Chautauqua County is looking to implement a countywide strategy to help improve the housing market.

A Chautauqua County official presented to Jamestown’s Planning Commission recently about ongoing work being done with the county’s Housing Market Assessment and Development Strategy.

Rebecca Wurster, planning coordinator for the Chautauqua County Department of Planning and Development and the Chautauqua County Partnership for Economic Growth, presented to the commission via Zoom, saying that for her role in the partnership they were looking for housing projects for the county to support. She said the strategy came from approaching multiple municipalities and asking about their housing markets.

“On the other side of things with my county hat, we had been talking with a lot of new municipalities about developers coming into their community, housing developers specifically, and asking them ‘Do you have a housing market study when they’re thinking about doing a housing project?'” Wurster said. “And the answer was always no. So, we found that there was a gap there and there was a need to do a county-wide comprehensive housing strategy to prioritize projects that we could be slowly going after to improve housing in Chautauqua County, but also have that document available to developers when they’re coming in to better understand our market.”

Wurster’s presentation focused on the process of developing their strategy, the goals and strategies throughout the process, and implementation of action items that they identified. The process for developing the report began with identifying things such as existing housing conditions, a market analysis, needs assessment, engagement in the municipalities, goal areas, strategies, and more than 80 action items before reaching the final report.

Wurster addressed some data for Chautauqua County in the housing market compared to New York state, also focusing specifically on the city of Jamestown and Dunkirk for data. The beginning of the process for the county looked at specific existing conditions in the housing markets from 2022 to 2027, looking at things such as a decreasing population, a slight reduction in projected households and number of people in households and the older population. Wurster said the median age of people is also expected to be getting a little bit older as well.

Other demographics looked at for the strategy include daytime populations, inclement poverty — with a high poverty level of 24% in Jamestown compared to 17% in the county — special populations such as seniors and those with disabilities, both of which had a high percentage in Jamestown, along with single-headed households with children under 18. All of these special populations and demographics are things that were taken into account by the county, Wurster said, to look towards creating safe, affordable and equitable housing for those populations.

Occupancy status and tenure are two other things that were looked at by the county.

“When you think about your housing units in the city of Jamestown, there’s 14,430 total units,” Wurster said. “Out of that 87% is occupied and then we wanted to further look at owner and renter occupation. 44% is owner occupied while 42.9% or 43% is renter occupied.”

The big number there, Wurster said, is vacancy rates. Of the 13.1% of properties that are vacant, Wurster said, 65.8% falls under the other vacant category, which Wurster said means vacancy reasons including owners not wanting to sell or rent, using it for possible storage units, some are in nursing homes or with families, and units being held by the state or being renovated and foreclosures.

“That’s something to keep in mind when you’re thinking about your vacant units in Jamestown,” Wurster said. “As you can see, Chautauqua County has a large vacancy as well, but really what stands out in those terms is that seasonal, recreational, occasional uses and when you think about the lakes, the homes surrounding that really account for a lot of that percentage.”

Other data and percentages Wurster presented to the board include; the real estate activity for single family and multi-family homes in the county, and what type of housing is needed through a needs assessment. In needs assessment, Wurster looked at the cost of houses in Jamestown for owner and renter occupied, saying that many are under cost burden, or making it hard for people to handle the general cost of living while also buying or renting a home. Calculations also looked at what housing units are obsolete and the needs of specific neighborhoods. Senior housing, and homelessness — which has seen a major increase in Chautauqua County, with a number of more than 800 based on data from the county — were also included in the needs assessment.

Wurster said stakeholder engagement was a big piece of coming up with the housing strategy, including stakeholder interviews, which allowed them to come up with four goal areas of housing diversity and quality, housing for special populations, reducing cost burden and land management tools and resources. Wurster then wrapped up with the implementation of the plan and overall strategy.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” Wurster said. “We need to do a lot of work to improve our housing in Chautauqua County but we’ve seen progress with quite a few housing developments. … We’ll continue to work to try and make that reality.”

Wurster’s presentation ended with a time for questions and answers from the planning commission board.