Sep 30
2025
Buffalo’s Housing Court: Fewer fines, lax collections
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The City of Buffalo over the past six years has failed to collect $6.5 million in Housing Court fines that could help to address the city’s budget deficits.
Since January 2020, Housing Court judges have issued $7,024,200 in fines, according to data Investigative Post obtained from the New York State Office of Court Administration. The city has collected $481,500, or 8.5 percent of the fines issued.
And between 2017 and 2019, the city failed to collect another $6.8 million in Housing Court fines, according to city records. That’s more than $13 million the city has left on the table over the past eight years.
The city’s current Housing Court judge, who took over the job in December, is issuing far fewer fines than his predecessor — and the city has had even less success collecting those.
Lawmakers say they’re frustrated that the city isn’t using the collection tools at its disposal, including legislation that allows the city to place a lien on a scofflaw’s property.
“I’m shocked, but not surprised, because that seems like that’s the way that the city works. No accountability,” University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt told Investigative Post.
Fred Brace, a former Housing Court liaison for the University District, called the collections rate “totally unacceptable” but not unexpected.
“My only surprise is how much was collected,” he said. “It’s reprehensible. It’s indictable. Somebody should go to jail.”
Investigative Post also analyzed the rate in which fines are being issued annually.
Former City Court Judge Patrick Carney retired last December after 30 years on the bench, the last 14 of those devoted to Housing Court. He was succeeded by Phillip Dabney, Jr.
Carney was often criticized for being too lenient in issuing court fines, but the data shows that his successor is issuing significantly fewer. On average, Carney issued about 1,500 fines per year, post-pandemic. Dabney has issued less than a quarter of that number in his first nine months on the job. Even Carney’s pandemic numbers were higher than Dabney’s. In 2020 and 2021, when court activity was curtailed, Carney issued 487 and 492 fines, respectively.
Of the 310 fines Dabney has handed out so far in 2025, just one has been paid, records show.
Neither Dabney, Eighth Judicial Administrative Judge Amy Martoche nor Chief City Court Judge JaHarr Pridgen responded to requests for comment for this article.
“Uncollectable” fines
The city for years has had a poor record of making property owners pay up. Investigative Post previously reported that the city had $22 million in unpaid court penalties issued between 2006 and 2012. Our reporting showed a vast majority of some 1,470 property owners faced no consequenc for skipping out on their fines.
Housing Court judges can issue fines to property owners who fail to remedy citations by city inspectors. Those citations range from minor violations, like overgrown grass or trash, to more serious offenses such as lead contamination, property abandonment and structural issues that could cause a house to collapse.
The typical Housing Court fine is $500 for each uncorrected violation. The maximum fine is $1,500 per violation. The city’s lawyers ask for an amount based on the number of violations, their seriousness, and how long they’ve gone uncorrected. The judge issues fines at his discretion, which may differ from the city’s recommendations. County inspectors may also propose fines for lead-related violations.
There are instances where the judge issues larger penalties. Dabney last month issued a $1.3 million fine to the owner of Elmwood Heights LLC. That figure reflected the maximum fines per day for each day the property’s code violations went unresolved. Due to the unusual circumstance and technical limitations, that fine has not yet been entered into the court system and is not reflected in the sum of fines that Dabney has issued.
Once a fine is issued, the city’s Division of Treasury and Collections is responsible for collecting payment.
Carney in 2012 told Investigative Post he considered the fines he issued “really, totally uncollectable.” He and City Treasurer Michael Seaman blamed owners who hide their identities behind LLCs and who live downstate, out of state or out of the country.
Seaman did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Carney at the time said he favored issuing bench warrants over fines because they were more effective in getting property owners to appear in court, although he provided no records to prove that claim.
Housing Court fines collected by the city are sent to the city’s general fund. The city last year filled a $40 million deficit with the last of its cash reserves and federal pandemic aid. It will likely face a deficit this fiscal year as well.
“We don’t have a spending problem,” Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon told The Buffalo News in February. “We have a revenue problem.”
Lovejoy District Council Member Bryan Bollman, who has served as Council president while Scanlon is acting mayor, told Investigative Post: “It seems pretty clear to me that we also have to take this a lot more seriously if we’re only collecting 8 percent [of fines] when we have not only the budget deficit, but the lack of compliance in the city of Buffalo when it comes to housing.”
Unused tools for collecting debts
The city’s Divisions of Treasury and Collections is responsible for collecting debts owed to the city, from unpaid taxes and user fees to Housing Court fines.
The city employs four collections officers, according to city payroll records — three assigned to the Department of Administration and Finance, one to Treasury and Collections. Between them they earned $239,418 last year. The city’s Traffic Violations Agency has their own collections officer, who made $58,229 last year.
However, the division’s web page says Housing Court fines are referred to an outside contractor “for further collection efforts.” The city previously used Mercantile Adjustment Bureau to collect unpaid debts. That company ceased operations last month.
Last October the city put out a request for proposals for debt recovery services, including unpaid Housing Court fines. Bid documents indicate that 588 fines totaling nearly $6.8 million went uncollected between 2017 and 2019.
The Council in March approved awarding the contract to RTR Financial Services. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomIn 2014, a decade before he became Council president and subsequently acting mayor, Scanlon joined former Lovejoy Council Member Rich Fontana in proposing legislation that would allow unpaid Housing Court fines to be added to a property owner’s tax bill. That, in turn, allowed the city to turn the unpaid fines into a lien against the property.
The Council in May 2019 adopted that legislation. But the tool has rarely, if ever, been used, according to lawmakers and budget documents.
Bollman, who was Fontana’s chief of staff before succeeding him as Lovejoy’s Council member, said he wants to see the law used. He said no one has given him a clear explanation why that hasn’t happened.
“We definitely had the legislation and the ability to do it at one point. I think it may have been an administration decision to not do it — and/or the law department,” he said.
The Brown administration in its 2024-25 budget listed “adding Housing Court judgments to tax bills” among its goals for the fiscal year, with a target of doing so with 600 properties in arrears. The document indicates the city failed to do that in the previous two budget years.
Fillmore District Council Member Mitch Nowakowski, who chairs the Council’s Finance Committee, said he brought up the legislation with the city’s corporation counsel, Cavette Chambers, and its tax commissioner, Jason Shell.
“We kind of got ambiguous answers as to why it’s not so prevalently used,” Nowakowski said.
Scanlon in April 2024 called on the Brown administration to provide an update on the collection of unpaid Housing Court fines, citing the tax lien legislation. Nowakowski and Bollman, as well as Niagara District’s David Rivera and Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope, co-sponsored the resolution.
Over a year later, there has been no update, according to Nowakowski. Scanlon, who has been acting mayor since last October, did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Neither did Chambers, the city’s corporation counsel, whose resignation Scanlon announced last week.
Nowakowski said he hopes a change in city leadership will result in better use of city statutes and resources to improve collections.
“The next corporation counsel that is appointed by the incoming mayor in January has to completely rethink the law department,” he said. “Instead of coming from a place of ‘no,’ come from a place of, ‘How can we accomplish the full intent of these laws expeditiously?’ ”
