Buffalo, NY has a lot bigger\u00a0challenges than finding a way to keep the Bills (or for that matter finding a way for the Bills to win a game against a divisional rival). An estimated 30% of Buffalonians live in poverty, and a huge\u00a0chunk of the housing stock is vacant while there is also a dearth of affordable housing for the poorest\u00a0city residents. There is a fantastic organization run by a recent HLS alum, Aaron Bartley,\u00a0called PUSH Buffalo\u00a0(http:\/\/pushbuffalo.org\/default.htm) which, among other things, is working to convert abandoned and blighted real estate into affordable housing.\u00a0PUSH seems to have an interesting model, which includes some advocacy and lobbying and other direct services like\u00a0the provision of\u00a0co-op housing arrangements to encourage housing ownership among the poor, and the FLoG Blog hopes to bring Aaron in for a guest post sometime soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is also a proposal on the table for the\u00a0city of Buffalo to become a “living laboratory” to solve the vacant housing\u00a0crises.\u00a0http:\/\/www.buffalonews.com\/home\/story\/448343.html. The proposal includes many different initiatives all to be\u00a0centrally\u00a0coordinated at the University of Buffalo, these\u00a0initiatives\u00a0include the\u00a0creation of regional development authorities and incentives for businesses that build green buildings and\u00a0create green jobs.\u00a0(You\u00a0can read more about the living laboratory project here:\u00a0http:\/\/www.lisc.org\/buffalo\/assets\/asset_upload_file503_10740.pdf). The proposal seems to want to draw in the talent and the money (from federal and state government) that would be needed to tackle the problem. The remaining question is whether the\u00a0city (or more accurately, the region) will have the legal authority and the political will to implement these proposals. It is unclear whether the state economic development statutes will allow the local Industrial Development Agencies to merge into a regional authority, and even if this merge\u00a0can happen, it is unclear whether the political willpower will exist to seek regional\u00a0cooperation. Aaron Bartley may have put it best: \u00a0\u201cThe question remains whether our leaders in the public and private sector, who have failed so miserably to address the problem thus far, will recognize the need for regional cooperation and a less parochial outlook on development matters”<\/p>\n
Back with more on Buffalo in the\u00a0coming weeks. . .\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Buffalo, NY has a lot bigger\u00a0challenges than finding a way to keep the Bills (or for that matter finding a way for the Bills to win a game against a divisional rival). An estimated 30% of Buffalonians live in poverty, and a huge\u00a0chunk of the housing stock is vacant while there is also a dearth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1950,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1950"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}