City

Syracuse Innovation Team to address issues of housing instability

Wasim Ahmad | Staff Photographer

The Innovation Team, in the past, has developed initiatives aimed at fixing Syracuse water mains that frequently break.

By Sam Ogozalek

Mayor Ben Walsh announced on Wednesday that Syracuse’s Innovation Team, an independent city agency, will focus on issues involving housing instability in 2018 as part of a year-long project.

The Innovation Team was first established by former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner. The office serves as an in-house innovation consultant at City Hall.

Team members have previously focused on developing several low-cost infrastructure initiatives aimed at fixing Syracuse water mains that frequently break, among other things.

More than 900 people voted as part of a poll to determine this year’s team priority project, said Adria Finch, the city’s director of innovation.

Residents eventually voted for the Innovation Team to prioritize issues surrounding snow removal and maintenance in Syracuse. But the city has already started developing several programs to address concerns about residents being forced to walk in the streets due to sidewalks being covered with snow.



“We feel like we have a good handle on our path forward on sidewalks,” Walsh said Wednesday afternoon during a Twitter Live streaming.

Stephanie Pasquale, commissioner of the city’s department of neighborhood and business development, said generally 25 percent of city residents move out of their home, in a given year. In some impoverished sections of the city, that number can be as high as 48 percent, Pasquale said.

“Housing instability affects one in four families in our city, and in some of our more distressed Census tracts that goes up to maybe one in two,” Pasquale said.

A 2015 report published by the Century Foundation, a New York City-based think tank, found that Syracuse had the highest rate of concentrated minority poverty among blacks and Hispanics out of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

One of the census tracts referenced in that report, with a high rate of minority poverty, is adjacent to Syracuse University property, near the Brewster/Boland/Brockway Complex.

“We look forward to working with all of you. We look forward to working with the Common Council, who are going to be our partners in this,” Walsh said.





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