Consultants outline Erie comprehensive housing plan, seek neighborhood input

Mullen and Lonergan Associates consultant Bill Wasilewski told a stakeholder meeting that the city of Erie has hired the firm to produce a comprehensive housing plan that analyzes current housing conditions, projects five-year demand and recommends implementable strategies to expand affordable and market-rate housing.

The plan will combine ACS and proprietary MLS data from the Greater Erie Board of Realtors with stakeholder input and purchased projection data to produce neighborhood-level profiles, Wasilewski said. "The city has never had a comprehensive housing plan," he said, arguing that a focused housing study can guide policy and grant-seeking. He described a public-engagement process that includes in-person stakeholder sessions the week of the presentation and up to 10 virtual sessions and neighborhood pop-ups after the new year.

Why it matters: Erie faces a tightening housing market, the consultant said, with mixed signals across tenure. The consultant cited a 53/47 homeownership-to-renter split, a rental vacancy rate of about 7.6% in 2023 and an owner-occupied vacancy rate under 1%, which signals very limited vacant owner units available for sale. MLS data provided to the team show the median sales price in 2025 as $158,003.61 and a 34% increase in median prices since 2018. Wasilewski said local rents reported to the team appear higher than the 2023 ACS median gross rent of about $836, and that up-to-date local figures will be reviewed in the analysis.

Planned deliverables and targeted analyses include neighborhood profiles for grant and planning use; a supply-and-demand gap analysis across AMI bands (0–30%, 31–50%, 51–80%, 81%+); and a feasibility study for Erie Heights, an affordable development on the West Side near Our Lady of Peace. The feasibility work will include architectural schematics and initial sources-and-uses modeling.

Policy options under consideration, the consultant said, include updating Erie’s zoning code to allow more housing types and exploring an affordable-housing overlay for market-rate projects that could require a share of units be kept affordable or require payments into a local trust fund. "Maybe we require them to do 10% of the units as affordable," Wasilewski said as an example of the sort of tools the study will evaluate.

Stakeholders raised outreach and equity concerns. Participants urged the team to notify food pantries, the public library and schools so neighborhood residents — not just repeat respondents — hear about meetings. A resident who described participation in a closing-cost program said that initiative made homeownership possible for her: "They gave me a $10,000 grant to close," she said, urging more first-time buyer programs. Wasilewski said the team heard reports that out-of-town investors have been buying properties and sometimes operating rentals without registering; he said the team will follow up to determine the scale of investor purchases and compliance with local rental-registration requirements.

The next steps: the consultants will continue in-person stakeholder sessions through the week, schedule virtual and neighborhood meetings in January–February, finalize draft recommendations and present a draft to the mayor for review before publishing a final plan. Wasilewski offered to provide the invited-stakeholder list and to clarify some figures that were garbled in the meeting transcript.

The meeting closed with an agreement to continue outreach to ensure broader neighborhood participation and with the consultants promising follow-up data clarifications and continued coordination.