Onondaga County Legislature’s four-bloc Housing and Transportation Citizen’s Advisory Board unveiled long-term plans to combat Central New York’s housing crisis.  The advisory board shared their findings, derived from months of work, during an open house on Tuesday evening at CenterState CEO’s Inspyre Innovation Hub.  The board’s four proposed solutions include: Creating a Builders Fund that will provide no-to-low interest loan funds to ease financing troubles for developers amid high construction and labor costs Aiding towns and villages with updating their zoning codes to allow for more multifamily housing development  Recommending studies to look at streets that can become complete streets and ensure safe transit for pedestrians, bikers and motorists Ensuring equity and accessibility for residents across the county  Those solutions came from six meetings — one in the city and the rest across county libraries — at which community members posed questions and concerns. The 40-member advisory board, which included community members with backgrounds in housing, development, finance and human services, tried to find answers to those questions. They analyzed nationwide housing and transportation challenges and case studies to explore ideas that could help boost housing production and transportation access in Syracuse.  “Think of [the solutions] as like the potter’s wheel,” said Onondaga County Legislature Chairwoman Nicole Watts, who is also the co-chair of the advisory board. “The clay has been formed. It’s in the shape of a bowl, but we may need to add a hand to the bowl. It’s not in the kiln yet.” The advisory board was founded in April to address problems and devise solutions for the housing crisis in the county. Gov. Kathy Hochul has said Central New York needs at least 30,000 housing units to meet demand, as Micron Technology’s semiconductor manufacturing plants are built. A CenterState CEO report found at least 2,500 units need to be built every year for the next decade to keep up with growing demands. However, the region is not on pace to meet that rising housing demand. Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens said during her state of the city address that there are over 1,000 housing units under construction in the city — less than half of the number required to keep up the momentum. Last year, the city on its own approved 14 permits for one and two-family homes, as well as 23 for multi-family buildings.  At a time when the region needs to build at scale to meet demand, the lack of housing units has driven up rents.  Central Current recently spoke to local developers and housing experts who pointed to three key bottlenecks to housing production in the area: zoning, financing and permitting. ​​ The advisory board put forth solutions to two of the three major bottlenecks and addressed transportation access and housing equity in the community.  The draft proposal from the zoning and policy reform arm of the advisory board wants the county to focus on creating the “strong centers,” which are also  proposed in the county’s comprehensive Plan Onondaga, also called Plan ON. The document serves as the county’s blueprint to prepare for Micron’s arrival to the community.  Plan Onondaga calls for the strong centers to include walkable towns and villages with thriving job opportunities and commercial services as well as more accessible and affordable housing and transportation. The zoning arm of the advisory board met with municipalities across the county to understand the barriers to creating these well-knit communities.  “Our draft proposal included going directly back to Plan ON and suggesting that the county could make some of those tools available for municipalities, including model ordinances and overlays, so that these great places to live and work can happen anywhere that municipalities want them throughout the county,” said Jared Shepard, the director of research and planning at CenterState CEO. Shepard is on the advisory board.  The transportation advisory board recommended Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council perform a comprehensive study of the county streets. The study could help determine streets that could be turned into complete streets, said Bren Daiss, the vice president of public affairs and planning at CENTRO. Complete streets include infrastructure retrofitted for different modes of transportation, including walking, biking, buses and cars. Solutions will include identifying streets to create sidewalks, protected bike lanes and bus lanes. The study will also act as a tool to determine which projects receive funding for street redesign and reconstruction.  The building development arm of the taskforce focused on finding ways to build “missing middle” housing: duplexes, row houses, small apartment houses and mobile homes. The group members analyzed the private and public financing landscape to understand the gaps that make it harder for developers to build faster.  Creating a county entity to administer the zero- to no-interest loans will fill the funding gaps to build both affordable and market rate projects, said Zach Zeliff, chief of staff for state Sen. Rachel May and a core member of the development advisory team.  “It’s kind of designed to be a bigger scale to really get projects from permitting to construction,” Zeliff said. “So it would be additive to O-CHIP.” The development team also proposed creating a neighborhood ownership and improvement fund that will look at vacant or dilapidated housing and find ways to get money to community organizations to acquire the housing, fix it and keep it affordable, Zeliff said.  Darrell Buckingham, another co-chair of the advisory board, said equity should be at the forefront of decision-making as the county grows. He believes educating community members about homeownership and financial assistance are key as the county anticipates population growth. “We want folks to feel like they are a part of that dream… that growth, and so we want to make certain that we are essentially preventing displacement,” Buckingham said.  Watts requested community feedback on the proposals ahead of the county’s 2027 budget season, which begins Sept. 15. She urged the over 60 community members present to urge County Executive Ryan McMahon to include the proposals in the budget.  “This is an important moment in our history as Onondaga County, and I really hope, in 10 years, we look back at this year and say we did something here,” Watts said. The post Ahead of budget season, Onondaga County Legislature’s advisory board shares proposed solutions to housing crisis appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less