BINGHAMTON, NY (WIVT/WBGH) – A local organization is building partnerships in an effort to establish permanently affordable, safe housing for marginalized residents of Greater Binghamton.

Southern Door Community Land Trust is a Black, indigenous, people of color, or BIPOC, lead non-profit that seeks to acquire property, bring it up to safe and decent standards and rent to low-income residents.

Southern Door is also pursuing a model in which it maintains ownership of the land but sells the building to its tenants as a means of promoting home ownership.

Executive Director Hajra Aziz says she’s in discussions with Broome County Real Property to potentially acquire some properties that have been foreclosed on for failure to pay property taxes.

Aziz says her organizations wants to work with the tenants to determine their needs and give them not just a safe, but also beautiful place to live.

“Coming from a safe, stable home is the foundation to being able to work, to go to school and learn, to think about going into higher education. All of those elements of upward mobility is intricately connected to housing and where you live,” she says.

Aziz says the organization has received funding from the Community Foundation of South Central New York and has developed collaborations with fellow non-profits VINES and NEST.

She says Southern Door, which was founded in 2019, is working to acquire its first apartment building in the near future.

The organization has an office in the Visitors Center of the Bundy Museum on Main Street in Binghamton.
More information at http://SouthernDoorCLT.com.