Opening up buyers’ options
Local group, Syracuse partner will develop financing alternatives
The Albany County Land Bank is now working with a Syracuse-based organization to help city residents who can’t access traditional forms of financing and are interested in buying a land bank property.
The partnership with Home Headquarters Inc., a nonprofit housing and community development organization, is meant to increase access to the resources residents need to purchase and rehab land bank properties, especially those in traditionally underserved neighborhoods.
Home Headquarters will offer financing to qualified buyers and serve as a single point of information and resources for residents, contractors and investors looking for land bank properties.
The land bank’s efforts to help residents purchase property in the city have been hamstrung by both the current and historical impact of redlining — a series of discriminatory housing and lending practices.
According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, just 20 percent of the city’s Black residents own a home, compared to 68.9 percent of white residents. The comparable national rates are 71 percent for white residents and 41 percent for Black residents.
Roughly 60 percent of the land bank’s properties are located in historically redlined neighborhoods.
In the Albany County Land Bank’s five years of operation, none of its first-time homebuyers has been able to secure traditional first mortgage financing for properties within these redlined neighborhoods. And many buyers of land bank properties in these neighborhoods have reported difficulty finding contractors willing to work on vacant buildings in those locations.
Last year, over concerns that residents were being shut out of the land bank’s efforts to get city properties back on the tax rolls, the organization created an underserved communities committee.
County Legislator Carolyn Mclaughlin, who raised some of the concerns that led to the committee’s creation, said correcting disparities in the city starts with housing.
“With this partnership we will be able to expand access to homeownership to those who could not see owning a home in their future,” she said.
Adam Zaranko, the land bank’s executive director, said getting residents access to the
capital and financing they need would serve the dual goals of helping the city’s underserved communities and returning unused properties to the tax rolls.
“This partnership with Home Headquarters will enable more people to access the resources needed to purchase and rehabilitate a vacant and abandoned building from the Land Bank, including members of underserved populations who are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and who have been denied the opportunity to build wealth through generations of institutional discriminatory housing and lending practices,” he said.
The partnership is also meant to help eligible contractors gain state certification as minorityowned business, which would open opportunities to participate in larger-value projects.