Syracuse needs affordable housing. Why is it resisting a big project in a poor neighborhood?

Sustainable Development Goals and Affordable Housing in Syracuse

Introduction

Syracuse, N.Y. — Mike Dehmler thought the city and community would embrace his proposed housing development in a struggling part of Syracuse.

His company, CSD Housing from the Rochester area, has developed a plan to build two, three-story apartment buildings on Cortland Avenue that would be affordable for people earning at least $34,000 and up to about $45,500 a year.

CSD would build it for Helio Health, the Syracuse drug and mental health treatment provider. About half of the 67 units would be reserved for Helio’s substance abuse clients and include support services.

It would seem an ideal fit for a city dying for more affordable housing and for a South Side neighborhood with rundown housing stock.

But a city board, by a 3-2 vote, rejected Helio’s project last month. The reason? The apartments would be limited to only low-income tenants.

For the city, the project pits two key goals against each other: a desire to break up the concentrated poverty that drags down some neighborhoods vs. the desperate need to add more quality housing of all kinds immediately.

Long-term approach

The city Board of Zoning Appeals voted 3-2 on April 25 to deny a zoning variance request for the Cortland Avenue project, saying that it would hurt the neighborhood by perpetuating a heavy concentration of low-income housing.

“We have been the welcoming, embracing community and I think we want to be that way,” said BZA member Tim Rudd, who is also the city’s budget director. “But there also is a fundamental problem of math where we continue to feel like we should undermine our neighborhoods with these variances to accommodate more and more poverty because we feel desperate. I don’t think we need to be.”

The requested variance was technically about this issue: One of the two proposed buildings had 37 units, seven more than allowed under the zoning law, and the project’s footprint was bigger than the threshold for the lot size.

But Rudd, who did most of the BZA’s talking in opposition to the request, did not focus on the variance itself. Instead, he cited the legally required consideration of whether a variance would “produce an undesirable change in the character of the neighborhood or a detriment to nearby properties.”

To Rudd, the project would make an already poverty-stricken area even poorer.

“While it’s uncomfortable and it may actually result in fewer housing units in the city in the short term, I think that’s the only way you get the long-term wealth creation and stability in the neighborhoods that we need to actually thrive,” Rudd said.

Neighbors speak out

Several neighbors spoke in opposition to the Cortland Avenue project before the BZA’s vote.

Bernard Bullock, a city firefighter who lives in a house that would be between the two apartment buildings, said he and his neighbors struggled for many years with a now-relocated men’s homeless shelter that operated a few blocks away. He’s concerned this project will bring those problems back.

“Our cars would constantly get broken in and your valuables would be taken,” he said. “I’m pretty confident if y’all put that unit there, we’re going to experience those problems all over again.”

Dehmler said at the meeting that the people who would be moving into the apartments make above poverty-level wages, with jobs such as nursing aides and maintenance workers.SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 1: No Poverty
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 1.1: By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere.
• SDG 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership, and control over land and other forms of property.
• SDG 11.1: By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.
• SDG 11.3: By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated, and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator 1.1.1: Proportion of population below the international poverty line, by sex, age, employment status, and geographical location.
• Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and type of tenure.
• Indicator 11.1.1: Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements, or inadequate housing.
• Indicator 11.3.1: Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate.

Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

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Fuente: syracuse.com

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