How Monroe County’s housing incentives undermine its climate policy

Late last month, Monroe County quietly announced a $200,000 Climate Action Fund Pilot Program, offering matching grants up to $15,000 to municipalities that want to implement one of the many strategies in the county’s Climate Action Plan. This funding is welcome, but it comes at a time when the county is giving property tax incentives that undermine our climate goals. This disconnect needs to change, and concerned county residents can ask for a course correction.

There is no doubt that we need urgent action to rapidly reduce fossil fuel emissions to stave off the most disastrous effects of climate change. What climate scientists were predicting in the 1990s has become more apparent with each passing year. Even here in temperate Monroe County, we’ve seen these effects, from choking wildfire smoke in the summer of 2023 to the dramatic jump in airborne pollen this spring. As this graph from the CAP dramatically illustrates, climate impacts in Monroe County are only going to become more pronounced over the next several decades.

If we don’t change course on emissions, the number of days at 90 degrees or higher is predicted to exceed the number of below-freezing days by 2090. That date is well within the lifespans of this year’s kindergarteners. The implications of this rapid shift are dire for human health and well-being, for our industries and agriculture, and for the survival of the natural places we love.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. The Climate Action Fund pilot program recognizes this by providing much-needed financial resources to municipalities to participate in climate solutions. It will be exciting to see what new and innovative projects are started as a result of this funding.

Unfortunately, at the same time that the county is providing climate action funds to the city, towns, and villages, it is granting subsidies to housing projects that will likely lock in fossil fuel emissions for decades to come. In January, the county announced a new tax-incentive policy for multifamily housing developments, in the hopes of loosening our tight housing market. COMIDA, the county’s industrial development agency, adopted a new tax abatement schedule that is more generous than nearly any currently offered by the agency to incentivize what is often called “workforce housing,” affordable to households making near the area median income.

Developers have rushed to claim these incentives, with six new or revised payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements for multifamily housing approved in the first quarter of this year. A PILOT agreement describes the exact amount of money the county, municipalities, and school districts will receive in place of what would be the expected full property tax amount. By my calculation, these PILOT agreements apply to 558 new housing units, which will receive a total of $18 million in tax abatements over the next 16 years. In just the first year of operation of these new buildings, Monroe County will be giving up over $416,000 in taxes—more than twice the amount allocated to the Climate Action Fund program.

The publicly available plans for these housing units do not provide full construction details, but none of their COMIDA applications note that they will be built to the highest energy efficiency standards. It is also likely that all of these new housing units will be supplied with natural gas for space and water heating. If this is true, my most conservative estimate is that the greenhouse gas emissions from these apartments will produce more than 1.3 million kg of carbon dioxide per year, the same as adding 310 new gas-powered vehicles to our roads. And this is just for projects subsidized in the first three months of this year.

The projects funded by the county’s new climate action program cannot hope to be even a Band-Aid on this gaping and growing new emissions wound. And given that PILOT agreements also take money from municipalities (for these housing projects, from Rochester, Greece, Henrietta, and Pittsford), this housing policy also plunders resources that could be used as matching funds for future climate actions.

If the county is serious about climate action, all of its policies should align to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Housing built with these generous subsidies should be required to be energy-efficient and fossil fuel free, have easy access to transit, robust EV charging infrastructure, and renewable energy such as ground source heat and solar panels on rooftops and parking lots. In fact, the CAP recommends these policies and identifies the county as the primary responsible party for implementing them. Given that the CAP has a goal of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, new housing built with gas infrastructure also faces expensive retrofits before it is even 25 years old. It’s foolish that projects receiving a decade or more of tax relief are not expected to be built for future conditions.

What’s the solution to the mismatch between the county’s housing policy and its climate policy? We should pause any more building subsidies until they are accompanied by zero-emissions requirements and designed to help our community transition to a fossil-fuel-free future. Fortunately, adding these requirements should not be an undue burden to developers—studies indicate that building zero-emissions homes is less expensive than building homes supplied with natural gas. Even better for moderate-income residents, zero-emissions homes are less expensive to operate, have healthier and safer indoor air quality, and will not be subject to increasing fossil-fuel tariffs that are set to begin in 2028 when the state finally rolls out its cap and invest program. And while some have expressed concern that our slowly modernizing grid cannot handle all-electric heating systems, the reality is that any building that installs air conditioning is installing an electric heat pump that draws a similar amount of electricity at our highest demand times—the hottest days of summer. There is no reason except inertia not to align generous incentives for building housing with requirements that this housing be built to standards that meet our climate goals.

County residents have several opportunities to urge our political leaders to do the right thing and align our tax abatement policies to our climate policies. You can call or write your county legislator or the county executive. You can ask your local municipal leaders to carry this same message to the county. You can comment on the Monroe County comprehensive plan to ask that its strategies include applying the CAP recommendations in full.

What we can’t do is to continue to wait to speak out and act to do our part to fight climate change. We need to be serious, committed, and aligned across all levels of government, which means implementing the highest impact actions in the CAP in a coordinated way. Our community’s kindergarteners are depending on us.

Ginny Maier is a resident of Fairport and co-founder of the local climate action group 40×30, which refers to a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030, as a step toward the New York and Monroe County goals of a more than 80% reduction by 2050.

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