Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) is calling creating affordable housing a top priority in her state budget, and her housing programs seem to already be paying dividends in central New York.
On Thursday during a visit to Syracuse, Hochul presented the keys to a new three-bedroom home on Loomis Ave to Theresa Durham. Durham plans to move there from her current home at McKinney Manor.
"They told me to start packing. If I pack, I don't have anywhere to move around in, because that's how small it is,” said Durham. “But to have space now, I'm excited."
Home HeadQuarters CEO Kerry Quaglia said this is the first home in Syracuse sold under the state’s new Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Program (AHOP). Under the program, the state provides a subsidy for new construction of affordable housing.
Quaglia said it will allow Home HeadQuarters to finish 40 new homes this construction season, and it’s just one of multiple housing programs at the state level.
"This is by far the most dramatic and comprehensive approach to responding to the affordable housing crisis that I have ever seen in my entire career, period,” he said.
Hochul said the budget includes more than $500 million in new state funding to help communities across the state with housing, including funding for infrastructure projects that support development, programs to prevent homelessness, and money to build more affordable starter homes.
She said the goal is to create or preserve 100,000 affordable homes in five years.
In Syracuse, Hochul spoke about the importance of having a stable home while she was growing up, and said for many New Yorkers, that dream is out of reach.
"It gave me more than a roof over my head,” Hochul said. “It gave me that security, that foundation, that I was going to be OK, and that's what families deserve."
And, standing on Theresa Durham’s new front porch, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh agreed.
"We are in a neighborhood where we had two vacant lots that likely attracted all sorts of nuisance issues, and now we have two homes, and it is Theresa's story and her family that make it all worthwhile,” he said.
