COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Brown biting the hand that feeds his city
She has a photo of her house on her cell phone. That is how thrilled Renee Law is about grabbing a piece of the American Dream. When I asked her about the home, Law—like a new mom showing off baby pictures— opened the phone to display her prized possession.
Law owns a neat three-bedroom near the University at Buffalo’s South Campus. She knows by heart the day she closed—Sept. 5, 2008.
“It still seems like a dream,” Law, 39, told me in her downtown office. “The first time I pulled up in the driveway, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is my house.’ It is such a blessing.”
It is a blessing that Law, friendly and talkative, admittedly would not have known without Homefront. The nonprofit agency helps lower-income renters such as Law become homeowners, with counseling and loan programs. It also buys battered houses for rehab, then sells them to home-ready clients.
“If not for [Homefront], I would not be in my home,” said Law, a manager at a health services agency. “I’m a single parent, on my own. There were a lot of things with credit and loans I didn’t know.”
Multiply her by 495. That is the number of renters whom the agency guided into homes over the last few years. Taking on a home deepened their stake in the community and stiffened the backbone of neighborhoods in America’s third-poorest city.
Somebody needs to tell Mayor Byron Brown.
Homefront is among a glut of nonprofit agencies being held hostage in recent months by a mayor who keeps putting politics ahead of people. Homefront has tried for nearly a year to get the city to re-up on its contract. Agency head Bryan Cacciotti said that it goes beyond the city’s usual tardiness.
“We are worried,” Cacciotti said, “about being dropped.”
Without the money, he will lay off workers and cut programs—and the city will have fewer new homeowners.
As reported Monday by The Buffalo News’ Jim Heaney, agencies that are politically friendly to Brown are getting city contracts. High-performing but nonpolitical places such as Homefront are getting stiff-armed. The city’s unofficial motto: If it’s fixed, break it.
A mayor who gave us a dead-on-arrival anti-poverty plan now seems complicit in killing what works. The rate of foreclosures among the new homeowners helped by Homefront is—drumroll, please—less than 1 percent. Thanks largely to Homefront, folks did not lift more home than they could carry.
Since 2005, the city has funneled federal dollars to Homefront. The agency used the seed money to bring in more than $4 million in private funds and other public dollars. The city, for little investment, gets a huge return in stronger neighborhoods. It is the housing equivalent of what the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, another agency that Brown is squeezing, does with prime parkland.
HUD blasted the city during the Masiello and Griffin years for misusing federal dollars sent to fight blight. Brown is keeping the sorry streak alive.
Mayoral spokesman Peter Cutler blamed bureaucratic delays for holdups with federal dollars. Money for some agencies came through Thursday. But Homefront and others stay unfunded— and that may not change.
Brown comes across well and holds people more accountable than predecessor Tony Masiello. But I think that, time and again, he puts political considerations ahead of the public good. That would be easier to take in a milk-and-honey municipality. In dirt-poor Buffalo, it is a punch in the face.
Homefront is gasping for breath. If the city smothers its gift horse, the agency’s rate of 100-per-year new homeowners will slow to a trickle.
“Owning a home,” said Law, “makes me feel like a more productive person.”
It works for Law. It works for the city. Too bad it does not work for the mayor.
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