The affordable housing challenge

As the nation grapples with a housing shortage, Rochester and Monroe County might appear from a distance like a market where things aren’t so bad. Zoom in closer, however, and the disconnect in supply and ability to pay is stark.

“What we know is there’s a mismatch here of the housing that exists and the incomes that people have,” observes Rebekah Meyer, operations manager at Rochester Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative. “It’s obviously most pronounced for households with very low incomes that even so-called affordable housing is not affordable to them. There’s a lack of housing that’s affordable to those with the lowest incomes in our community, and particularly a lack of quality housing that they can afford.”

In addition, there’s a shortage of middle-income housing. While the prioritization of increasing affordable housing supply at the low-income level is evident at the city, county and state levels with various initiatives, those looking for one- or two-bedroom apartments in a slightly higher price range often are coming up empty.

“I think there’s a need for everything, for very different reasons,” says Bret Garwood, CEO of Home Leasing. “Sometimes (we) need three-bedroom homes, because a lot of the three-bedroom homes that exist are just not fit for habitation. They’re not safe. We need one-bedroom apartments because we have a lot more one-person households than we used to. For different reasons, there’s a real need to do a lot of different things.”

It is no secret that poverty is highly concentrated in the city of Rochester, where the overall rate is 26 percent, according to U.S. Census estimates. Though households in smaller communities within Monroe County also struggle to make ends meet, the overall poverty rate for the rest of the county, excluding Rochester, is dramatically lower: 9.2 percent.

“Anywhere where you have poverty, you are going to have a housing crisis for those people who are poor, because housing is one of the biggest costs in anybody’s budget,” notes Aqua Porter, executive director of RMAPI. “It is really difficult to get housing at 30 percent or less of your income if you’re already very poor or poor.

“I don’t care where you are,” she adds, “if you are in East Rochester, or if you’re in Pittsford or Parma; if you’re below the poverty level, you cannot find housing that you could afford based on your income.”

For the city of Rochester and Monroe County, the challenge lies in not only finding homes for its poor, but also for the middle-income families, and coupling that need with a desire to build in neighborhoods with access to transportation, health care, safety and education. Some experts say affordable housing should spread to the suburbs. However, in those communities other challenges arise, including fears that such housing brings higher crime rates, and loss of property value and community character.

“A lot of the conversations we have around affordable housing policy are difficult because we don’t get specific about what (we) mean. Do we need housing for someone that makes $20,000 a year? Do we need housing for someone that makes $60,000 a year, or a family or individual,” notes Monica McCullough, CEO of MM Development Advisors, a real estate development and affordable housing consultancy. “Those are different affordability levels and different subsidy needs.”

What is affordable housing?

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines affordable as “housing a household can afford spending no more than 30 percent of their income.” Developers and policymakers typically use that definition too.

“That is the goal of affordable housing, that no one will be rent-burdened, or burdened with house expenses,” says Carol Wheeler, manager of housing for the city of Rochester.

She also is quick to add: “What we want to see is making sure that people that are even of lower income are accessed and pay no more than 30 percent of their income toward housing.”

The U.S. Census tract data paints a pretty grim picture when it comes to rent-burdened households in the city. Rent-burdened rates in Rochester have always been high compared to the rest of the county. As a 2018 study into Rochester’s citywide housing market by research firm czb summarized: “Very low incomes, not high housing costs, are at the root of affordability challenges in Rochester.” (This study is expected to be updated this year, to reflect recent changes in housing.)

In the northwest and northeast sections of the city, the proportion of rent-burdened households has stayed above 50 percent since 2010. Even the southeast, which generally has higher income and homeownership levels, continues to hover in the 40 percent range for its renter-occupied households.

The southwest only recently dropped slightly below the 50 percent level, with the biggest improvements occurring in the downtown core and the Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood. Both have been active areas of development in the past decade, with luxury apartments in Sibley Square and Tower280 downtown, and student housing at Riverview and Brooks Landing in PLEX, for example.

In Monroe County, the picture is similarly mixed. The most recent census data estimates total housing countywide at 314,000 units. Among those units, there is a 2-to-1 split between owner- and renter-occupied homes, with most renters in the city of Rochester.

Positive developments over the last decade include a falling number of cost-burdened households. In 2010, 35 percent of all occupied units in the county were considered cost-burdened, or spending 30 percent or more of their monthly income on housing.

Twelve years later, that number had shrunk by 5 percentage points.

Overall housing stock has been on the rise. The towns of Henrietta, Webster and Clarkson, as well as southwestern Rochester, have grown their number of occupied units in a range of 13 to 26 percent from 2010 to 2022.

This upswing is far from universal, however. Housing type and geographic location in particular have a clear impact on whether improvement has been felt by households.

For example, conditions for renters have worsened, while those for owner-occupied households have improved. From 2010 to 2022, the number of owner-occupied households that spent 30 percent or more of their monthly income on housing costs dropped from 51,000 to 37,500. By contrast, the number of renter-occupied households in that same category increased from 50,000 to 56,000.

The growth of rent-burdened households is not a trend found only in the city. While the northwest section of Rochester saw an increase in that category by 786 units from 2010 to 2022, the numbers of additional rent-burdened households were even higher in the towns of Brighton, Webster, and Henrietta—1,501, 1,306, and 1,028 units, respectively.

Brighton and Webster had notable jumps in rent-burdened households during 2020, suggesting it was caused by issues related to COVID. By contrast, Perinton’s increase in cost-burdened individuals was steady. From 2010 to 2022, the number of renter households that fell into the burdened category grew from 1,438 to 2,211 at a relatively consistent rate.

Statewide, nearly 3 million households are paying more than 30 percent of their income toward housing, a 2024 report from the state comptroller’s office shows. One in five households are severely cost burdened, or allocating more than half of their household income toward housing. Low-income renters are the most cost-burdened, the report states, adding that these financial pressures are increasingly felt by middle-class households. 

High-cost burdens, the report finds, are more prevalent in urban areas. More than one-third of households (owners and renters) were burdened in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Rochester and Yonkers. 

“The consequences of housing insecurity are wide-ranging and while low-income renters are the most cost-burdened, these financial pressures are increasingly felt by middle-class households,” Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said when the report was released earlier this year. “Action is needed by all levels of government.”

Meeting multiple needs

In Rochester, Wheeler says, the city lacks housing at the very low end of the income spectrum.

“Those individuals really have a hard time with rent or with housing in general,” she says. “And a lot of times they are what we call severely rent-burdened, which means that they’re paying more than 50 percent of their income toward housing. So, they’re the most vulnerable, and we do like to target our resources for those most vulnerable.”

The city is preparing to update its housing market analysis from its previous iteration conducted before the COVID pandemic. The Rochester 2034 comprehensive plan, in addition to action plans for promoting collaboration and monitoring of housing, calls for efforts to “pursue new housing development that grows the city’s population and fosters the creation of vibrant, equitable neighborhoods.”

Annually, Wheeler says, the city puts out an affordable housing RFP—“a request for proposals for developers to come in to tell us what they’re able to do as far as developing new housing or attracting new projects.” She adds: “What we’re looking to do is fill a gap.”

Monroe County is also working to create a conducive environment for affordable housing. In March, the county announced a $7.8 million plan with four pilot initiatives to create more affordable housing options for low- and moderate-income families and to assist in eliminating barriers preventing the rental of existing affordable housing.

The four initiatives aimed to increase access to affordable housing, support housing seekers through the rental process, and help landlords update unrented units to bring them back in the rental market, officials said. The Legislature passed a $4.25 million plan last month without the rental-unit repair program.

“The shortage of affordable housing is a national crisis that must be addressed through new thinking and strategic investment. With direct support to families looking for affordable housing and incentives for landlords to invest in their properties, we can close this housing gap,” said County Executive Adam Bello at the time. “The county will be the convener, bringing together all stakeholders—tenants, landlords, government partners and developers to work on sustainable solutions. This proposal further advances a priority of my administration to decentralize county services by creating additional access points directly in the community where people need them.”

The county, which works to encourage home ownership and affordable rentals, is in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan. Public input, says Gary Walker, Monroe County spokesperson, has been essential to the process.

“The feedback we have heard indicates there is a need to increase housing availability and affordability,” Walker says. “The Comprehensive Plan is not yet finalized, but our goal is to find strategies and partnerships with communities, independent developers, and nonprofit housing developers to increase the availability and affordability of our housing stock and create more opportunities for Monroe County residents to access quality housing in all parts of Monroe County.”

The Comprehensive Plan will examine existing programs, tools and policies, and make recommendations for improvements as well as new tools and policies that would increase housing availability and affordability.

The county has partnered with the city on the development of the First Genesis Single-Family Homes project. Through an agreement with the city to provide $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, the project expects to construct 22 single-family homes in the Upper Falls neighborhood.

“The single-family homes will be sold to income-eligible residents upon completion. The homeowner purchase price is estimated to be approximately $110,000 per home,” Walker says.

Examples of success

Though it might seem like a daunting challenge, Rochester has seen success in some parts of the city. 

Wheeler points to the Inner Loop area as an example of integrating market-rate units and affordable housing.

“Most people believe that the majority of all those units down there, or all of the units down there, are market-rate units, and they are not,” Wheeler says. “There is pretty much an even split of affordable and market-rate units that are there on the Inner Loop.”

Garwood agrees with Wheeler’s characterization of the Inner Loop area. 

“I think the best model in Rochester is the Inner Loop,” he says. “We built (600) or 700 units of housing of all sorts, with rents from $400 to $3,000—supportive housing for the homeless as well as market-rate housing—and it was done in a way that rebuilt the fabric of dense urban neighborhoods between downtown and the East End.”

McCullough lauds Dimitri House’s Mamczur Place for the homeless. (Dimitri House is named after Dimitri Mamczur, a homeless person who lived under a I-590 bridge.)

“They had a vacant property that they owned that they converted to six apartments for the chronically homeless, (the) hardest population to serve.” She adds: “Five of the six people that originally moved in are still there.”

“To house five chronically homeless people stably for many years is an incredible accomplishment, and the resources that that project brought to that organization are also a game changer,” McCullough says. “So, not only did that project stabilize a building, it stabilized housing for the tenants that live there.”

Other successful projects include Canal Commons, Union Square, Voters Block and Edna Craven Estates. 

Busting myths

For an even bigger impact, more affordable housing needs to make its way into the suburbs, developers and others agree. It is not an easy task, however, and RMAPI’s Porter believes it requires a shared community vision to get there.

“Let’s say we have a developer, an affordable housing developer, who does have the tax credits lined up, they have all the stuff lined up to be able to build,” Meyer says. “If they then approach a community and are just met with opposition and bureaucracy and process, barriers after barriers to building that development, they’re going to go elsewhere, or they’re just going to give up on it.”

In Perinton, an affordable senior living community on Baird Road is in the works. Another mixed-income development is also under consideration, increasing the stock of affordable housing units. But Fairport, a village in Perinton with mostly single-family homes, is now a locus of debate over housing. As the Beacon reported last week, its zoning update project—which aims to allow for more diverse housing options—is opposed by some residents who see a threat to the village’s character.

Fairport is not unique. Communities nationwide wonder if more affordable housing would burden municipal resources, decrease property values, and bring higher crime rates and poverty to wealthier suburbs. 

For a couple of projects that Home Leasing is working on in Brighton and Perinton, local approvals were relatively easy to obtain, Garwood says

“Not quickly, but quicker than often can be,” he says. “But even for those projects, some people did stand up and say they don’t want rental housing, or they don’t want affordable housing. … Zoning codes show what they are willing to have and what they’re not willing to have. When you have a town that essentially has almost no place where you can build multifamily housing, that means you’ve got to do a zoning change to develop multifamily housing, and if you’re lucky, that’s a year of process, and that’s a real barrier.”

Shifting perspectives

While initiatives like Our Local History have been sharing their efforts in documenting local policies with roots in place-based racism, prompting new ways of thinking, Rochester and Monroe County have a ways to go. 

“We have to get people to change how they view housing, homes, community … and what it means to really take care of your neighbors, and we’re not there yet,” Porter says.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Pro-Housing Communities program is one push to change the narrative. Stemming from the housing crisis, it encourages municipalities to apply for certification as a pro-housing community. In May, the state said more than 200 municipalities had launched applications to begin the process. Among them are communities in the Finger Lakes region including Henrietta, Honeoye Falls, Irondequoit, Macedon, Victor, the city of Rochester, Phelps, Williamson, Newark, Canandiagua and Ontario.

These localities must be committed to or have launched steps to support housing by adopting pro-housing policies, and submitted critical housing and zoning data to the state. Once certified by New York State Homes and Community Renewal, these communities will be eligible for a share of up to $650 million in state discretionary funding.

“We have to kind of push on these communities that say they now want to be pro-housing communities; we have to now start to hold them accountable for kind of putting their money where their mouth is,” Porter says.

If the pro-housing designation is a way of laying the groundwork, Meyer wonders if there are ways to hold communities accountable—at the state level or the local level.

“It’s new, so we don’t really know how that’s going to play out yet,” she says.

In spite of the many hurdles, housing advocates believe that the awareness around housing and zoning changes are a step in the right direction to bring about change.

“There’s got to be some hard conversations about when are we willing to use public resources or tax abatements in order to get something that is needed that can’t occur without assistance. And depending on the location and depending on the circumstances, you might arrive at different conclusions, like it might make sense to incentivize market-rate housing in downtown Rochester, but it might not make sense to incentivize market rate-housing in a wealthy suburb,” Garwood says. 

Wheeler has a sense of optimism about the future. She notes that developers are interested in building more housing or rehabbing existing properties. 

“We will continue to advocate for not only rental units, but also the development of affordable homeownership opportunities,” she says, adding the pandemic created a tight real estate market, with fewer homes for sale, pricing low-income households out of the market. “The city of Rochester, one of the things we have to do is make sure that we control the inventory.”

Perhaps Rochester’s strength in the affordable housing industry—developers, funders, accountants, architects, engineers, lawyers and marketers—will eventually work in its favor. Even so, experts say, it will take community leaders, residents and others to dig deep and consider some tough questions, the answers to which might take years. It will also require a delicate balance between affordable housing and market-rate properties. 

“Reasonable people will disagree where you should put housing, but I think generally it needs to become easier to build housing pretty much everywhere, and various types of housing,” Garwood says.

This Community Chronicles article was made possible by a grant from the ESL Charitable Foundation. 

Smriti Jacob is Rochester Beacon managing editor.  Jacob Schermerhorn  is a Beacon contributing writer and data journalist. The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. Submissions to the Letters page should be sent to [email protected].