As Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS) celebrates 50 years of service to Ithaca, a lot has changed. The people, the fashions, the technology. But INHS Executive Director Kate de la Garza says the core mission remains the same.

Since its founding on Sept. 28, 1976, INHS has served thousands of households in Ithaca and the broader region. It was established as a grassroots organization to help prevent displacement and revitalize Ithaca’s Southside and adjacent urban neighborhoods, with its first “headquarters” in a modest house at 520 W. Green St. INHS purchased the property for $14,000, and it was furnished with donated furniture. 

Its first projects were smaller endeavors: rehabilitating rundown homes, providing repair assistance for low-income homeowners and using grants to pay for neighborhood cleanup and beautification efforts. Among the first homes INHS saved from the wrecking ball in the 1970s was 213 S. Plain St., which still stands today.

While it started with modest projects, INHS has grown into a community pillar over the last 50 years. In 1978, INHS launched its homeownership assistance program, helping working-class prospective homebuyers. The program assists with down payments and financial assistance with closing costs, one-on-one financial counseling and homebuyer education courses. INHS also expanded into renting. The organization has increasingly become a property manager of income-restricted rental housing, and through the decades, an affordable housing developer.

Today, INHS has more than 50 staff. It has provided financial assistance to more than 1,350 first-time lower-income homebuyers. Nearly 11,000 households have taken part in its counseling sessions and homebuyer education classes. INHS has 1,200 residents across 650 apartments in 36 properties and well over 100 owner-occupied homes in its community housing trust. 

INHS still has Ithaca in its name, but its  service area now stretches across the Finger Lakes and Southern Tier, an expansion that was partly facilitated by its 2006 merger with Better Housing for Tompkins County, a more rural-focused housing organization.

But, through these changes and additions to INHS’s functions, the goal has remained the same: to strengthen the communities it serves by enabling safe, secure, affordable housing options, and to enhance the communities where it operates. 

“We’ve been around so long and we’ve served so many people. We’re looking at how we are really representing and driving impact in housing across our service area,” de la Garza said.

De la Garza did note that change and evolution bring concerns. As INHS has expanded its programs to adjacent counties, there’s always the worry that Ithaca and Tompkins will lose some of that energy and focus. She stressed that logistically, INHS has worked to modernize its systems, add staff and address concerns as they arise. A project in the City of Ithaca is going to be designed differently than a rural project in Cayuga or Ovid. 

However, she made clear that Ithaca’s housing affordability issue is no longer just Ithaca’s issue. 

“There’s this acute pressure that in some ways has always been felt in Ithaca. But in the last ten years, the income disparity and lack of housing options has only grown more here, and spread further,” de la Garza said.

De la Garza said INHS has increasingly had clients in places surrounding cities like Cortland and Elmira face housing costs that outstrip their incomes. 

“We’ve seen the variables around supply and demand here in Ithaca spreading that unaffordability through our entire service area,” de la Garza said.

Construction costs have continued to soar, and grant funds from D.C. have dried up. Housing issues have only grown as income disparities widen and affordability concerns remain at the forefront of economic worries.

“There are a lot of headwinds right now,” de la Garza said.

Amidst the challenges it has faced, INHS has benefited from a supportive local and regional community, as well as state efforts to provide assistance to housing efforts, which have been a major focus of the governor’s agenda. The Village Grove Apartments in Trumansburg and the Wheat Street Apartments in Cayuga were both completed in recent years. 

INHS just submitted two housing grant applications for a 56-unit senior housing development and daycare on the 200 block of West State Street in the City of Ithaca, and for the 50-unit “Polaris” apartment project it is pursuing in the Cayuga County City of Auburn. INHS also continues to renovate the Compass manufactured housing community it purchased in Trumansburg.

“The story of INHS is as much about our ability to innovate and pivot in the face of challenges, as it is about the buildings we build and the people we serve. To be where we are at 50 is to demonstrate how we’ve met every challenge,” said de la Garza. “We’ve kept at the repair program with different funding sources, our housing typology has evolved with modular housing. While there’s so much threat, we’ve adapted to these challenges. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

On the programmatic side, de la Garza said that INHS recently added a full-time and part-time social worker to its resident services department as the nonprofit is giving increasing attention to housing stability. 

“As we’re seeing continued erosion of our social safety net, making sure we can help people stay housed is really important. It’s just the reality of our world,” de la Garza said. 

Another key component of INHS’s 50 years in Ithaca is not just being a facilitator of housing, but a good neighbor and employer too. De la Garza made clear distinctions between the way INHS manages its properties versus other local properties that she deliberately would not name.

One notable project that might fit that description is the Asteri Ithaca development. Local officials and members of the broader Ithaca community have criticized the troubled housing complex. After months of mounting sanitary and fire safety issues, the Ithaca Fire Department issued an order to vacate the building in March. The evacuated residents began to return about two weeks after the order was issued, but reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions have persisted.

De la Garza described it as “hard to see other owners fall down” on fair, safe housing. While declining to go into detail, she stated that INHS accepted about 20 households seeking to leave Asteri Ithaca.

De la Garza stated that INHS takes a more active managerial role in addressing issues as they arise, is more engaged with the community before, during and after development, and is a living wage employer that makes sure staffing is adequate and properly trained to handle any issues that arise, whether they involve construction, maintenance or tenant disputes. By being proactive and supporting its staff, its tenants and the community, de la Garza said INHS has been able to overcome many of the concerns that affordable housing creates for surrounding residents and ensure that its housing services are a community asset rather than a burden.

“What does accountability look like? In communities that we build in, we see a lot of different approaches, and that’s the best way I can say it. But for us, we cannot show up and just be good. I want us to be the best in this space for those that we serve,” said de la Garza. “We have to be good to each other, we have to be a living wage employer and care for our front-line staff. I would put my property maintenance team up against anybody in this town, in terms of quality. We invest in our mission through the people that we hire.”

In particular, de la Garza drew attention to Trumansburg’s Village Grove, which was the subject of intense local pushback during planning. She acknowledged she was “a little scared” when she became director of INHS due to the history and acrimony. During construction, she regularly walked the neighboring streets knocking door-to-door to solicit feedback and actively engage neighbors to resolve issues promptly. Today, it’s widely seen as a good neighbor, home to many longtime village residents and one of the village’s three police officers. The most recent issue has been spring peeper frogs being too loud in the stormwater pond.

“If that’s the biggest complaint in the last few months, I’ll take it. We run a very tight ship,” said de la Garza.

As INHS looks toward those next 50 years, it still looks back at its past and the people who helped shape it. The senior housing in Ithaca will be named “The Lucy”, in honor of the late Lucy Brown, a devoted housing advocate and board member of INHS for nearly 40 years.

“We’re able to leverage our team, our approach, our local support. That’s the key to our success. There’s a fear we won’t be accountable. We take our community accountability very seriously,” de la Garza said.