Investing in Housing

On Sunday there was an article in Syracuse's Post-Standard's Empire section.  It detailed Ken Craig's quest to help people on the East Side of Syracuse find housing at the same time he renovated old homes.

Over the past few years we have gone to Syracuse University basketball games and I have taken "the road less traveled" to find a parking spot in Thornden park by the rose gardens.  I grew up in the area - my home backed onto Thornden and the lilac trees.  I slid down the Big Hill in the winter, swam in the pool in the summer, and - while it seems quite amazing to me now - freely roamed the park with my friends as a kid. We skated at night and walked home - several girls, laughing and playing.  My mother walked her dogs daily until she came to live with us.  It was a different time then.

Now we race through the area, but I like going back.  We noticed all the homes being renovated and pointed out to each other the changes on Beech and East Genesee, East Fayette.  Amazing homes...well-kept up homes too.  Brightly lit, freshly painted.  And now I know who started all that...and I am very appreciative! Thank you, Tim Knauss, for your article!

Twenty-five years ago Ken Craig left The Pyramid Companies and struck out to make changes.  He was still relatively young to leave - only 54 by my calculations - but he wanted to do something positive for the East Side.

He was an entrepreneur, and lived on credit cards and hope to pay his own way.  Now he takes a good salary and is CEO of Housing Visions Unlimited.  That little social entrepreneurship start-up has now raised over $300 million dollars to refurbish/renovate low-income housing.  He maintained control over the homes to keep them looking beautiful, to never let them succumb to the fate of other projects.

They have also rebuilt the Cherry Hill apartments into Maple Heights that you can see from 690 east of the city.  The site of the old Jewish Community Center on East Genesee is now a 50-unit apartment for homeless vets.  (I think this was one reason that Syracuse is one of the few - if the only - city in the nation to have met the challenge by the federal admnistration of seeing no vet homeless.)

So now as I wind my way from the Teall exit to Beech to the park entrance I will know who to thank as we go by these homes.  Thank you, Ken Craig, for taking care of my old stomping grounds!