ITHACA, N.Y. — With a wave of fresh faces on Common Council, City of Ithaca Planning Director Lisa Nicholas was given the unusual task of getting the elected officials up to date on the most prominent issue facing the city they now govern: housing.
Nicholas presented to council last week, informing members about the city’s current housing development environment and what kind of projects are in the pipeline and will be coming online in the next 1-2 years.
Nicholas’ presentation featured a mixed bag of statistics for the city, which is poised to see the introduction of another influx of housing units over the next 12-18 months that well outpaces the national average — though prior unit increases have not had the desired effect on local rental costs.
Due to the once-a-decade rule that all 10 Common Council seats be up for election after a U.S. Census is completed, a number of retirements and a couple of election surprises, six of the ten faces are new to the council, while new Mayor Robert Cantelmo is now included as the 11th member of council under the new city manager structure.
The unusual amount of turnover has led to a very green Common Council, most of whom have limited experience with city government and spent the first month of the year in weekly meetings to orient them to the city’s operations.
Several housing developments have recently been completed, including The Gem and 325 Dryden in Collegetown, The Ithacan in downtown, the Market View Apartments near the waterfront and Library Place next to DeWitt Park. Between them, that has resulted in 319 apartments for rent, of which 62 (19%) were affordable to low-and-moderate income households making 80% or less of area median income.
As for current building, there are 789 units under construction, with 265 units (34% of total) designated as affordable to low- and moderate-income households. That represents more influxes in the pipeline, but the Northside project is replacing 70 apartments, so the net gain there will only be 14 affordable units.
In a local context, a wave of 789 units likely to be completed within the next 18 months is somewhat unusual. Using the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Building Permits Database, you can see Ithaca’s recent spike in housing production above. Still, impacts on affordability have been muted. The city makes up a much larger proportion of the county’s housing construction (shown in green in the above chart) than it used to.
Nicholas took the group through projects that appear to have construction financing lined up and are going through the final pre-construction steps — such as subcontractor bids, work schedules, etc. Although the project leaders have yet to apply for building permits, construction is likely to start this year or early next year.
Here, 585 units are in the works, with Visum’s West End project being the only affordable development, hosting 57 apartments. Projects under review account for another 590 units, the bulk of which come from the Water’s Edge project, which will be doing an Environmental Impact Statement and is unlikely to start before mid-2025 at the earliest.
Lastly, Nicholas discussed the unknowns — projects approved, but with unclear timelines, usually because they have yet to obtain construction funding. There are 851 units in those projects, but it’s a question mark as to if, let alone when, they will be built.
“We always have a group of projects that are ready to go but they’re not going to construction and we don’t know why,” Nicholas said. “Usually it’s a short list, but recently the list has gotten a bit longer. […] Usually, it’s cost.”
Nicholas described several housing-related regulatory proposals that will likely be coming before the Common Council in the near future. Short-term rental legislation has been the most publicized measure, and will be designed to keep as many long-term units on the market as possible.
Also in the works are streamlined Zoning Appeals to allow staff-level approval for certain minor variances, accessory dwelling unit legislation with staff-level review, potential removal of minimum parking requirements for certain R3-zoned residences. The point of most of these is to allow gentle density increases and make it less bureaucratic and financially onerous to be a homeowner in Ithaca.
“None of these will solve the housing problem, but they all are pieces of the puzzle,” Nicholas explained.
On the initiative side, city planners would like to use grant funding they were awarded last year to do a vacancy survey, join the state’s Pro Housing Communities initiative as Dryden did, determine if there are viable incentives the city can give for rowhouses or townhouses, and find ways to encourage “missing middle” housing.
That could include everything from reduced/removed parking requirements, to lower height limits in certain zones, to try and force developers to spread housing out on a lot instead of doing a multistory building over parking.
Council members then took the floor to question Nicholas. The topic of the Southside Neighborhood Comprehensive Plan was broached, with council members noting that the absence of finalized zoning likely contributed to the opening of a Squeaky Clean Car Wash in the neighborhood that raised the ire of neighbors last year, to no avail.
“We did a plan for Southside, and because of the pandemic, about 50% of the zoning was done and [the rest] wasn’t finished, and so things happened that were unexpected because the zoning wasn’t finished,” Nicholas said. “That is on our work plan for this year. It’s what the neighborhood asked for and we need to finish it.”
Council member Clyde Lederman (D-Fifth Ward) then asked about a “phenomenon” he had seen recently. Single-family homes, he said, were being used for student housing illegally, something he attributed to a lack of housing at a suitable price point for some students.
Lederman in particular noted that Cornell grad students were being told to seek rental housing in Fall Creek.
“That negatively affects everyone,” he continued. “What are the biggest barriers to more housing in and around the university? What can we do as council to move things in the right direction in terms of long-term supply growth?”
Nicholas said there has not been a non-student housing project presented in Collegetown.
“Student housing projects can’t only rent to students, that’s not allowed, but they’re designed and built to specifically appeal to students,” Nicholas said. “The other neighborhoods you’re talking about [like University Avenue, Cornell Heights, East Ithaca], some of them are not in the city, many of them are single-family, they’re much lower density. I would say that would inhibit further housing in those neighborhoods.”
Nichols said zoning could influence certain aspects of the development in those neighborhoods.
“Changing parking minimums and lot sizes, that could encourage development in some of the neighborhoods that doesn’t radically change the character of their neighborhoods, like duplexes,” Nicholas said. This is also a goal, to increase density without changing the character.”
“If we only have student apartments and we only have affordable apartments, I don’t know what else we’re going to be able to have,” said Margaret Fabrizio (D-Fifth Ward). “All of these new apartment buildings, I think the rates are like $3,000-$5,000 per month. I just want to make sure that we understand that that is not affordable, and that there’s a whole segment of people in this community who are not income-eligible for affordable housing.”
Fabrizio asked if there were any ways to encourage middle-income housing like condominiums, senior housing or any housing outside of student or affordable housing.
Developing in the middle is fairly difficult, at least right now, as Nicholas outlined. There aren’t many state incentives for middle-income housing construction. Market-rate developers aim for higher-end luxury prices for new construction because it is a marginal investment for nicer materials and they need to achieve a certain return on investment as part of getting their construction loans.
If they can build in bulk, or work in an area where construction loans are easier to get, then middle-market new construction is possible. But that’s not the case in Tompkins County.
“We can imagine that the senior category is an emerging category because of the demographics of our population, but we aren’t seeing that much,” Nicholas said. “I will tell you just from experience, many of Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Service’s apartments are rented by seniors.”
Another point of concern was raised when councilor Haines-Sharp asked about affordable housing being clustered on the West End. As Nicholas pointed out, that stems from two factors: there was developable land there, and it was less expensive to buy and build on than other parts of the city. Affordable housing developers have to stretch their dollars if they hope to make a lower-moderate income development a feasible reality.
Council member Phoebe Brown expressed concern with the city’s homelessness problem and finding housing for those vulnerable to ending up either sleeping on the streets or in “the Jungle.”
She added that the community has both a lack of housing for those returning to the community after serving time in prison, which Brown deals with professionally, as well as three- or four-bedroom lower-income units available for rent.
“We need to do a better job of letting people know what units are available,” said Brown. “I learned a lot from you in my time on this council about how things work here. At one time, I was just like, ‘Oh, they could fix it, they just don’t want to.’ What I see is that it takes more than just that.”
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