Board hears plan and funding timeline for neighborhood housing strategy; members press for staffing and sustainable funding

City staff and a consulting team updated the Housing Strategies Corporation board on implementation steps for a multineighborhood housing strategy and a related urban renewal plan amendment, and described near-term funding flows the board will need to manage.

Michelle (staff member) and Charles (consultant) briefed the board on two pieces of legislation the city will request from the Common Council: adoption of a second urban renewal plan for the SIRRA Urban Renewal Agency and a waiver of the city’s request-for-proposal process so the city can transfer budgeted funds to the urban renewal agency to be managed and administered by the Housing Strategies Corporation. Staff said the council was expected to consider the legislation in the May 12 or a coming vote cycle and that timely approval was needed for the city to move budgeted fiscal-year 2024–25 funds out of the city’s accounts before the fiscal-year deadline.

Discussion focused on money and capacity. The board was told the city already has $2.5 million in budgeted city funds available and that Governor-allocated Empire State Development (ESD) money of $5 million had been promised; staff said the two sums together total $7.5 million but that ESD funds would be distributed in tranches and are reimbursement-based. Staff said ESD disbursements cannot be used for personnel costs, which means the corporation will need up-front, non-ESD funding to cover staffing during initial activity.

Charles presented the neighborhoods-based strategy underpinning the corporation: four initial neighborhoods (Tipp Hill, Salt Springs, Elmwood and Eastwood) were chosen from a longer analysis that identified 23 clusters of focus. He said the board’s draft fundraising target for the four neighborhoods is about $60–65 million over a multi-year period and that the work could require roughly 1,900 intervention projects across the four neighborhoods over a 10–15 year horizon. He gave neighborhood-level planning targets — for example, an illustrative $13 million target for Tipp Hill — and suggested Salt Springs could be paced at roughly $1.5 million per year depending on campaign length.

Board members raised questions about staffing and sustainability. One board member said hiring four new staff raised concerns about how those positions would be sustained after initial funding; Michelle and Charles said the expected approach is a layered funding model that could use some city dollars, public-authority contributions and other sources, and that staff salaries in similar programs are sometimes covered in part by other public authorities. Michelle said the housing strategy presented to council recommended the city consider allocating $2 million annually for the corporation’s work and that staff can provide more detailed, multi-year budget breakouts to the board.

Members also asked about program design differences from existing providers. Staff said one principal difference is removing income limits that currently exclude many middle‑income homeowners from programs like Home Headquarters; the corporation’s flexibility to use city or ESD funds would allow assistance to owners who make too much to qualify for traditional low-income programs but still lack means to invest in needed repairs. Staff emphasized the board’s discretion to decide program terms such as loan interest rates, forgiveness, grant versus loan mixes, and leveraging private financing.

Finally, staff and the consultant urged the board to emphasize concentrated, block-level interventions rather than scattered one-off projects to tip neighborhood markets. Charles advised starting with projects that are likely to succeed to build momentum and to remain flexible to pivot if opportunities arise in other neighborhoods. Staff said the SIRRA Urban Renewal Agency and planning commission approvals are in place and that council action is the final step to match the urban renewal plan language to the housing strategy’s aims.