Op-Ed: Vacant Rental Program provides relief for renters and landlords

This month, I joined Buffalo resident Daniel Adams, owner of Kerns Avenue Bowling Center, to celebrate the start of renovations on two long-vacant rental units above his beloved bowling alley on Buffalo’s East Side. Daniel is the first local recipient of a grant from New York’s Vacant Rental Program.

The Vacant Rental Program is a new state program I proposed early last year to help property owners turn uninhabitable units into affordable rentals for years to come. The program was designed to address our region’s shortage of high-quality, affordable housing while also creating a new income stream for homeowners and small business owners like Daniel, who own older homes or businesses with attached rental units that sit vacant because repairs are unaffordable. New York has set aside $80 million to fund Vacant Rental Program grants, but we’ve gotten so much interest in the program that we’re already working on expanding it in the coming years. 

Here’s how the program works: Community organizations and local governments here in Western New York and across Upstate New York have received money from New York State to distribute grants of up to $75,000 per unit to small, local, responsible landlords who apply for grants in their regions. In exchange for the grants, the property owners are required to rent the renovated units at affordable rates for at least 10 years. More details are available at hcr.ny.gov/vrp.

We wanted to make sure the money would be used where it would be most impactful, and we know that these organizations understand the local landscape better than state administrators. Each application is carefully vetted by the local organizations and then the applications that are selected are sent for approval by New York’s Department of Homes and Community Renewal.

Buffalo has some of the oldest housing stock in the nation, and the organizations distributing grant funding within the city quickly received a long list of applicants and have spent recent months selecting recipients. But for residents of the surrounding suburbs—like Kenmore, Tonawanda, and Amherst—applications are still open through Belmont Housing Resources for WNY, which is responsible for distributing these grants throughout the rest of Erie and Niagara Counties.

Restoring these units to livable conditions benefits everyone. It reduces blight in our neighborhoods, it adds more affordable options to the rental market, and the new rental income helps businesses and homeowners maintain their properties. In Daniel Adams’s case, it’s allowing him to keep his bowling alley open and thriving as a beloved community asset. For another local Vacant Rental Program grant recipient named Earnest who joined us for the announcement, the grant is helping him maintain the house he inherited from his mother and secure generational wealth for his family.

This program is already changing lives, and I’m proud to have secured this funding in the New York State budget two years in a row. I look forward to it continuing to provide new opportunities to Western New Yorkers like Dan and Earnest for years to come.