The state has given Essex County the green light to create a land bank.

The Essex County Board of Supervisors on Monday announced that Empire State Development, which oversees the state’s land banks, approved the county’s proposed land bank, which has been in the works for around two years.

A land bank is a tool to create more housing in a community, most often by pulling derelict homes from foreclosure auctions and rehabilitating them for resale. Essex County’s affordable housing crisis, paired with the area’s pandemic real estate market boom, have diminished the availability of all types of housing across the county and has had ripple effects across the county, namely on employment. Within the county government alone, there are 75 job vacancies, according to Lewis town Supervisor and Essex County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman Jim Monty. That put pressure on county officials to take steps toward creating more housing that’s affordable to people who live here.

In 2011, New York passed legislation allowing land banks to combat the presence of “vacant and abandoned” municipalities across the state, according to Empire State Development. Currently, the state allows a maximum of 35 land banks to be created. Essex County is the second county in the North Country to get approval for a land bank, the 28th to be created in the state. Franklin County got state approval for its land bank a few months ago, becoming the 27th land bank in the state. Most of the state’s land banks are located in the southern/southwest portion of the state, though Ogdensburg created a land bank in 2018.

Essex County’s land bank process was born from the board of supervisors’ low- to moderate-income housing task force and was spearheaded by Monty, board of supervisors Chair and Willsboro town Supervisor Shaun Gillilland, Essex town Supervisor Ken Hughes, and county Manager Michael Mascarenas, among others. Monty called the creation of the land bank a true “team effort.”

A land bank is an entity separate from the county government. Land banks are typically administered by a nonprofit organization rather than a municipality or county. The county has already done some legwork and signed a memorandum of understanding with PRIDE of Ticonderoga, a preexisting nonprofit that has nearly 40 years of experience with rehabilitating owner-occupied homes, to administer the land bank.

PRIDE will work with the county to take properties that have years of delinquent taxes and are run-down or vacant and transfer them to the land bank to renovate and sell to citizens for housing. These properties could be safety hazards, eyesores or empty prime real estate that could be rehabilitated and used for business or housing. However, Essex County’s land bank could also build modular homes on vacant lots, create green spaces in the place of blighted homes located in a flood zone, and demolish decayed properties to build new modular homes. If the cost of rehabilitating a home is greater than the cost of a new modular home, PRIDE Executive Director Nicole Justice Green said, PRIDE would opt to build a modular home.

Before the land bank was given the green light by the state, Essex County’s board of supervisors got a head start on the land bank process, picking up a foreclosed property last year in Upper Jay. This single-family home is first on the list for Essex County’s land bank rehabilitation projects. While the home in Upper Jay is viable for rehabilitation, according to the county’s land bank website, it will require “significant work.” Justice Green hopes the home could be rehabilitated by this fall, but that depends on the availability of contractors to complete the work. PRIDE wants to take its time on the first land bank project to “get it right” the first time.

Once a land bank home is complete, PRIDE will officially list the home for sale. The county and PRIDE won’t net a profit when a land bank home sells. All of the money from each sale would go right back into the land bank, Justice Green said, creating a cyclical source of money for a steady flow of new land bank projects. PRIDE would also seek funding for new projects from state and federal grants. The county dedicated $300,000 of its ARPA funds — federal funding for COVID relief — to get the land bank work started in Upper Jay.

Home prices will be aimed at people who make 120% of the Area Median Income or below, though some state grants require that buyers make no more than 80% of the AMI. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Essex County’s AMI to be around $61,563, according to data from 2021. At the heart of Essex County’s land bank is the need for more affordable housing across the county, Justice Green said, so PRIDE’s goal is to make the homes affordable for people who live and work in the area. Based on who applies and qualifies for the homes, properties will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

Justice Green hopes that, once the land bank is well-established, PRIDE could rehabilitate as many as 10 properties for the land bank each year. In the last year, she said PRIDE rehabbed nearly 15 properties. She said Essex County supervisors hoped that PRIDE could rehab between three and five homes in the first year of the land bank, which she believes is an attainable goal.

The success of the land bank depends entirely on town supervisors in Essex County, Justice Green said. Supervisors must agree with their town boards to donate foreclosed or vacant properties to the land bank. Then, the entire Essex County Board of Supervisors has to approve the property for the land bank before construction or rehabilitation can begin. The county is approaching a foreclosure auction, and Justice Green is already eyeing some properties that might work for the land bank.

Justice Green sees the Essex County land bank as one tool in a wheelhouse of methods she believes are necessary to address the county’s affordable housing crisis, including new affordable housing developments like the McKenzie Overlook in Lake Placid, PRIDE’s owner-occupied rehab program, and HUD-certified counseling programs offered by PRIDE and the Housing Assistance Program of Essex County.

“It took us decades to get into this crisis, and it’s going to decades to get out of it,” Justice Green said. “And it’s not a one size fits all approach — especially because we’re in the Adirondack Park,” where restrictions on new developments are tighter than in many other areas across the state.