Can Rochester, New York Point the Way for Climate Havens?

This article is part of The Rooftop, a blog and multimedia series from New America’s Future of Land and Housing program. Featuring insights from experts across diverse fields, the series is a home for bold ideas to improve housing in the United States and globally.

As the once-home of a thriving business sector that included Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb, the current home to Wegmans and more than a dozen universities, and the resting place of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, Rochester, New York is an historic Rust Belt city trying to remake itself in today’s economy.

Climate migration may provide Rochester with a chance for revitalization. Along with other Great Lakes communities, it has been named a climate haven attracting internal migration to escape extreme weather impacts. As a resident I have been surprised to already meet folks moving here mostly from the Southeast, counter to many national real-estate narratives.

Rochester’s ongoing transformation captures both the promise and difficulty in becoming a climate haven. On one hand, leaders in Rochester have already begun investing for the future. The city is tearing down and filling in a highway that cut through predominantly Black communities. Along with neighboring Syracuse, it recently became a Vision Zero community to reduce traffic-related deaths to zero by promoting active and safe transit. And it is pursuing other climate and economic development policies to attract and retain people.

However, the city’s efforts to become climate-resilient are complicated by its aging housing stock and unique mix of renters and homeowners. Rochester’s ability to overcome those challenges will determine whether it becomes a climate success story—or a cautionary tale.

Older, Single-Family Housing Stock and Split Incentives

When it comes to the impact of climate change on the built environment, most attention goes toward important features for new construction: Buildings should be all electric, highly efficient, and created with capacity for electric vehicles, solar, energy storage, and other technological developments. But older construction will also be necessary for net-zero emissions and can help reduce the housing cost burden, especially for renters. Around 80 percent of existing buildings globally will still be around and in use in 2050, the year by which most organizations and governments have committed to achieving net zero emissions, and rehabilitating them is typically much less carbon-intensive than building new structures. The needs for these older buildings are much more nuanced, but equally deserving of attention.

Another complicating factor is that between 60 and 70 percent of Rochester households are renter-occupied, compared to an average closer to 35 percent in other mid-size U.S. cities. Despite the high percentage of rentals, Rochester residents are not more transient than other communities: Many families in Rochester have lived in the same housing for decades, including in rented single-family homes (about 30 percent of single-family detached homes in Rochester are rented).

“Despite the high percentage of rentals, Rochester residents are not more transient than other communities.”

The high concentration of long-term renters presents a split incentive. Landlords who don’t pay for their tenants’ utility usage will not benefit from energy savings, while renters who don’t own their equipment and appliances have little reason or agency to replace them with more energy-efficient models.

This dynamic complicates the use of rebates, tax breaks, and grants available through the federal Inflation Reduction Act or state and local programs to support certain climate-resilient investments. Pursuing these programs can be difficult, especially for renters who cannot prove ownership of related equipment and for owners who don’t know their properties’ day-to-day energy usage.

In a city with historic single-family housing owned by mom-and-pop landlords like Rochester, some of the most efficient upgrades may be financially infeasible without the right supports, or technically impossible and will require workarounds.

Housing Policy Is Climate Policy

Good housing policy is good climate policy and vice versa. Important housing reforms include upzoning and fundamentally shifting our codes to change the density of our spaces from being only single-family homes or allowing more commercial and residential space intermixed, as well as eliminating minimum numbers of parking spaces or requirements to construct two sets of stairs for some building types. These policies are also good for the climate: they use less materials, encourage alternative modes of transportation that pollute less and are healthier for us than driving, and create efficiencies in heating and cooling among multiple units versus single-family homes. Still, the existing single-family housing stock in Rochester cannot be ignored.

The Climate Solutions Accelerator of the Genesee-Finger Lakes Region, based in Rochester, is exploring ways to make the most of this symbiotic relationship. It recently funded a collaborative research project with the Urban Institute to bring together landlords, tenants, energy efficiency advocates, along with city, county, and other stakeholders, to leverage and enhance existing processes around rental property registration and inspection with a goal of both reducing emissions and energy costs (which are housing costs).

This is particularly relevant in an era where increasingly extreme temperatures due to climate change mean that households are spending more on heating and cooling (if they even have air conditioning). As a climate haven, Rochester may see significantly reduced effects than other areas, but it's still not something the city can ignore.

“Increasingly extreme temperatures due to climate change mean that households are spending more on heating and cooling.”

There’s a template for processes to address a split incentive: Rochester’s own Certificate of Occupancy that includes a lead-paint provision. It offers a pathway without overburdening landlords and municipalities, while framing a focus on tenant safety and wellbeing.

While many people would prefer not to live in a home with lead paint, landlords may not proactively remove it without this requirement. In higher-cost housing, such safety measures are expected, but enforcement at the municipal level ensures renters have safe conditions regardless of housing type and at the expense of the landlord. This cost-effective public health success has become a national model and demonstrates that some regulations are necessary when market incentives do not align.

Given little federal action on climate change, or potentially even national policy that creates barriers to success, it is worth focusing on tenant protections and climate goals/energy efficiency at the local and state levels. Opportunities to move forward include:

• Adding energy efficiency requirements to existing rental inspections and approvals like the Certificate of Occupancy
• Creating state requirements for utilities to enable data sharing between landlords and tenants, which may spur voluntary action from landlords
• Increasing state funding for existing incentives and programs like Empower+ and creating new ones
• Recognizing the intersection of health, safety, cost of living, and climate through state and local land use planning
• Public leaders acknowledging the economic potential—and obligations —of being named a climate haven
• Increasing awareness of the power of electrification and tools for homeowners, landlords, and renters
• Considering bigger changes to the system: Some in Rochester are advocating for a publicly owned utility as an alternative to the current ownership by Rochester Gas & Electric, part of the publicly traded multinational company Avangrid/Iberdrola, citing the needs for local investment and climate action among other reasons. Meanwhile, the proposed NY HEAT Act seeks to cap utility bills at 6 percent of income.

Rochester has a real opportunity, one it seems to be starting to embrace, to make its housing better for current residents and create opportunity for future migration to the city all while balancing affordable, clean, and safe housing in the larger area and achieving necessary climate targets. There is ample room for efficiency gains that could benefit tenants while also ideally extending the life of buildings for landlords, ensuring stability for both those owning and living in a building. It will take a cross-community, cross-sector approach—but that is nothing new for Rochesterians.

Editor’s note: The views expressed in the articles on The Rooftop are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy positions of New America.