they deserve to know, and they need to know what's going on because that's a long time for trucks to be coming in and out of their neighborhood without knowing.

Right.

Yeah.

Um so I just two more things for me.

The uh brownfield, um how well I see how much, but like how many average um per year do you guys have for like having to work on brownfield?

We don't get a ton of brownfield properties.

There aren't all that many on the seasable list to begin with, and we they take a lot of staff time.

Um, so we try to methodically chip away at that list.

Um we have acquired 917 Montgomery that used to be an auto repair shop.

And uh and also 541 Seymour Street over on the nearwest side, it's a huge building that spans between Seymour and Shawnard.

Uh a lot of people know it as the Consolidated Industries Building.

Um it was built about a hundred over a hundred years ago um as a ball-bearing manufacturing plant, and there's some soil contamination under there.

Um so last year we were able to get a grant from the EPA for about 3.7 million dollars, and that will pay to do soil remediation underneath 917 Montgomery.

Our goal there is to save that building.

It's a little brick building, and it's on a pretty small lot.

So my fear has been if we take that building down, it's so small the lot that it's unlikely anybody will ever build there, and it'll just become a parking lot.

So we're trying to do everything we can to preserve that building, do the soil remediation underneath, and then um finish it off as kind of a vanilla box.

It's in the blueprint 15 target area.

So we're committed to working with Blueprint 15 to recruit developers for those sites.

Um we may put in the RFP that we want to see some specific sort of use there, but that building could be used for office for retail for a restaurant.

There's a lot of options.

Now, over on Seymour Street, that building has to come down.

Uh it's about 35,000 square feet, and the roof is almost fully collapsed.

Um, so a big chunk of that grant will be to demolish the building, and then once it's gone, we can remove all the contaminated soil, bring in clean soil, and that happens to be an industrial building in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

It's residentially zoned, so when we're all done, we can divide that up into 13 building lots for new houses.

Okay.

Uh, we're also gonna be applying this fall for a cleanup grant for 500 Holly, that's uh the former Patrick's Dry Cleaners over in the Holly Green neighborhood.

Oh, yeah.

The city currently holds title to that building.

I I already responded to Larissa from BPA.

So thank you.

And I said Kayla Reitner's staff will be working with you on this project.

Okay.

Um so I'm optimistic if we can get funding for that, it would be huge.

Um you can apply for up to four million, and our consultants tell us that we'll probably need all four million just for that site.

The soil is extremely contaminated under the building.

We would have to take the building down and remove a bunch of that soil.

Um and then it's a mixed-use zoning district, so I'm hopeful that we could get somebody to build something multi-story there with commercial on the bottom and residential upstairs.

But even if we're successful, we won't be under contract until say October of 26.

Maybe we start remediation in 27, maybe we get somebody to build there in 28 or 29.

These projects all move painfully slow.

For demolition to go through these chemicals, it's gonna be difficult.

Yeah, yeah.

Caitlin on the list, there was a list that came out just recently that went that um, I think it's this upcoming one.

There was some seizable lots.

Some of them were like 23,000.

Did you see those?

Honestly.

Okay.

So do you have a bunch of or several of the lots that are like excessive that you're trying to seize and not those kind of lots?

See, when we're looking for land, we're looking for what's geographically the most strategic.

And I just see on the map, is it seizable or not?

I never really see how much they owe.

And I don't really care how much they owe.

Uh, that's not our area.

Um, but if they're like three and five thousand, I'm not gonna be okay with them too.

Understood.

So I'm saying, like, is there or if you're willing to talk to maybe the owner to say, hey, this is what it is.

We don't just yeah, we don't do the foreclosures.

The city does all the foreclosures.

And if the city wanted to make it a policy that they're not gonna foreclose on anybody that owes less than 3,000 or less than 5,000, it's certainly within your power to do so.

Yeah, I know, but I'm I'm just telling you, yeah, my own three thousand.

I'm not gonna When I'm putting together a map of where we can build stuff, I'm just looking at what's adjacent and is it feasible or not?

I have no idea what the number is.

Michelle, let me ask you a question with this.

So with that being said, as they're gonna be trying to build, where do you claim a CDBG or any funding to help support this?

Yeah, so typically the way that we're um sorry, Michelle Spansky, deputy commissioner of neighborhood development.

Um typically where we are supporting the development of affordable housing and construction is actually usually out of the um home partnership program, which is a uh kind of companion hut entitlement grant that we get uh an annual allocation every year from HUD.

I think uh the latest that we've heard uh about what the future of that funding looks like, it does sound like there's still some questions about um what the uh whether or not home is uh going to be included in the um upcoming uh federal budget.

So uh we don't really know at this point where that's going to land, it's all kind of tied up in um the uh government shutdown.

So yeah, so it's it's still uh we're not sure uh what it's gonna look like.

What we do know is that on a regular year, um, if we are getting those resources that um to Caitlin's point, they are um decreasing every year.

Um I think the way that we would really look to try to kind of attack this, obviously um within New York State.

Uh Caitlin mentioned many other programs that uh the governor is uh lining up to help support uh funding for housing construction.

Um so the AHC program is a great example of those.

Um and so I think the kind of name of the game for us is working with our partners like the land bank, like home headquarters like Jubilee to um uh line up our applications in a way where we can uh keep them moving through as competitively as possible so that uh everyone is able to take advantage of them, but we're able to get um I think the way that some of those programs typically work, it's uh often the case that we could have multiple subgrantees in the same community.

So uh trying to line those up with the timing so that we can keep those dollars flowing will be uh I think how we'll look to kind of attack that.

But well, how many properties from the 2024 um are still in the process?

Uh from 2024 from the that was already approved through the recent phase.

Um we have about a hundred and uh twenty-five, I believe I can double check the exact number, but it's somewhere in that ballpark of properties that the council has voted on and they're in their final legal closing.

These are vacant, right?

These are um these are houses and vacant lots.

Correct.

So everything that was approved since uh the beginning of 2025 or sorry, 2024 when we started this current phase.

So I asked Caitlin, which this really should have been you, some of the houses that the land that are adjacent or connected to land that we want because they're they're buildable and they have a um enormous amount of taxes, but then there's some that's connected that's not on the list.

What are we doing about that?

Because I saw on the list there is that we can talk about it.

Oh, you got to let it be.

Okay.

She she said she got you.

Okay.

I got it.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

So last I wanted to ask about when you do acquire, well, when you have in the past acquire properties that have tenants in them.

Um what's the process?

Not the tenants who I'm talking about tenants who can't afford to become owners, like they might be in a multi-family.

Yeah.

Um, what's the process of them, you know, being there to the point that they have to move out?

So the goal would be to help them buy the house, but you're right.

Most of the time that doesn't work out.

Either they have virtually no income, there's no way they could get a mortgage, or the home itself is in such bad shape that they don't want to stay there.

Um so we work with Catholic charities for that.

We uh have a c service contract with them, they provide relocation assistance to help people find available units, help them get signed up for benefits that they may not already be getting.

Um now, because of the housing crisis that we're experiencing, we used to be able to help somebody relocate and find them a new place to go in about three months.

And these days it's taking up to nine months to find somewhere for somebody to go.

Um and we are unfortunately oftentimes having to simultaneously pursue an eviction.

Um people would like to live in better conditions, obviously, but if you're living somewhere for free, you tend to drag your feet.

Um so we're providing So you guys don't charge a rent when in a situation like that, no, because I don't want to be the landlord responsible for maintaining that building that is not in good condition.

Um, in other cases, we will enter into a lease and rent to somebody for a year or sometimes more if it's in good shape and they're working on getting mortgage qualified.

Yeah.

But if it's a a unit that's so bad that we need to relocate them, we do not charge rent.

Um and we also provide cash assistance.

So it's not just the caseworker, there's also cash available to help with first and last month's rent and security deposit because we want to make it easy for them to find somewhere good to go.

With the um new modular homes, um, this is very interesting to me because I saw how they did it on.

I actually watched the video, so it's very um unique to me how they build it.

But with this being said, do we have to go in agreement with um whoever developers to build so many?

Can we start off small to see, or do we have to say we're going to, you know, when you build a contract, they want to know can you we want 30 of them and they want to be secure?

Is there any way we could start off smaller to secure we have the finances secure, especially when everything's going on?

Yeah, I'm trying to not be so um critical or say anything negative, but just to make sure that we can build it.

I mean, I think it's reasonable what which what Counselor Call was saying because we all know like we're gonna hit with tariffs every other day.

So, you know, what the move in New York may be um you know, proposing for funding that could change Moving New York is a little bit different than most of the state programs because HCR is really heavily involved in selecting which manufacturers we're gonna be working with, reviewing their bids and pricing.

Um and HCR has pledged that they will provide as much subsidy as needed for each house.

So for that one, I'm a lot less worried.

We know that they're backing it.

We know they're not gonna fund us unless we have an affordable partner for the manufacturing.

Um but for AHP and block by block, we are building in, um, we're required to build in a contingency into our budget.

So if there are cost overruns, we dip into the contingency first.

If there are more cost overruns than that, um we could potentially dip into our own developers' fee and take a little bit less of a fee.

Um and there's always the possibility of going back to HCR and saying, look, this just isn't viable anymore.

The numbers have changed.

So if we get halfway through and suddenly our contractors say they can't honor the prices, we'll just have to stop.

Um it's I hope we don't find ourselves in that situation.

It would be disappointing.

Um but particularly with the move in New York, HCR is really pushing the idea of volume.

I think they would be disappointed if we came in with a application for a much lower number of houses.

Their whole theory is that these are more cost effective than a stick built home, partly because of the way they're manufactured and partly because we're going to be doing a whole lot of volume.

Tell me the iron HCR.

Homes and community renewal.

So that's the agency that's running all of these other funding programs.

They run AHOP block by block and um the Move in New York program.

And their funding is from where?

New York State.

Okay.

I said I had one last question, but I got one more.

Um as far as the um uh Article 11 uh reimbursement stuff, how has that gone?

Like, has there been any um submissions for that?

And are we looking to um uh cover you guys at the same cost for next budget year?

Um I hope that the same amount of money is in next year's budget.

I don't know the answer to that.

Um, but we're way under budget.

Um so we've had about 12 claims so far.

About eight of those, we've gotten them appraised and done the math and seen that there is no surplus, so we send a copy of that appraisal and the city tax bill to the claimant and explain we're sorry there's no surplus.

Um, and in at least four cases, there has been a surplus, and we've hired uh a retired judge to handle those hearings.

He's paid out the first uh of those cases, the other three cases are still pending.

And all in, I think it's about eighty-five thousand dollars so far that we've incurred.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just not bad.

Yeah, it's still a good amount of money.

Okay.

So we won't be looking at more is the main thing.

So yeah.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

That is for me.

Anyone else?

I'm fortunately the chairman lands.

So this is just going through all.

But I I do have the one advantage I have is I remember the city before the land bank was created.

I I knew the city before the land bank was created, and it was uh really difficult for especially district counselors when you had a house that dilapidated delinquent house.

It was uh everybody in the neighborhood was complaining about, and we couldn't do anything about it.

No, I I uh don't get me wrong.

Caitlin knows I I'm very transparent and very outspoken about it.

I love the fact that we're taking these vacant lots that have old, you know, um the taxes are high, and I know that we're working on you know some people, but I believe that if we can work with educating people about, you know, they own a home and if they have back taxes, that's our first job, and then you know, not just taking them, that's generational wealth with housing.

Yeah, I do respect the land bank, but I also am gonna be transparent about you know houses being taken in generations of people, and I'm be honest, people don't leave wills and they haven't done that.

So, you know, getting people ready for that because that's a lot of times what happens, you know.

People houses are stuck into wheels and generations of mass buttons I completely know where you're coming from.

Uh, you know, our mission is to deal with vacant and abandoned properties, unfortunately.

Some occupies get caught up in the net, but um that is something that didn't come up today that we oftentimes find that the people living in the homes at the time of foreclosure are descendants of a deceased homeowner, and it never changed ownership after that person passed away.

Um so we really do need to figure out a way to get more of these heirs in touch with legal aid so that they can properly settle their estates and absolutely keep that home equity in their family.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Um if you have a moment, I know that Walt would probably like to say something about what we're doing together on the near west side.

Well, Dixie, Zeke Director Doubly Homes and Syracuse.

So Council Kelwa, one of the things we like about Kerry is that he has helped us with some of our own homeowners that didn't have wills and was losing properties, and he's able to been able to take back the properties, repurpose back to the folks, give them a substance, make it more affordable.

So Carrie's definitely try to figure out some of that, those issues.

And I at our new training center, we we're hiring a new uh director of housing that's gonna be certified, and we want to educate because we have a hundred homeowners because a lot of them don't have what you described, including myself, no will.

So we need to get more focus on those things and deal with that.

Uh the partnership is a great partnership between our agency, as you know.

We've we're partnering with home headquarters, we're building five houses.

Uh, we're doing a nine percent test credit as you folks know.

We feel great about that, and more importantly, this relationship is a great relationship because it allows our strength, what we do.

They're taking up the upfront risk in terms of as I said to you earlier uh today, uh acquisition, the designs of the properties.

We participate with that.

Uh Desiree and myself in particular, so it's not like we're out there alone.

So and we are excited to sell the homes.

We have buyers pending right now.

We just can't figure out the numbers yet.

And we do believe that after looking at stick builders is marginal, this would be more affordable, not huge, but a duct a drop miners, basements, but you know, you get a little bigger house, two bedrooms, the garage, but more importantly, um it's faster to build.

And so uh on that number.

So we do have a developer that we have been partnered with for a minute.

I don't want to do that publicly today, but it's working, and and we need everyone you hear that's doing this for all these projects here.

This is still not enough.

And also, back to your question on the east side, uh parts comment, I call it hilltop.

Uh, you know, we've been meeting with them, we've been having discussions with them, as we just did a job fair for them, and they really want to do the development, so we would be uh working with them and helping them, and I think once you re-design that, everything around that's gonna elevate.

So you'll find good landlords, good developers, us coming through here to help build.

So over the next five years, the transformation is gonna be key.

What happens to Hilltop?

And they're really willing to do it, and also educating and power their residents.

So we've been meeting with them.

Madea is doing case management with them, helping them find homes, and we have a span on staff that's been helping do the translation.

So at this point, I'm not a part of the wheeze of that, but there is discussions going on uh with that too.

So this is a great relationship, and we're looking forward to continue to build our community.

Thank you.

Uh what before you step away, the houses on Midland.

What what's the size of those houses and do they have a basement?

Our house Midland is um, no, those are not our houses.

Ours is on West Kennedy, Kennedy Martha De Key.

No, you do have design.

Midland and Calvin, Midland and Beard.

No, Midland between Bellevue and Tom and not Midland.

We we we're gonna do one house on Middle.

We not designed it yet.

That yeah, that ain't us.

I like to take credit for it, but uh that's not us.

Uh tallman.

So we're building right now in South Abb and White Street, being built in one of West Kennedy, and the ones on Martha King that we built, those were as um You mean that we built many years ago.

Yes, these are old.

These are like 20, like a split level looking house.

I'm not sure.

It's like three or four of them.

Or the row houses on a call.

Oh, a middle and half?

Yes.

Huh?

Oh, Ms.

Ms.

Hades.

No.

Oh, those are Tom Francis.

Never mind.

Never mind.

That was it.

That's Tom Francis.

We'll figure it out.

We'll find an answer.

Tom Francis.

That's our guy.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we'll figure it out.

We'll get you an answer to that.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

So um, Caitlin, we appreciate you filling us in on um the questions asked today.

I'm pretty sure we'll probably have some more that will get you offline.

Um, and um look forward to seeing your uh budget for the next coming.

Yeah.

I appreciate your guys' time and giving us an opportunity to share this with the community because I think a lot of people don't know what's going on.

Like I said, you you can't see lines moving around on a map when you're just walking down the street.

So yeah, and then a lot of people get like housing vision at home headquarters mixed up too.

So they see like houses being built, and they're they don't know exactly which one is which.

So and um I think we kind of started alluding to this a little bit, but like I said, New York State is providing more funding right now for affordable housing than ever before, so it's really kind of an all hands-on-deck moment, like Walt was starting to say, we need every group in town to be building as much as they can in order to capture that money and bring it home to Syracuse.

Yeah, absolutely.

We need it.

Okay, so thank you very much.

And if you have any follow-up questions, you know where to call it this meeting adjourned.

Yeah, so move.

All right, thank you.