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State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Discusses Land Bank Funding in Syracuse

Max Brady, WAER News

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pointed to a homeowner and a neighborhood on Syracuse’s Near West Side today as an example of how he plans to dedicate money to the state’s land banks.  He stopped by Haydee Rolon’s house on Marcellus Street to announce his intention to allocate $20 million more in relief for the neighborhoods by addressing vacant properties.

Schneiderman has secured roughly $2 billion in relief to homeowners throughout the state from last year’s settlement with five banks. 

“It is harder to get other people to move in – they are magnets of crime.  And I have been persuaded that the right vehicle to solving this problem is for us to take another portion of the settlement money that we continue to get from banks that engaged in misconduct to fund the land banks around NY state that have the power to purchase,” said Schneiderman.  “And either demolish or rehabilitate abandoned properties and make these neighborhood’s revival a priority that can go beyond the individual homeowner.”
 

Home Headquarters has helped place 35 homeowners in either new houses or substantially renovated ones.

“Haydee was really smart, and she said, ‘Well, this is great I love this.  But what are you going to do about the house next door?  What are you going to do about the house across the street, or the three vacants down the street?’”  Kerry Quaglia, the agency’s executive director, said.  
 

Haydee Rolon is a single mother of three, and bought her first house last October. 
 

“I look forward to the day when every house on this block can look beautiful, and just have no broken windows, no boarded up houses and are safe,” Rolon said.