Building on the county’s new comprehensive plan and CZB’s earlier work in the City of Syracuse, CZB conducted a countywide housing analysis built on a simple premise: a market this large and this varied couldn’t be understood as one undifferentiated whole. Onondaga County is home to nearly half a million people living in almost 200,000 households, spread across 34 separate political jurisdictions, and its core city and surrounding suburbs function as genuinely distinct markets. CZB presented data and analysis separately for the City of Syracuse and the rest of the county, then broke the remaining county into sub-regions so officials in individual towns and villages could see exactly where their community fit within the larger regional picture. That approach surfaced the city’s weak market, a history of suburban sprawl, changing suburban demographics, and unmet rental housing needs as the central housing challenges facing Onondaga County over the coming decades, and led to a recommendation that the county and its key municipalities work together to adjust planning, zoning, and housing programs to better match the housing being built to the households who will actually need it.
The Housing Onondaga analysis and its executive summary gave county and municipal leaders a shared, evidence-based understanding of a housing market already in transition, along with clear direction for tilting new housing production toward rental units and smaller unit sizes. That direction positions the suburbs and the City of Syracuse to grow smart together, rather than continuing to build housing for households that are steadily becoming the exception rather than the rule.
