“There are now more than 250 city-owned vacant homes on the West Side.” -Aaron Bartley @ PUSH Buffalo
So what do you do to get The City on board with speeding up the process of finding a solution to the problem? Issue housing tickets. “In our view, the city taking title to the property is not a terrible thing,” says Aaron. “It becomes terrible when they don’t rehabilitate, maintain or resell a single parcel.” Today at 1pm, PUSH members and community residents will be gathering at the corner of Normal and Massachusetts Avenues to bring additional light to the issue.
PUSH members will then proceed to issue color-coded housing tickets to vacant, City-owned houses along the Normal-Massachusetts corridor. If a house is cited with an orange ticket, then that means that demolition procedures should be stepped up. If a green ticket is issued, then the house is salvageable and quick measures should be decided as to how to best deal with getting it out of City hands (and back onto the tax rolls).
In a recent written statement, Aminah Johnson of PUSH was quoted as saying, “If City Hall can’t come up with a plan for rehabilitating its own property on the West Side, we as residents will have to do it. The Mayor’s 5 in 5 demolition plan will not bring back our neighborhood without real investment in rehabilitation and strategic planning.” By issuing the tickets, PUSH hopes that The City will:
*See that twenty vacant West Side homes are rehabilitated each year using Federal funds allocated to the City
*See that one hundred West Side homes are weatherized per year
*See that the West Side’s 20 most dangerous homes are demolished immediately
*Require that 50% of all the employment opportunities created by these projects should be prioritized and go to low-income residents
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