Buffalo Rising Online

Scary? They're getting s*** done.

Where is the house? It appears to be Bird Ave at West Ave? If so, there are many city-owned vacant lots nearby that should be leasable from the city in return for maintaining them as gardens.

"Is this a cult of some sort? I don't think I would like them living in my neighborhood, when they are equated with the Manson family I find it shocking. Do they have religious beliefs of some sort I cannot elucidate that information from the contents of the article."

Buffalostan -- please don't be afraid -- Just because one random commenter mentions the Manson Family doesn't mean there's anything sinister going on. I've known squatters in NYC and they're just normal people, usually of limited means, who want a place of their own. It sounds like they're working to fix up and abandoned house, which is admirable in Buffalo.

I think it sounds great that they're working on improving the place but I've heard some skeevy things about the place. I personally haven't stayed there so I'm not gong to knock them, I'm just saying this article isn't everything I've heard about the "Bird House."

And its lien not lean. A lien is security interest over a property until some sort of contractual obligation is completed.

I live on Bird about 2 blocks from this house and pass by it everyday and in doing so I had seen that there were a group of lets just say colorful people that lived there. What was I found less than surprising was that one day the house was all boarded up and the colorful people were gone, I had figured that the city or who ever got rid of some squatters. I'm semi torn on this issue, on one hand these people are at the very least making use of a vacant property however I would say that its a less than ideal situation from the perspective of property owners in the neighborhood.

Drawing attention to themselves was the last thing they should have done. In three months they'll be someone else's problem. If you want to be part of the underground economy, it's best to remain underground. Think that property's zoned for a 'print shop'? How 'bout collecting sales tax on those brochures? Think they've got permits for all the work? I doubt it. It's all warm and fuzzy til they burn the place down/need medical help/some small kid in the neighborhood vanishes for an hour or two (not that they'd be holding the kid...but it's the first place everyones attention will go to).

If you want to be left alone, don't give the neighbors enough ammo to do you in by dinner time. Love the line that "the remainder of the monthly fee goes toward the collective pot. " Yeah, pot. Also, "were not an official cooperative", at least he knows enough that he hasn't completed the proper paperwork in NYS to be "official". Don't we also have a law about number of nonrelatives in a home? Oh well, I'm normally the libertarian around here, but if you want the number of layers of government that this town has...well, this group hasn't got a prayer.

WTF? We livin' the Sixties? These people need to get a job and buy a house so we can drive up property values and keep the scum out of the city (at least the North Buffalo part of the city, I am very selfish).

Yikes... Is this the only development news of late????

Uht oh - Economic downturn is on I guess.

I wrote (not that they'd be holding the kid...but it's the first place everyones attention will go to). But who'd expect you to read before commenting. I own property in the city, and while doing rehab on one project, did have these sorts get in the building. Of the three in the building, caught by the police, one had outstanding warrants for a felony. Love the way they put 'environmentalist' in their name, and you Williamsville types will eat it up. What's the difference between breaking and entering and squatting? Squatters just hang around after the initial crime. These people aren't part of the solution... how many blue bikes did you have to throw out a few summers ago? If you don't know what I'm talking about, you shouldn't comment on about these people.

Ben is right, Does this sound like an upstanding group of people to you? Basically, they took posession of this property by squatting so they could have someplace free to live. Do their commercial ventures sound like they are going to produce enough money to really fix this house up? No, the will just wind up being another kind of blight in the neighborhood. I had to laugh at how they are trying to make the world "more beautiful." Do band flyers make the world more beautiful?

lol...i would love for a group of squatters to take over a restorable home in my area, park an old van in the drive and invite 10 people to live with them! I hope the printing press and bike shop cover the taxes, new roof, new plumbing, new electric,paint, gutters, porch repair, drywall, new windows, siding etc, but then the veggies they grow should offset these costs.

Aren't these the kind of people who we should invite into the city. I don't understand this negativity. They fought against an out of town landlord that was letting a property fall apart. They are doing their bes to maintain and improve upon their new-found property. They are looking to buy or lease more land for more garden space (better than rats and plastic bags right?) AND they are attempting to create several small businesses.

Just because they are small basement based industries doesn't mean they are somehow illegitimate. How many big businesses were started in someones garage / basement. Honestly. If we want to promote local businesses we NEED people willing to get their hands dirty, take some risks, and start to produce profit for themselves.

And so what if people want to live together. Maybe not everyone likes coming home to an empty house every night. These homes were built for families that were much larger than they are today. I doubt they are sleeping in bunk beds in some compound like setting. Let them fill the space, enjoy life and help to stabilize another small area of our west side.

eliz, the property has close to ten adults in and out of it daily, with no electricity, no gas service, and most likely no water. If a landlord let people live this way, he'd be put in jail. If the place caught on fire, you'd probably charge the landlord with a very serious crime. But call yourself an environmentalist, and you get a pass? In the next article they'll mention they road a bike in the 'gay' parade...then they'll REALLY be untouchable.

Personally I would opt for a tree fort instead.

Hippies

Interesting they are of college-age, but chose not to attend. Sorry to dissapoint, but I'm closer to college age, and probably know a few of these guys by name. Tried to let them help on a few projects, but when you see how they are willing to live, and how 'new' items begin to turn up out of no where...well, you realize what's your's will soon be there's. Do you have a specific problem with anything I've written? Where are they getting electricity, borrowing it from a neighbor? How 'bout the bathroom? Sure the closest restaurants know these guys real well, and not because their buying the specials.

@ iambuffalosfuture...if you think this is a positive for our city and a shot in the arm for the area, then your screen name scares the hell outa me...signed, geezer

"Oh, no! They're different! They don't wear their Lacoste shirt collar's up or their Patagonia's zipped! They don't drive a Beemer! Therefore they are scary and BAD!"

Until the people of Buffalo drop their pedestrian attitudes and fear of anything new or different, they will never change. Just because someone chooses to live in an unorthodox manner does not make them evil, predatory or dangerous. It just makes them different. The hysteria displayed on this thread is a pure example of this. You claim to want to embrace change - but that change must take the form of 'acceptable' and 'familiar'. Well, get over it! This is how progress starts - those with new ideas, or those that choose to implement old ideas in a new setting, are always the face of transformation. There's an old term - Follow The Freaks. How do you think Greenwich Village became a place to be? What about the North Side of Pittsburgh and the renovation beautiful old brownstones? The list goes on and on of people who can't afford traditional housing because of their chosen lifestyle - artists, musicians, etc. - that move into the rundown and the abandoned FIRST. Then a little while later, something else happens, it's called gentrification. And those that pioneered that particular area are once again forced to find a new, affordable, place to call home.

There's another saying from Herbert Spencer: "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

Before you call the cops or organize a lynch mob, try knocking on their door.

Except for the one person that lives on Bird, does anyone even know or have been impacted by these people or this house.. doubtful. They seem like people trying to make a life for themselves a little different than most, I don't get what the big deal is. They said they were RENTING which means they had power, water etc... They fought the landlord who knew about them, because he wouldn't take care of the property... We could only wish to have more people stand up to slumlords like this.

Talk about mob mentality.

VILLAGER #1: We have found a witch. May we burn her? CROWD: Burn her! Burn! Burn her! Burn her! BEDEVERE: How do you know she is a witch? VILLAGER #2: She looks like one. CROWD: Right! Yeah! Yeah! BEDEVERE: Bring her forward. WITCH: I'm not a witch. I'm not a witch. BEDEVERE: Uh, but you are dressed as one. WITCH: They dressed me up like this. CROWD: Augh, we didn't! We didn't... WITCH: And this isn't my nose. It's a false one. BEDEVERE: Well? VILLAGER #1: Well, we did do the nose. BEDEVERE: The nose? VILLAGER #1: And the hat, but she is a witch! CROWD: We burn her! Right! Yeaaah! Yeaah!

sbrof...you're so disconnected from life on the street, that you don't get this. These people were never renting anything. Once a property has been empty this long, National Grid has a funny way of cutting off the power (exactly because they know what happens when people like this get in). Once it's off for a year, you need a licensed electrician to certify everything is safe. This rarely happens without the electrician saying 'you need all new wiring." Your liberal bias says its a corrupt landlord. Maybe an elderly out of town relative didn't get back as often as they'd like. Oh no, that's not the liberal belief system you want to weave into this story. Bad landlord, good kids. Why not leave your door unlocked tonight, so these good kids can have some lunch money tomorrow.

"Oh, no! They're different! They don't wear their Lacoste shirt collar's up or their Patagonia's zipped! They don't drive a Beemer! Therefore they are scary and BAD!"

You mean people that pay taxes and abide by the law. The first word that comes to my mind is (deleted) and the quicker the better.

BF-you forgot to mention that the landlord prob has cancer.

I have literally been laughing out loud as I read these posts...are you kidding me?!?!?! Please continue with the numerous posts...this is pure comedy...

I mean, seriously, these clowns write an email to this site, then after a brief telephone conversation we are supposed to take them at their word...where are the video cameras? this may be candid camera comes to buffalo...if these clowns tried this in my neighborhood i'd have them arrested for burglary...but liek i said before, pure comedy...

Zen - you get points for paying attention. Without nono to correct me, I'm getting sloppy.

Anyway, people keep mentioning the 'landlord'. There was never a landlord relationship here. The current tenant broke in, found it stripped, and said 'cool, we could live here'.

People here really think this is a way to distribute property? Siding with common criminals over 'chronic code' violators is so absurd I can barely type. Buffalo Rising? How 'bout Buffalo-falling so far that we're grasping for any straw?

The comedy comes from the people posting on this site who actually think these people are a benefit to the community...i can't even write anymore...i am shocked that what these people are doing would garner any kind of positive reception...unbelievable!

"As of November 20th 2007 I (the "squatters") finally managed to secure ownership of the deed... and now we are rebuilding the house."

Sure they might have started out by moving into an abandoned vacant house but they no longer are squatting. They own the house and presumably will start to pay taxes etc... These are not hobos moving into a building, starting fires on the second floor and burning the place down.. BIG DIFFERENCE HERE PEOPLE.

If it takes some squatters to take back forgotten about properties and returning them to the tax roles and productive use.. so be it..

Actually the City has a program for just this thing.. It is called Urban Homesteading. The only difference is these people didn't wait for the building to be in such bad shape, demolished or so far into debt that the city took ownership of it to begin with. Because once it is in government hands it never easily leaves them.

I say kudos to these people for finding a better and faster solution to getting property out of the hands of negligent landlords. And I don't care if they are elderly, have cancer or anything. If they can't take care of their property they should have sold it instead of letting it fall into debt and become a burden on everyone else since we (the city) in the end acquires these properties.

My reaction to this story is that allowing squatters to take over ownership of a neglected property sets a weird precedent. As somebody who aspires to own his own home one day and is trying to do so by contributing to the economy like normal working folks, I have to wonder who is really paying the cost for these folks to live in this house? It's impossible to imagine that they're paying property taxes and utilities like ordinary working people. Where do they get the money? And if they aren't paying, they should be. Everyone else has to.

You have to purchase the issue of Rolling Thunder to read the article on this house and group, but here's a link to a summary of it from Infoshop News - anarchist news, opinion, and much more (that's from their website's banner, not my opinion):

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070423205750871

I have some mixed feelings about this whole thing, there is a benefit to having this house rehabbed etc. But there is a legal means to aquire ownership of a property, and I would be interested to hear if this group ever attempted to follow that path. My guess is they did not, and to portray them as "activists" working towards improving the community to me seems misguided at best. Sounds to me like they wanted a place to live without paying for it.

You guys are right. If someone has a better use for a property, it should become there's. I'm proposing the thirty minute rule. If you someone leaves their property for thirty minutes, you can take it. Heck, it's your right, right? I mean jeez, have you seen the color on some of these houses? As a matter of fact, some of these old people don't leave very often, so let's say it's ok to take there houses while their still in them, heck, they'll be dead soon anyway. This is a much better way to redistribute homes than the old fashioned way of working, and saving, and working, and saving. That's so played out. I've got my eye on this beautiful ranch on Lebrun in Snyder...but the damn family never seems to leave....

This is a great house. It likely would have been torn down if these folks did not come along. Without judging this group pro or con there is the seed of a concept here that the City does not seem to grasp. If a the market for a product does not exist then you need to lower the price and do other things to create a market. The city has no plan and as such nothing ever happens.

Instead of suing the banks that own these properties why not work with the banks to eliminate liens and why not eliminate back taxes on these properties for people willing to take them over and invest in them. Why not eliminate property taxes on them for a certain period in exchange for investment in them. Why not work with the state to create income tax free zones in distressed communities. From the stories reported on BRO it sounds more like the city is doing everything possible to discourage investors.

i love the part where they blame the bank for being a poor property owner, yep, the bank ran it into the ground folks. did they even approach the original owner and try and purchase this property? me thinks not. rather just a group of freeloaders trying to bilk the system and garner support through BRO.

I can understand hesitation or skepticism, but when did it make the leap to "cult"? That I don't get.

@ STEEL good plan, but it is being done already, just ask council member Brian Davis.

It doesnt take much to put a house that people want to demolish back on the market especially if caught early.

The city and preservationists would be better at putting funds into new roofs and gutters and paint jobs etc (minor repairs) and putting the house on the market than in demolition.

Its worked in other cities...my question is why does it take 25 years after everyone else for Buffalo to catch onto a good idea.

...admitted by the wonderful college aged kids....

" then broke in through the basement window, kicked the boards off the back kitchen door, and installed locks there, and began using it as the main door."

"The house was trapped in limbo with no overseer; without a legitimate complaint from the landlord or the block club, they had to wait. Almost mysteriously, we've had no more trouble with the police."

"We forged the lease agreement to get the house inspected and they never set foot inside due to our construction efforts. After we took care of the cosmetic housing court violations, the city practically left us alone.

"so long as you get out of housing court and no one looks up your address on the city website and gets an inspector to demand a certificate of occupancy, deed, or lease agreement. "

... oh yeah.... this is great.

There are thousands of properties in this city just like this one. It is painfully obvious between people who try and those that don't care about their property. It isn't someones right to a home and you should save and pay for one, but the way the system works is by the time it is out of the hands of the owners that don't care, it is already too late. There is so much debt, and back taxes no one would take them. Hence the total lack of demand for homes that should be sold dirt cheap to get people into them.

benfranklin I see your point, 30 minutes is extreme. But how many years does a property need to sit vacant before the government or someone else step in? Would you rather this building continue to be owned by the bank, with no hope for investment? Sit there for another 2 years before a flipper buys in and tries to sell it on ebay or maybe 10 years when the roof collapses or someone burns it down?

The system in regards to a property like this, is broken.

Cool idea Ben. When these guys leave...if they leave...let's walk in and take the house. I don't really like the looks of this place. My Mercedes would look way better in the driveway and I am sure there is ample closet space for my Lacoste wardrobe.

This isn't about people buying a house and fixing it up. It doesn't seem like 80% of the people posting get what this is all about. I see people using the term landlord and renting and revitalization. Where is that coming from? Squatting and acquiring a house via adverse posession has nothing to do with any of that. Yes, this house was vacant but do you think this group has the resources to fix it up? Do you think 10 unrelated people living in a house that is at least partially heated with a woodstove make good neighbors? Look at the pictures. Does it look like the 10 people living here have been working around the clock to renovate it?

I am not trying to demonize anyone. I am being a realist. This has nothing to do with their different ideas. It is about how they acquired this house, what they are doing with it today and what they will have the resources to do with it in the the future.

Sbrof I hope you come home one day and find these people living in your garage and unwilling to leave.

Texpat10...maybe we should wait til the garden is ready for harvest, the new roof is on, wiring, plumbing, etc. is complete. Then we roll, just after dark. Maybe the night before we should let the air out of their tires, just so they know we mean business.

Sorry Clevergirl. Not bathing regularly IS scarry. Have you been in the house? Can you give us an update on the progress of the renovations?

@CLEVERGIRL they never should of filled in the pool then if they are not bathing...not so clever now...are you girl?

I am all for taking the food but I think I'd rather have the electrical system and plumbing done by licensed contractors. I don't want my wardrobe going in smoke or my ability to bathe regularly being put at risk.

....not using licensed contractors!?!? How dare you say something so negative about our entrepreneurial-college-aged environmentalists. If only they'd take a bath, clevergirl was preparing a house-warming party for them.

They moved into this property because it was vacant, and unwanted. My house, garage or anyone else's isn't. Different situation. They didn't have to push anyone out to move in. I do agree that we should all be cognizant of their means. Can they upkeep the house? Are they going to pay the taxes now that they have ownership? They should and if they don't, they, just like the previous owners shouldn't be allowed to let it sit and rot.

Property is at best leased by the government. I can't put in a pig pen, bon-fire pit, smelting furnace or other noxious or dangerous things on my property. Why should someone else be allowed to let something rot, become vacant, structurally unstable next to me. Because they own it? Does that gives them a right to endanger other people and ruin a streets property values?

Yeah I see the point of the precedent that this poses, and the illegality of what they did. But in the end I don't somehow feel threatened or harmed by their actions. In fact I would be glad if they took over a soon to be arson trap on my street. The city would also love to have 10,000 more of them. If they are all going to make an effort, and become home owners. The city owns thousands of properties, if anything we should encourage people that want to become homeowners and invest in our city to get their hands on one, or two of them for free.

@ CLEVERGIRL...Is the electric up and running for the doorbell to work or are they pulling steam power from the wood burning stove in the "music room"?