David Torke has a terrific series of posts going over at Fix Buffalo. He’s taking a critical look at Belmont Shelter’s $12.1 million plan to build 50 “rent-to-own” houses on the city’s East Side, in the Cold Springs neighborhood, scattered across 60 city blocks.

He questions whether scattershot new-builds are a good strategy for revitalization. He asks whether $240,000 per house is a bit too keen a pricetag for these sorts of properties in these neighborhoods. He suggests, and references, what a lot of other smart people have been saying: that we’d do better to focus our energies on preserving and rehabbing historic structures in tightly focused project areas, preserving the urban nature of the environment rather than swapping it out for a false sense of suburbia.

Torke is at four posts and counting. Start with this one.

Interestingly, someone who claims to be former board member of Belmont Shelter has been commenting on Torke’s posts, suggesting Belmont’s first loyalty is not to its housing mission or to its target communities, but to the bottom lines of the for-profit construction, development, and property ownership companies that are subsidiaries of the not-for-profit housing agency.