Chained To Coe; Protesting State's Stranglehold on City Housing
To coincide with Governor-Elect Eliot Spitzer’s visit to Buffalo yesterday, a number of activists, interested citizens, and residents gathered on Coe place to protest the state’s Municipal Bond Bank Agency stranglehold on so many blighted city properties.
Back in 2003, the state agency assumed the liens on over 1,500 properties in the city of Buffalo.
Participants held signs depicting George Pataki and the State of New York as preying upon the weaknesses of a small-market city like Buffalo. US Rep. Brian Higgins refers to MBBA as the biggest slumlord in WNY.
David Torke, East Side pioneer and fixbuffalo blogger, took it a step further and chained himself to the front porch of 28 Coe Pl, an abandoned house tied up in an MBBA lien, for the entire night.
“The Brown administration has failed to respond to 1500 problems created by an agreement inked by the City of Buffalo and MBBA,” he said.
This extremely narrow street is something truly unique in Buffalo. Small Queen Anne and Victorian houses line this one block street, in a very intimate setting, with almost zero setback from the street. Many of the remaining houses are either abandoned or in decrepit condition, desperately awaiting a rehab. The state’s housing agency, MBBA oversees liens on several houses on Coe, effectively keeping them out of reach to average citizens, thanks to dodgy financing schemes.
East Side housing activist Michelle Johnson was present and noted that on Coe, “These are all beautiful house with plenty of potential.”
PUSH Buffalo, an activist group which has done much work addressing rotting MBBA-held houses on the West Side, helped organize this “Housing Strike.”
PUSH organizer, Eric Walker spoke about how the state has created such an adversarial relationship between residents and the city.
“[MBBA] isolated the people from the city by playing the great divide and conquer game by offering the city money for liens,” he told me. “It isolates city residents from being able to use this housing.”
“It’s a very predatory relationship,” Walker summarized.
Be sure to read more here about this ongoing story.
Is the MBBA a state agency...if so who runs it? Who does the agency report?
Well this is a very strong argument for why municipal housing needs to be replaced with rental vouchers and the city should not be in the business of real estate but lowering taxes and offering incentives to property owners....and of course strict enforcement of housing laws.
The incompetence of the city never ceases to amaze me
MBBA simply buys up liens held against properties that were abandoned and have tons of backtaxes owned by whomever, under the false premise that such monies can actually be recovered at a later date.
They leverage these liens as what are essentially junk bonds used to finance urban development in NYC. They are not much more than a holdings agency.
So again greedy NYC big mouths have once again created a financial shell game destroying and exploiting Buffalo so they can own property in NYC and vacation in the hamptons.
Sounds like a 21st century version of jewish lightning
Wakisha -
While your rage over dirty land deals is understandable, your racism in the form of anti-semitimic comments is not, and has no place in this kind of community.
HERE WE GO AGAIN! OPEN THE FLOOD GATES!
Didn't we already cover the racism thing in a previous post!
what exactly is "jewish lightning"?
Please Ignore Wakisha, L, or whomever this might be. I suspect the latter.
As long as we keep on topic and not feed the trolls this post won't stray off into all sorts of crazy tangents like so many previous ones have.
someone needs a playstation 3
Phoenix versus Buffalo
http://blogs.business2.com/realestate/2006/11/phoenix_versus_.html#more
118430641_82102aca8f_m There's a debate raging in the forum below about the housing and lifestyle merits of Phoenix versus Buffalo. The two are inverse mirrors of each other: the city of Buffalo has lost almost half of its 600,000 residents in the post-war period. The Buffalo-Niagara region as a whole, which is 1.2 million people today, was one of only two major metros in the U.S. that lost population during the booming 1990s. Meanwhile, Phoenix has more than doubled in the past two decades. Phoenix has been one of the destinations for exiles from western New York, and we heard from some of those people below.
You know something's off when the scary-sounding National Vacant Properties Campaign (NVPC) decides to make your city its poster-child, and that is what's happening tomorrow with Buffalo. NVPC is actually a coalition of private foundations like Ford and non-profits that estimates 15 percent of Buffalo's structures are vacant and that more than 40 percent of them are outright abandoned -- a higher rate than in any other Rustbelt city. Talk about a vulture play -- the NVPC's slogan is "creating opportunity from abandonment."
I just got off the phone with the lead author of the "Blueprint Buffalo" they're releasing tomorrow, Joe Schilling of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute. The 100-page plan outlines the biggest revitalization program in the U.S. since the Bronx in the 1980s.
Schilling says that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars over several years but a lot of that money can be re-directed from existing programs. "What struck me while doing this research is that there's already a lot of funding available so why doesn't anything get done? There are 120 agencies and programs in there, and it's simply overwhelming for a policy maker."
Schilling says the first priority is to "contain and clean up" the existing blight. Who wants to buy in areas that look like a dump? Over the past decade, the report says, Buffalo has already spent $30 million demolishing 4,500 vacant buildings. The state's 2007 budget earmarks another $10 million to take out 3,000 more. Expect some serious federal fudning to kick in now that Democrats from New York have the strongest presence in the House and Senate in decades.
Gabe,
Thanks for getting this out.
Coe Place, an amazing one block street right in the shadow of a major public investment , Artpace - very bold and intelligent Masiello admin legacy project - is seeing significant private sector investment.
It's my sincere hope that Eliot Spitzer can bring his reformist pugle stick to City Hall. Byron et al, have done nothing in 11 months, save watch 1500 properties rot in various neighborhoods.
As Governor we should hold Eliot Spitzer responsible for re-negotiating the agreement between NYS agency MBBA and our own City Hall. If we can't shake two from the tree on Coe Place, there is NO hope in dealing with the same problem in lesser known neighborhoods.
Really appreciate the steady stream of visitors last nite up until 1 am who came to check in with me. Very nice clam chowder from the Sonic Cafe, lots of BK mozarella sticks, steaming spicy cider from Coe Place residents...
The last link in Gabe's piece above takes you to a web based spreadsheet I created - it's searchable - and you can find all 1500 properties MBBA controls using that site.
Very good connecting with Aaron, Eric and all the people from PUSH Buffalo...
Kudos to David Torke and the others for bringing this issue up.
This MBBA financing scheme is perverse. The City of Buffalo should seal up these houses and market them to potential buyers. Or arrange for an annual lottery of some kind. Such a waste and absolutely not necessary.
A development imact charge of .05% of every new building permit fee (NOT a new fee, just a re-assignment of existing revenues) should be instituted and designated towards handling existing surplus/vacant housing.
Thank you David for illustrating the pandemonium of noiseless irresponsibility present at MBBA. Is anybody listening? Or does it have to be brought to their front door.
Is there any Buffalo representation on the MBBA Board? Where is Belmont Shelter on this situation - don't they have all sorts of investment and management jobs and their headquarters in the Artspace neighborhood?
In response to No Money - No Style's email, I am really sick and tired of hearing that the City of Buffalo lost 1/2 of its population since the 50's. Just go to wikipedia and you can see other older industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland lost 1/2 of their population (heck Detroit lost about 900,000 people). This is not only a Buffalo problem. You think the Eastside is bad, take a train from NYC to DC. The neighborhoods along the railroad, which tend to be poorer, in cities like Newark, Philly or Baltimore, will shock you. Vacant and rundown homes everywhere the eye can see. The point of my post is that Buffalo is not the only city with problems and I'm sick and tired of the national media using us as the poster boy of urban blight --- they should look in their backyard first before pointing fingers at us.
PUSH has developed a fairly comprehensive "Community Standards Agreement" that we presented to the Brown Administration. We have yet to receive a response to it. In fact the Administration has yet to take a public position on the city's crisis.
This agreement has turned into a de facto flip, with control over the properties in the hands of an irresponsible state agency.
Urban Critic and wakisha were right about two things:
This tax lien sale, which gave MBBA their control over the predominantely vacant houses, was cooked up by a bunch of lawyers in NYC and touted by executives of the Housing Finance Agency (HFA). Jerome Becker and Stephen Hunt (Pataki appointees) who run the HFA & MBBA, use millions in bond money to support big ticket development in NYC. This goes disproportionately to developers who are Pataki campaign contributors. It's exploitation of weak market cities - plain and simple.
For a quick Fact shee ton this whol debacle:
http://pushbuffalo.org/JERFactSheet.pdf
PUSH has developed a fairly comprehensive "Community Standards Agreement" that we presented to the Brown Administration. We have yet to receive a response to it. In fact the Administration has yet to take a public position on the city's crisis.
This agreement has turned into a de facto flip, with control over the properties in the hands of an irresponsible state agency.
Urban Critic and wakisha were right about two things:
This tax lien sale, which gave MBBA their control over the predominantely vacant houses, was cooked up by a bunch of lawyers in NYC and touted by executives of the Housing Finance Agency (HFA). Jerome Becker and Stephen Hunt who run the HFA & MBBA, use millions in bond money to support big ticket development in NYC. This goes disproportionately to developers who are Pataki campaign contributors. It's exploitation of weak market cities - plain and simple.
For a quick Fact shee ton this whol debacle:
http://pushbuffalo.org/JERFactSheet.pdf
This sounds like a another wonderful battle for Higgins. Time after time Higgins has taken on the state power brokers and demanded local accountability.
This should be far easier than the others. We as a city should be demanding any money leveraged from Buffalo buildings should be spent in Buffalo and it should be managed locally in a local office by Buffalonians.
Video Story about Dave and Coe Place...
http://www.wnymedia.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2385&Itemid=37
No Money - No Style,
You've got "no argument." I've been to Phoenix. I know Phoenix. Phoenix is no Buffalo.
That AZ hell hole is nothing but dust and strip plazas. Just try and find a real community (not gated or a subdivision). They don't exist. People who go to Phoenix are looking for warmth and isolated living spaces and social interactions.
* *
The condition of Buffalo's residential and business structures have more to do with flat job growth than anything else and the culprit is Albany. What Buffalo can and must do on its own is enact and enforce property code enforcement laws AND market economic (res. & bus.) incentives programs.. With property still relatively inexpensive, and a general turnaround now bringing positive development growth to town, there is hope down the not-too-distance road...if we can retain our City's character ...and structures... instead of tearing them down.
PQ - excellent comments! And I for one put no value on being able to drive around in a convertible in November or any other month for that matter. Each to his own.
ok Buffalo Rising and Torke and others why not use your podium for something more than idle chatter. Put up a petition like you did for saving 399 Franklin for our elected representatives at the city, county and state levels...even ask for a federal audit...if necessary...of the MBBA.
Demand local oversight
Demand all financial leverage be used to finance Buffalo projects.
Come on BuffaloRising....this is something that every Buffalonian, every neighborhood association, every politician can rally around!