The City of Rochester hired CZB in 2018 to produce a citywide housing market study that would inform the development of a new comprehensive plan.
Using dozens of local data sources, CZB built a market typology detailed enough to work down to the block level, revealing areas of strength and momentum, areas of continued weakness, and areas that looked stable on the surface but were highly vulnerable to decline. The analysis also pointed to a harder truth: Rochester’s affordability challenges were rooted in low incomes, not high housing costs, and nearly all new housing development in the city needed some form of subsidy to happen at all. That fine-grained portrait gave Rochester something it hadn’t had before: a real, evidence-based understanding of exactly where its housing market stood, and why.
The study went a step further, providing strategic direction on the outcomes to pursue in each type of market, giving the city and its partners a clear way to guide future housing and neighborhood interventions.
Data and policy direction from the study became essential content for Rochester’s new comprehensive plan, adopted by the City in 2019.
Reach out for more information about this project or to see the final document.
