Chautauqua County Land Bank Corporation receives a $300,000 stabilization grant from the Ralph C. Sheldon Foundation

Chautauqua County, like other counties bounded by the Great Lakes with a manufacturing legacy, has an extremely high percentage of housing stock built before WWII.  A good portion of that housing stock is in poor condition and is considered “unhealthy housing.”  The Chautauqua County Land Bank was one of the first to be established in NYS following the housing crisis of 2008, but it has experienced a “perfect storm” over the past two years.  First, there was the COVID -19 pandemic, which cancelled the county’s foreclosure auction two years in a row. The foreclosure auction is the main source for housing inventory that the Land Bank purchases, rehabilitates, and then resells for a profit.  Without houses purchased at rock bottom prices to fix and then resell, the Land Bank was cut off from one of its main revenue sources. Secondly, there was the end of NYS grants to state Land Banks, financed from legal settlements from large mortgage companies after the 2008 real estate market crash. Those grants provided most of the operating funding for the county’s Land Bank since its founding in 2011.    

Recognizing the vital role the Chautauqua County Land Bank has filled in combating blight in our county, the Ralph C. Sheldon Foundation awarded a special initiative grant to help stabilize the Land Bank until foreclosure auctions are reinstated and new sources of operating funds can be obtained.