NSPIRE Wire is independent and not affiliated with HUD.
New York State marked another completion under its five-year housing plan on October 21, 2026, when Governor Kathy Hochul announced that Stately Apartments, a $32 million mixed-use development in Ithaca, is finished and leasing. The project delivers 57 affordable homes in Tompkins County, with 20 of them reserved as supportive apartments for people leaving homelessness, including survivors of domestic violence.
The building was developed by Visum Development Group, Rockabill Development, and Arbor Housing and Development. Apartments are reserved for households earning up to 60 percent of the area median income, and the property mixes studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units to accommodate different household sizes. Six apartments are fully accessible and adapted for residents with mobility disabilities, and three are adapted for residents with sensory disabilities.
The 20 supportive units are the piece of this deal that affordable housing operators will study. On-site services are provided by Catholic Charities of Tompkins/Tioga and include case management, financial planning, social wellness programming, and trauma-informed support. Those services are funded through the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative, administered by the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports, which is providing more than $2.4 million for the program.
The pairing is deliberate. Supportive housing only works when the service funding is as durable as the bricks, and New York's model of routing service dollars through a separate state agency with its own appropriation is one reason these units tend to stay staffed and stable after the ribbon cutting. The project also drew $4 million from the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance's Homeless Housing and Assistance Program, the state's main capital source for housing that serves homeless households.
Reserving supportive units for survivors of domestic violence carries operational obligations that go beyond standard supportive housing practice. Survivor-serving properties typically manage confidentiality more tightly, limit how resident information appears in building systems, and coordinate with the service provider on safety planning. Managers new to this population should expect the service partner, in this case Catholic Charities of Tompkins/Tioga, to lead on those protocols, and should build them into house rules, visitor policies, and staff training from day one rather than after the first incident.
The capital stack on Stately Apartments is a textbook New York affordable housing structure. Federal and state Low-Income Housing Tax Credits awarded through Homes and Community Renewal are expected to generate more than $17 million in equity, against a $32 million total development cost. HCR added more than $6 million in direct subsidy. The Clean Energy Initiative, a partnership between HCR and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, contributed more than $427,000, reflecting the building's all-electric design. Tompkins County's Community Housing Development Fund added $100,000.
The equity figure deserves a second look. More than $17 million in credit equity on a $32 million deal means the tax credit is doing more than half the heavy lifting, which is typical for New York deals that pair the federal credit with the state credit. It also means the project's affordability commitments, including the 60 percent AMI cap, ride with that equity for decades under the credit's compliance regime. For the households who move in, the financing structure is invisible; for the owner, it defines the property's rent schedule, reporting obligations, and operating margins for the compliance period and beyond.
Two things are worth noting in that stack. First, tax credit equity covers barely more than half the cost, which is why every layer of gap funding matters and why completions like this take years of assembly. Second, the clean energy money is small in dollar terms but signals how New York now expects new affordable construction to be all-electric, with energy funding braided into housing deals from the start rather than retrofitted later.
Nine of the 57 apartments, six for residents with mobility disabilities and three for residents with sensory disabilities, are fully accessible and adapted. That is roughly 16 percent of the building, a share worth noting because accessibility is where many affordable developments do the minimum and stop. Adapted units also change operations: they require matching during lease-up, specific features maintained in working order, and staff who understand that a broken automatic door opener in an adapted unit is not a routine work order.
The all-electric design also has an operations angle. All-electric buildings shift the property's entire energy load, including heating, onto systems that management must maintain well, because there is no gas backup when a heat pump fails in January. The Clean Energy Initiative contribution is modest, but the design commitment behind it is the kind that shapes maintenance budgets and emergency planning for the life of the building.
The development includes ground-floor commercial space, a community room, an outdoor children's play area, a garden, and a patio. Its location is walking distance to schools, public transportation, restaurants and small businesses, the Cayuga Waterfront Trail, the Ithaca Farmers Market, and the Ithaca Children's Garden. For a project serving families and formerly homeless households, that walkability is not a marketing line; it is the difference between a unit that connects residents to work, school, and services and one that strands them.
Ithaca is a classic constrained college-town market: a major university anchoring demand, limited developable land, and rents that pressure exactly the workforce households a 60 percent AMI property serves. Developments like Stately Apartments do not solve that equation by themselves, but they add stable, rent-restricted supply in a market where new unrestricted construction often prices well above what service workers, school employees, and fixed-income older adults can pay. The county's own Community Housing Development Fund contributing $100,000 shows the locality putting skin in the game alongside the state.
Stately Apartments lands inside the Governor's $25 billion, five-year Housing Plan, which the state says is on track to create or preserve 100,000 affordable homes statewide. HCR reports it has created or preserved nearly 800 affordable homes in Tompkins County alone under the current administration. Upstate completions matter to that math: New York City's pipeline gets the attention, but smaller metros like Ithaca face some of the state's tightest rental markets, driven by university demand and limited land, and each 57-unit building moves the local needle more than its size suggests.
Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand both tied the completion to the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, with Schumer pointing to the credit's role in delivering the equity behind the 57 units. That is a useful reminder of where the largest single share of this capital stack originates, at a moment when the credit's future is a live topic in Congress.
New York's housing plan remains one of the largest state-level housing commitments in the country, and completions announcements like this one are the administration's way of showing the pipeline is converting to finished units, not just awards. For an industry audience, the distinction matters: capital stacks only become housing when deals close, get built, and lease up, and the gap between award and completion is where many projects stall. A 57-unit completion in Ithaca is, in that sense, a small but real data point that the machinery is working.
For developers working in smaller upstate markets, Stately Apartments is a current example of a complete New York capital stack: 4 percent-style layered financing with credit equity, HCR subsidy, homeless housing capital, supportive service funding, clean energy money, and a county housing fund contribution. Seven distinct public sources closed into one $32 million deal. The coordination burden is real, but so is the proof that deals of this size pencil in secondary markets.
For property managers, the operational takeaway is the service model. Twenty units with funded, on-site, trauma-informed services means lease-up involves coordinated referrals and eligibility documentation, and ongoing operations require a working relationship between management staff and the service provider. Properties that treat the service partner as a vendor rather than a co-operator tend to learn that lesson the hard way.
With construction complete, the work shifts to lease-up and stabilization. That means marketing the units through the channels the financing programs require, processing eligibility for the 60 percent AMI apartments, coordinating supportive-unit referrals with the state and the service provider, and standing up the operating budget the layered financing assumes. The first year of operations is also when the compliance machinery, income certifications, reporting to HCR and the tax credit investor, and service-funding documentation, gets tested for real. How smoothly that goes will say more about the project's long-term success than the ribbon cutting does.
Stately Apartments adds 57 affordable homes, 20 of them supportive, to one of upstate New York's most supply-constrained markets. The $32 million project shows the full New York toolkit in action: tax credit equity, state subsidy, homeless housing capital, supportive services funding, and clean energy money, plus a county contribution. Completions like this are how the state's 100,000-home goal actually gets reached, one small market at a time.
New York officials announced the October 21 completion of Stately Apartments, a $32 million development bringing 57 affordable homes, 20 of them supportive units for people leaving homelessness including domestic violence survivors, to Ithaca.
Apartments serve households earning up to 60 percent of area median income, with nine fully accessible units, on-site services from Catholic Charities of Tompkins/Tioga, and ground-floor commercial space.
The capital stack layers more than $17 million in federal and state low-income housing tax credit equity with over $6 million in state subsidy, $4 million in homeless housing capital, clean energy funding, and a county contribution.
The project is part of Governor Hochul's $25 billion, five-year plan to create or preserve 100,000 affordable homes statewide; the state says nearly 800 have been created or preserved in Tompkins County alone.
For developers and managers, the deal is a working model of a multi-source New York financing stack and a supportive housing service structure in a smaller upstate market.
Editorial Desk
The NSPIRE Wire Editorial Desk publishes source-verified reporting and analysis covering HUD policy, NSPIRE inspections, affordable housing finance, development, transactions, and the people shaping the industry.
Know something we should know? Have documents, corrections, or related developments on this topic? Send an editorial tip to our reporters.
