Buffalo Rising Online

Aug 25th, 12:24pm By queenseyes

Last evening Harvey Garrett, Director of the West Side Community Collaborative, took me out to speak to the incoming UB Honors College Freshman. He wanted them to be able to relate to the city of Buffalo in ways that they might not normally do. Seeing that the UB Amherst campus is located in a fairly remote area, Harvey asked that I discuss many of the urban amenities that students might want to connect with. The talk was all part of the Freshman Honors Colloquium - a proactive program that is literally taking UB students and helping them to acclimate and identify with the city. It is also a great way to dispel many of the unsettling preconceived notions that the students have about Buffalo.

For a little over an hour I spelled out to the students what it could be like for them to live here. Instead of holing away for four years, they actually have the ability to shape the city in ways that they could not imagine. That really sunk in with many of the students (I think), especially when I mentioned anything along the environmental lines, music, the arts, biking, skate parks, festivals, grassroot initiatives, the waterfront and even the future weather museum. At the end of the hour, the students were allowed to ask questions regarding the city and some of the problems that it is facing. Following the questions we wrapped up with some one-on-one dialogue. It was amazing to see so many of the students asking questions regarding how to get involved with the projects that they had just learned about. Some of them wanted to know what to do to get their own ideas off the ground.

This was really an exciting opportunity to listen and learn about the people in this city (including Harvey) who are out there everyday to make a go of things. If we can capture the imagination of these students right off the bat, then we can work with them over the next four years on numerous goals and aspirations.

Following is the detailed plan by Harvey Garrett regarding West Side Community Development: It's fascinating to see the level of commitment on the behalf of the students and University at Buffalo. These students are ready to get involved with Buffalo, but if there is no direction there is no result.

Group: UB Honors College Freshman Honors Colloquium, Monday 3-5

Projects:

1) Property condition surveying - (three groups of 5 students)

These students will help us conduct a physical survey of all the properties on the West Side of Buffalo. We are looking to determine which properties are vacant and the condition of each property. Each group will be working with neighbors and community organizations to survey 1/3 of the West Side. The information will be later entered into a GIS (Graphical Information System) to help us track our progress, as well as our challenges, in bringing back the West Side of Buffalo. No other group will interact more with the houses and within the individual neighborhoods as this group.

2) Marketing assistance (three groups of 5 students)

The West Side of Buffalo is coming back very quickly and we are concerned that the existing renters will be pushed out of the area if we don't help them to become home owners while the housing prices are still affordable.

The Honors students will help us to develop a strategy and marketing plan for convincing area renters that they can become home owners, convincing them that the West Side is a good place to own a home, and to help us develop creative marketing solutions to challenging properties.

- Marketing of Neighborhood

- Marketing of specific houses

- Marketing of homeownership as a concept

3) Education program development (three groups of students)

- Home buyer club

It's hard to become a home owner if generationally your family has always rented. You don't know where to start, who to trust, or whether you can even do it. Although we have numerous housing agencies across the West Side they do not have the resources to work with families that are a year or more away from being home owners (through debt counseling, saving money for a down payment, job security, etc.). We have developed home ownership clubs in order to create a peer group support system for families who wish to become home owners but aren't ready for the housing agencies yet.

The honors students will be helping us to create marketing materials to encourage home ownership within lower income families as well as in creating the programs themselves. This will include researching existing programs, and using that research in developing programs here on the West Side.

- Home repair club

After decades of decline and disinvestment our inner city homes are in deplorable shape. Many of our first time, low income, home owners don't have the money to hire professional contractors, or the knowledge or tools to fix up their homes themselves. The home repair club will consist of classes in simple home repair and tools usage as well as a tool lending library. We are hoping that it also attracts renters who we can convince to become homeowners rather than fix their landlord's properties (although we won't be discouraging any investment). Their is probably no larger opportunity to break the disinvestment cycle in these neighborhoods than to empower the residents to fix up their homes.

The honors students will be researching similar programs around the country and helping us to develop and implement a program on Bufffalo's West Side.

- School of choice project

In the 60's and 70's cities all over the United States (starting with Buffalo) began programs of bussing students from poorer neighborhoods into wealthier ones and vice versa for the purposes of equalling out public education. The initial intent, which was to equalize the quality of education across all class levels, instead resulted in white fight to the suburbs, the hollowing out of our city cores, and the destruction of community schools in all our inner-city neighborhoods (wealthy and poor). Not only did this not raise the quality of education for lower income families it actually made it more difficult because now poor families who could not afford cars could no longer take part in their children's educations which were often taking place on the other end of the city. Not only were the very people bussing was supposed to help not helped but in destroying community schools the program weakened our neighborhood cohesiveness - knowing the kids in your neighborhood is important to the health of the neighborhood, the school, and the kid's social skill development. In addition, as the inner-city neighborhoods further decayed and kids formed gangs to defend themselves from compounding social ills, bussing introduced troubled kids into neighborhoods with competing gangs - further destabilizing the schools, neighborhoods, and the education of our students.

Although the intent was good - the results were disastrous for our kids, our neighborhoods, and because of a new lack of parental involvement and the quality of education, our schools. Our inner-city school system has never recovered. The white flight also removed jobs (retail operations, family businesses, etc.) from the inner cities further engulfing our neighborhoods in poverty and all the social ills that come with it.

This project will take advantage of affordable home ownership and a program called "School of Choice" which allows parents to choose their schools (including the ones they live close to). The concept is simple - we will market home ownership to the parents whose children are attending our neighborhood schools. The parents who are already renting in the area will be asked to buy homes and the parents who are currently bussing their students into our neighborhood will be asked to move here and buy a home. The potential success of the project is in the fact that while the West Side has some of the most affordable housing in the city - it's also the fastest appreciating. Not only can parents own their own homes for far less than they are currently paying in rent but they can create wealth through equity increases in their home values. Many families will be able to use this equity to ultimately send their kids to college.

If this program is successful it will increase home ownership in the area without gentrifying it, it will improve the quality of our education system by increasing the opportunity for parental involvement, it will help to create wealth in lower income families through home equity, and it will enhance the quality of life in the neighborhoods and the student's education (studies show that kids whose parents own their own homes do better in school and are more likely to go on to college).

We will be asking students from the Honors program to help us research this concept, create a program including marketing materials and interest from the schools, and in creating a project proposal that could ultimately be used city-wide.

4) Business District development (2 groups of 5)

- Grant Street code enforcement

Grant Street on Buffalo's West Side was once one of the City's great commercial strips. Fortunately most of it is still there - but it is in severely blighted condition with numerous vacant buildings that are in various states of disrepair. We need to document the street and identify the properties with the best chance of rehab as well as the properties in most need of immediate help.

The Honors students will be asked to help with photo documenting and physically surveying the Grant Street commercial district as well as potentially researching photos of what it looked like in it's hey day. All of this information will be used to build a plan for bring back this grand commercial corridor.

5) Refugee project (2 groups of 5)

- Develop plan to get more refugee groups involved in BIREC and their neighborhoods

Two years ago we created an organization that has become the Buffalo Immigrant and Refugee Empowerment Coalition (BIREC). It has become a coalition of refugee community leaders across the West Side (Somali, Burundi, Sudanese, Burmese, etc.). Although we now have all the refugee groups working together we are still having trouble getting individual community members more involved.

The Honors students will be helping us to put a plan together to further empower BIREC and it's members to solve their own problems and build capacity within their own communities.

6) Youth (1 group of 5)

- Asset mapping of youth programming on West Side

In order for us to determine where we lack youth programming on the West Side we first need to identify where it exists. Youth are our most important asset, they will determine our future - yet they are often the last to receive any attention of guidance. We wish to identify all forms of resources available to our youth on the West Side from tutoring programs, to basket ball courts, parks, and vacant lots that can be used for soccer fields or other forms of green space.

The honors students will be asked to help develop this asset mapping of youth services as well as to identify opportunities for improvement.

Overall Project Objectives:

Buffalo is the second most impoverished large city in America. Buffalo also has one of the highest property vacancy rates in the United States. These two factors reinforce each other to create horrendous living conditions in our poorest neighborhoods. This situation also creates a tremendous opportunity in affordable housing. Because there are more houses than people in Buffalo, houses here are amongst the most affordable on the nation. In addition, much of our housing stock is also of very high quality. Mortgages can often be far lower than rent, and families who couldn't afford to own a house anywhere else in the nation can afford to own a house in Buffalo.

Homeownership is shown to improve students’ grades and parents’ involvement in their children's education. It can also be leveraged, where property values are increasing like the West Side of Buffalo, for wealth creation that can be used to send children to college. Our primary objective is to break the poverty cycle through home ownership wealth creation and college enrollment in impoverished neighborhoods.

Our goal is to help existing groups on the West Side of Buffalo like the West Side Community Collaborative (WSCC) and the West Side Housing Group to fulfill their low income home ownership quotas through assistance in marketing the concept of ownership to low income buyers, marketing neighborhoods and available housing to prospective low income home owners, assistance in asset mapping and housing / neighborhood condition surveys, development of home ownership and home repair clubs, and educational communications in areas such as school of choice, food security, and self empowerment.

Progress Made Since Inception:

Although both the East and West Sides of Buffalo have traditionally been the most poverty stricken in the city, the West Side has been rebounding through the efforts of a local group called the West Side Community Collaborative (WSCC). Despite the fact that houses can still be purchased very inexpensively the area is now the fastest growing real estate market in the city, with property values are rising year after year faster than in any other neighborhood. The UB Honors Colloquium started working with the WSCC last year with just a few students and will be ramping up its involvement to almost 100 students this year. All of the necessary relationships have been formed, much of the planning is complete, several of the programs have been started, and we are ready to provide resources to deliver on them.

This initiative addresses poverty alleviation on the West Side of Buffalo through low income home ownership (and a few other projects). This is significant because there are very few areas of the country with rising, yet inexpensive, property values where a low income family could build enough wealth to bring their family out of poverty despite living in an area with few job opportunities. Our initiative is also unique because of the University / Community partnership and because of our relationship with 10 other local colleges through the Western New York Service Learning Coalition (WNYSLC), which will be leveraged when necessary for this project.

Through our relationship with the WSCC we have access to the Buffalo City Housing Court, 7 housing service providers that work on the West Side of Buffalo, several other colleges working together in the area, the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors (BNAR), and dozens of block clubs and community organizations who are asking for our help with this initiative. We are also a member of the Western New York Service Learning Coalition which is a coalition of 11 local colleges and hundreds of community partners all working together on service learning.

Relationships Developed to Advance This Initiative:

The community groups we have partnered with to deliver this initiative are:

- The West Side Community Collaborative (Lead Agency for this project)

- West Side Ministries

- Homefront

- People United for Sustainable Housing

- West Side Neighborhood Housing Services

- West Minster Economic Development Initiative

- Habitat for Humanity Buffalo

Key Stakeholders:

The key stake-holders are primarily the impoverished residents on the West Side of Buffalo. We involve them through the community groups and block clubs that make up the West Side Community Collaborative and the housing service providers that make up the West Side Housing Group. We ensure that we are addressing their needs through this same partnership. They initially requested our assistance and set up the goals - we are developing and implementing this plan with them rather than for them. Other stake-holders include the University, the local municipalities, police department, City Housing Court, Regional Realtor group, and the WNYSLC (coalition of 11 local colleges and universities).