Dozens of new homes planned for vacant lots in poor Syracuse neighborhoods

In Syracuse, the Block-by-Block program has prompted a flurry of vacant land purchase offers in the past three months to the Greater Syracuse Land Bank. Nonprofit organizations focused on providing affordable housing are turning to the agency, which acquires, stabilizes and sells properties seized through city property foreclosures.

Since January, the land bank’s board has approved sales of more than 25 empty lots clustered on blocks in South Side neighborhoods and the Near West Side to nonprofits eyeing the new state program to fund single-family home construction.

The land bank has also entered into an agreement with Jubilee Homes, a South Side-based nonprofit economic development organization, to develop 10 two-family houses on parcels it owns on the Near West Side and fund the work with Block-by-Block grants.

Both areas of the city have been hit hard by the severe shortage of quality housing that’s also affordable to Syracuse residents. Mayor Ben Walsh’s administration launched a program in 2020 to get 200 units of new housing built on vacant lots in distressed areas of the city, and with a combination of local, state and federal funds, those goals have been reached five years later.

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