SYRACUSE HOUSING Market STUDY

Syracuse, NY

what housing challenges and opportunities exist in central new york's METROPOLITAN HUB?

SUMMARY

The City of Syracuse has begun to reverse decades of population and household loss dating back to the middle of the 20th century, but serious questions remain about the strength of its housing market, its neighborhood quality of life, concentrations of poverty, and the city’s competitive position in relation to suburban Onondaga County. Using our “mixed-method” approach, czb analyzed a large volume of available data sets, worked with senior staff from City Hall, facilitated a process of multiple stakeholder working groups, and engaged the public to understand the city’s housing market.

While the project was analytical in nature, focusing on research, data collection, and market findings, the community helped vet the study results and identified the most salient issues. A series of open houses, both in person and online, shared analysis with the community and asked residents to help guide the czb team toward those issues and opportunities of greatest importance to Syracuse’s future.

Finalized in June 2023, the Syracuse Housing Study will provide the City and a range of stakeholders with the guidance they need to support the development of strategies that are fine-tuned to Syracuse’s challenges and opportunities.

SYRACUSE HOUSING STUDY

A granular understanding of housing and market conditions

czb supplemented a wide range of administrative data sets from City Hall with a comprehensive windshield survey of residential property conditions. After training by czb, City of Syracuse staff and interns set eyes on over 35,000 properties over the course of two months to provide the project with an up-to-date and block-by-block understanding of property conditions. Armed with that data, czb was able to analyze correlations between property conditions, tenure, levels of investments, code violations, prices, and other critical variables.

Two simple gaps that tell the whole story

Syracuse’s housing market is complex, and a housing study for the city could have run for 300 pages and contained nearly as many maps, tables, and charts—all serving to overwhelm the reader without shedding light on essential next steps. But czb recognized that every storyline it encountered could be categorized into one of two gaps: a market gap or an affordability gap. Defining those two gaps and their impact on housing in Syracuse became a framing mechanism that served to simply the presentation of findings while clarifying what Syracuse will need to accomplish to achieve different outcomes.

Engaging the community in the conversation.

While the project is analytical in nature, focusing on research, data collection, and market findings, the community will help vet the emerging study results and identify the most salient issues. A series of open houses, both in person and online, will share analysis with the community and ask residents to help guide the czb team toward those issues and opportunities of greatest importance to Syracuse's future.