Essex County Land Bank completes second home renovation, expands property search

Housing officials celebrate $200K Lewis project while launching countywide search for more properties to renovate

By Tim Rowland

As Essex County supervisors and housing officials cut the ribbon on the second home to be renovated by the Essex County Land Bank last week, they were already plotting how to find more of what they know they have too many of: dilapidated houses.

The land bank, just three years old, has nine properties under its control, and earlier this month, Nicole Justice Green, executive director of the North Country Rural Development Coalition, told supervisors the agency had run out of project properties and was looking for more.

“All the properties that you all donated to the land bank two years ago, we’ve completed, and so we need more work to do—which is a good thing,” she said.

Part of a new wave of inventory is expected to come from the county’s annual inventory of properties that have been foreclosed on and are headed for the auction block in November. Theoretically, the winners at these auctions can buy a property for next to nothing, then fix them up and return them to the tax rolls. But the reality is far different.

The latest land bank success, located just off Interstate 87 on Stowersville Road in Lewis, is a case in point. Lewis Supervisor Jim Monty said it was purchased at auction 30 years ago by a religious sect for $500 and used as a flophouse for their journeys between New York City and Montreal. They neither fixed it up nor paid a dime in taxes.

Monty said he had driven past the property “thousands of times” and watched as it fell further into decay. However, it had been built a century ago to last, and the roof timbers and foundation were still good.

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Green said the first thing her team must do when presented with a new property is assess whether it makes more financial sense to rehabilitate it or tear it down. In the case of Stowersville, it was—despite its outward appearance—good enough to save. That’s preferred, because it preserves the character of the community.

“We also were able to do some historic preservation in the home,” she said. “We saved the historic fireplace and the beams, which is also a really important element to the work that we’re doing, because the historic character of these homes in your communities, when we’re able to go in and do these gut rehabilitations, is really important to salvage.”

Also crucial to the land bank’s first two projects has been finding a community-oriented contractor—Todd Stevens Construction—willing to do the work at a time when many contractors prefer to work on big, more profitable vacation homes.

Rehabilitation cost $200,000, which in this case was cost-effective. “To demolish this home would have cost about $150,000 because of the asbestos,” Green said. “To place a new, modular home would probably be about $300,000 to $400,000, not including the septic replacement. So this is why we chose to do this gut rehabilitation of this home.”

The house will sell for $170,000, and the land bank is currently accepting applications from prospective homeowners. Two other land bank homes are nearing completion in Ticonderoga, and one in Newcomb.

To be eligible, prospective owners must be within certain income limits, although they are not as strict as typical affordable-housing projects.

Expanding the search

In pursuit of more properties, a supervisors’ committee also voted earlier this month to conduct a study to identify zombie homes throughout the county. County Manager Mike Mascarenas said he expects the search will be performed by the Lake Champlain-Lake George Regional Planning Board in conjunction with town code officers.

This will serve the goal of providing more affordable housing, and also of cleaning up rural blight, he said.

Meanwhile, another agency, Adirondack Roots, is working with financially challenged homeowners to repair homes before they become too far gone. “The best way to prevent (blight) is to keep them from becoming zombie homes to begin with,” said Roots Executive Director Megan Murphy.

Game-changing construction method

The Newcomb project nearing completion is the land bank’s first Cross-Mod, which state and local housing officials believe can be a game changer in the search for affordable housing options. These can be mass-produced cheaply like manufactured homes (known over the years as mobile homes or double-wides) but have the same structural durability as modular homes, which can qualify for traditional 30-year mortgages.

“The total, all-in development cost is $260,000, so this is profoundly inexpensive compared to other modular construction,” Green said. The project was made more affordable because the Town of Newcomb donated the land.

Still, whether rehabilitation or new construction, affordable housing is not cheap. “These are properties that are really on the precipice,” Green said. “Only through state and federal reinvestment can we bring them back to life.”

Photo at top: The latest addition to the Essex County Land Bank portfolio on Stowersville Road in Lewis, where supervisors held a ribbon cutting Aug. 18. Photo by Tim Rowland