Erie County officials announce affordable housing project set to break ground this summer

Cheektowaga, N.Y. (WBEN) - Just a few days following Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz's 2024 State of the County address announcing the approval of 10, $500,000 grants that will construct 630 affordable housing units across the county, Poloncarz announces groundbreaking coming soon to an affordable housing project he highlighted in last year's county address.

Poloncarz late last week alongside Cheektowaga Supervisor Brian Nowak, county officials and the Buffalo Erie Niagara Land Improvement Corporation (BENLIC) gathered on a vacant lot to speak to the details of an affordable housing project that is now possible through last Friday's passage of a local law that authorizes the certain county dollars can be used for affordable housing if a housing crisis is identified.

"We'll begin very soon with shovels in the ground sometime later this summer, [with] the construction of the first single-family homes as part of our affordable housing program that I announced last year, at last year's State of the County," said Poloncarz on Friday afternoon.

"We have $13.5 million of American Rescue Plan funding that will be used to build affordable homes across the City of Buffalo, in the Town of Cheektowaga and we're currently looking at other locations in Erie County as well."

In the State of the County last year, Poloncarz announced this initiative to build single-family homes across Erie County as well as assist developers in building multi-unit developments for affordable housing purposes in the county to combat the affordable housing crisis.

One of the first single-family homes that will be built is located at 44 Long Avenue in the Town of Cheektowaga, a property that is owned by the county land bank following a house fire.

"There's a goal to build up another half dozen homes in the Town of Cheektowaga on similar type lots, in similar type neighborhoods, as well as in the City of Buffalo. We are waiting for the city to identify the lots which will be transferred to the land bank and I'm hoping that comes soon," Poloncarz added.

According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report shows that a renter living in Erie County would have to earn at least $20.56 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment at market rate or would have to work 56 hours per week at the current minimum wage to pay for the same two-bedroom housing unit.

Couple the county's projects with the state funding championed by State Senator Sean Ryan for tens of millions of dollars secured in the state budget for affordable housing in Buffalo and funding for renters to improve their units for their tenants, there should be thousands of new, affordable, and move-in ready properties to settle into in just a few years time, which will hopefully spur substantial economic growth for Western New York.