Tag: Urban Affairs

Nov 12

2025

Real estate firm settles housing discrimination lawsuit

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The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has settled a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a Western New York real estate agent accused of racial steering, a practice that violates local and federal fair housing laws. The organization accused Avant Realty founder Charles Glander of directing white homebuyers away from “unsafe” neighborhoods on Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side, “a practice he did not apply for Black homebuyers,” according to a statement the Legal Defense Fund issued in January. The Legal Defense Fund — representing Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a nonprofit watchdog organization  — in April reached a settlement with Glander that[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Nov 4

2025

The intersection of neglect and indifference

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The intersection of Niagara and Jersey streets on Buffalo’s Lower West Side is riddled with trash, vacant lots, abandoned buildings and menacing squatters. It’s been going downhill for a decade or more. The only consistency has been the indifference of property owners and the inaction of city officials. Jersey Street resident David Eisenbart used to tend a community garden on a corner of the intersection, but he said that squatters in an abandoned cottage next door made the environment too dangerous. “Every once in a while I would go and mow, just because it got very bad, but the squatters were[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Oct 16

2025

The Central Terminal’s costly redevelopment plan

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The nonprofit charged with redeveloping Buffalo’s landmark New York Central Terminal, situated in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, has proposed converting two buildings on the sprawling campus into apartments that could cost as much as $900,000 per unit to build. Critics tell Investigative Post the cost is astronomical and a poor use of taxpayer dollars.  In June, the developer and nonprofit announced plans to spend $80 million to develop 90 to 110 affordable apartments, plus potential commercial space, in a former mail sorting and storage facility adjacent to the Central Terminal’s iconic tower and a city-owned structure that housed[...]

Posted 1 month ago

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[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Aug 12

2025

Absentee landlord hit with historic fine

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The Elmwood Heights Apartments are for sale as former owner faces record fines. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel. The absentee owner of a Buffalo apartment complex may soon be hit with the largest fine ever imposed by Buffalo Housing Court. On July 23, Housing Court Judge Phillip Dabney issued a $1.3 million judgment against Elmwood Heights LLC, the owner of the now-vacant Elmwood Heights Apartments at 597-605 Elmwood Ave., at the corner of Lexington Ave. The three-story, 49-unit apartment complex, which has been in Housing Court since 2018, was condemned in March 2023 by the city for unsafe living conditions, with[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 23

2025

More delays in creating Buffalo Housing Court panel

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Plans to reinstate the Buffalo Housing Court Advisory Council — which, despite being written into law, has been inactive for over three decades — seem to have stalled yet again.  The state judicial system says not enough people have shown interest in joining the council, which is intended to monitor Housing Court, make recommendations to the judge, hold quarterly meetings and produce annual reports.  Meanwhile, community members say the courts have done a poor job of advertising the search for applicants. “It shouldn’t be shocking that you don’t get a lot of applicants if you don’t actually make the position[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 3

2025

Protesting city inaction on lead poisoning

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Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good (center) joined by community advocates and state elected officials Jon Rivera (left) and April Baskin (right). Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel Local housing advocates and elected officials are condemning Buffalo’s failure to spend over three-quarters of a $2 million federal grant dedicated to removing toxic lead paint from city homes.  Meanwhile, proposed state legislation aims to pressure landlords to clean their property of lead when identified by housing inspectors.  Investigative Post reported last week that the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency to date has only spent  $479,481 of the $2[...]

Posted 6 months ago

Mar 27

2025

A new approach to East Side development

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Henry Louis Taylor of UB presents plans for Census Tract 166. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel Census Tract 166 — an economically devastated community situated in the heart of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood — will be ground zero for a new approach to revitalizing the East Side. The census tract is peppered with 1,300 vacant lots, more than any other neighborhood in the city.  Only 25 percent of its adult residents work, according to 2022 US census estimates. More than a quarter of its households live below the poverty level. Henry Taylor, director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies,[...]

Posted 8 months ago
Investigative Post