Governor Kathy Hochul announced at her 2026 Fiscal Executive Budget that she will be putting an over $2 billion investment into making living in New York more affordable.

"As a first time home owner, it's the prices of real have been real high. But as the bringing the prices down, it helps me personally to budget more," Binghamton resident Teiron Bernard said. 

Since COVID, Broome County has gone from 1300 homes for sale at any time to 300, with the median home value listed $188,000 as of October 2024.

"We did a study that said that we needed to build thousands of more units of housing, and it wasn't just affordable housing, it was market rate apartments and single family homes," Broome County Executive Jason Garnar said. 

Through the help of state resources and incentives, Broome County has four large scale housing projects currently taking place, including a 75-unit complex on Grand Avenue in Johnson City, a 108-unit development at the Old Sheltered Workshop in Binghamton, and the renovation of the Town and Country Apartments on the northside of Binghamton. 

"You've got a lot of people that this idea that homeless that need houses and stuff like that," Binghamton resident Carlos Butterfield said. "I'm just glad to see all that man just taking views of the neighborhood"

Hochul is investing an additional $110 million going to pro-housing communities like Binghamton, helping out organizations like Broome County Land Bank.

Renovating foreclosed properties to put back on the market for income qualified families, the Land Bank has renovated five homes and sold three of those this year alone, including 34 Andrews Avenue in Binghamton, which the land bank recently just did a complete renovation to.

"There are a lot of environmental hazards here. There was a lot of asbestos, a lot of lead. We had to put in a radon mitigation system," Executive Director for Broome County Land Bank Jessica Haas said. 

For future homeowners, Garnar says the county is creating a $5 million housing fund to work with developers who want to come and build or fix up developments.

"This is the first kind of fund that we've ever created in the county to leverage resources and encourage this type of construction," Garnar said.