Dick Kern on Buffalo’s Abandoned Homes
Former Buffalo housing activist (and columnist for AV, Buffalo Beat, and Alt) Dick Kern sent around this note earlier in the week, in response the three-part series in the Buffalo News about the city’s plague of abandoned properties. (Here’s part one. Follow the links to parts two and three.)
Here’s what Kern has to say:
The Buffalo News‘ provocative, three-part series on abandoned homes once again does not mention other parts of a dramatically failed housing policy, which is speeding neighborhood decline.
Why is there so little debate about the wisdom of taxpayers paying for a frenzy of new housing construction in a shrinking city drowning in abandoned housing, for which the mayor is planning the massively costly demolition of 10,000 buildings?
Why is HUD so silent, as Buffalo’s poverty fuels a steady stream of lucrative “poverty housing” funding that too often makes things worse, not better? Isn’t Steve Banko ashamed to preside over the second poorest and third most vacant US city as he has watched all those $100s of milions pour through Buffalo? What does he propose his Department of Housing and Urban Development should do?
And why is City Hall’s flagship poverty agency, BMHA, engaged in a costly building frenzy as ever more of Buffalo’s poor live in dangerous, half-empty neighborhoods? BMHA spends over half of City Hall’s poverty housing funds on less than 10 percent of the city’s poor. That is blatantly unjust. What is BMHA executive director Dawn Sanders’ vision for a virtually obsolete agency more fairly reducing poverty and blight among Buffalo’s ever-growing ranks of the poor?
And why are Buffalo’s too-numerous, too-small “neighborhood housing agencies” getting a free pass while being scandalously unproductive? For example, West Side Neighborhood Housing Services has lost more clients in foreclosure over the past several years than it has rehabbed houses, generally slowly rehabbing at the rate of merely two per year. They currently are not rehabbing any houses and have not released any plan.
A dramatic example of the problem is Massachusetts Avenue, where WSNHS has focused more resources than any other street except their Connecticut Avenue “backyard.” Their $50K rehabbed 353 Massachusetts Avenue is currently in both mortgage and tax foreclosure, and WSNHS has been unable to sell their 807 Prospect (at the corner of Massachusetts) for which they paid $7K in July 2002.
After the jump you’ll find a list of 17 city-owned properties on Massachusetts Avenue, and 20 more scheduled for tax auction in October. What does WSNHS plan? Do they have a plan?
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June 20, 2008
Foul Rumor
Rumors of Mayor Byron Brown’s imminent resignation are apparently premature.
His denial that the rumors are true, of course, are front-page news.
Here at AV we heard these rumors earlier in the week but figured they were wishful thinking on the part of the rumormongers. Some of them said that an FBI investigation into BMHA would touch the mayor. Over at the Lefty Line, where Buffalo cops go to gripe and plot, a poster suggested that the purported investigation had to do with organized crime and money-laundering. Governor David Paterson, a Brown ally and fellow Queens native, would helicopter Brown out of the scandal and deposit him in a new, comfortable job in Albany.
The Lefty Line and Glenn Gramigna seem to have been the first to post the rumors, and their posts apparently prompted the mayor’s denial, which was delivered in writing at a press conference called yesterday for 4pm, with 17 minutes notice.
The denial, of course, sounds like a cork popping: Let flow the wild speculation.
April 7, 2008
Echo Chamber (Monday, April 7): News You Could Have Read Anywhere
- Heavyweight boxer “Baby Joe” Mesi is running for Mary Lou Rath’s (R-Williamsville) soon-to-be vacant State Senate seat, making him the fourth Democratic contender in that race. Mesi, whose experience doesn’t extend much beyond the boxing ring, said he will give up his fighting career to become a public servant. The other three contenders are perennial candidate Dan Ward, Erie County Legislator Michele Ianello and Amherst Council member Mark Manna. So far, no Republican candidates have been announced in the race. It’s an important seat for both parties, as the Republican party holds only a single seat majority in the Senate.
- Henry Littles, manager of BMHA’s Marine Drive Apartments, can’t manage his own houses. Littles, who owns 14 properties around Buffalo, was cited by city housing inspectors for numerous violations at properties on Schreck and West Utica streets. Littles says he will fix the problems, which include broken windows, tires and trash in yards, rotting decks and loose gutters.
- A Lockport man, the son of a cancer survivor, plans to hike the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail in support of cancer research. Justin Cassamo, 30, plans to trek from Mexico to Canada through the deserts, mountains and forests of California, Oregon and Washington in honor of his mother, Paula Greck, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 but is now in remission. Cassamo hopes to raise money for cancer research at Roswell, and has set up a Web site—www.hike4lives.org—where pledges and donations can be made. (more…)
