NEWS SPECIAL REPORT
Looking for a blueprint to fight poverty in Buffalo
In Boston, affordable housing replaced blight after a neighborhood gained control of 30 acres to redevelop.
In Richmond, Va., after government money was directed at six poverty-stricken neighborhoods, crime went down 19 percent and home values increased 10 percent more than the city average.
In Dayton, Ohio, six public schools in distressed neighborhoods were transformed into community centers that now provide after-school recreation plus medical and social services.
These are examples of how some cities are experimenting with ways to stabilize poor neighborhoods and reverse decline.
Buffalo may have some success stories, but not many.
The fight against poverty in Buffalo — where nearly 30 percent of the population is officially classified as “poor” — is on hold, waiting for a comprehensive blueprint and sustained commitment to lift people, and the neighborhoods in which they live, into self-sufficiency.
Today, most local anti-poverty initiatives — those of the city and Erie County, of nonprofits and businesses — deal with the conditions of being poor: of not having enough food, not having a place to live, not being able to take care of one’s children.
L. Nathan Hare, executive director of the Community Action Organization, put it bluntly:
“We’re really just doing a holding pattern, keeping people from starving to death,” he said. “If we’re going to work on these issues that tend to breed and sustain poverty, we have to have a more cohesive process.”
A big-picture anti-poverty blueprint would take on the factors that lead to, exacerbate, and perpetuate poverty: insufficient or inadequate jobs, poor education, crime and lack of personal savings.
“The city needs to start saying, ‘This is what the city could look like, and this is why we would be better off if the least among us were pulled up,’ ” said Allison Duwe of the Partnership for the Public Good, a coalition of 40 organizations.
A blueprint to fight poverty also would provide a way for the community— particularly the business sector— to focus its resources for optimum benefit by tracking and measuring results, and seeing what works and what doesn’t.
“There are plenty of companies in the City of Buffalo that would love to help if they knew where and how to help,” said Harvey Garrett, a housing activist and executive director of the West Side Community Collaborative. “But without a master plan, you could be throwing money out.”
Here are the main issues anti-poverty experts say Buffalo must address:
Education and literacy
“Every child under the age of 5 must have access to quality early childhood education with high-quality programs and well-trained teachers,” said Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, president of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.
Once the children get a good education, she said, “you have the strongest lever to pull to eradicate poverty.”
Marlies Wesolowski, executive director of the Lt. Col. Matt Urban Center and a former Buffalo School Board president, also advocates starting early.
Public schools should provide quality prekindergarten and enhanced after- school programs, she said, along with longer school days and longer school years. Music, art and language should be taught in primary grades, along with giving children hands-on experiences in science and math.
She also says the district needs to work harder to attract good teachers and to remove those that underperform. And she urges school unions to get on board or risk seeing more parents turn to charter schools or other alternatives.
Job training
At the federally funded Buffalo Employment and Training Center, clients learn computer skills, prepare to take GED tests and receive job training. But its budget was slashed 20 percent last year, continuing a downward trend.
On the other hand, the center ran a summer jobs program for youth ages 14 to 16. Director Colleen Cummings said 375 students received training in carpentry, culinary skills or media work.
“It’s the first time I recall the city really allocating a significant amount of money to summer jobs for youth,” she said.
With the right skills, Cummings said, well-paying jobs can be found in Buffalo in new industries like life sciences or advanced manufacturing, or in older, changing fields that require new skills.
Buffalo is positioned to be a leader in creating green jobs through a major expansion of weatherization programs, said Aaron Bartley, executive director of People United for Sustainable Housing.
“You can cut the amount of money poor and working-class people are paying for utilities by half, and train hundreds of post-high school youth and unemployed adults to be doing that work,” Bartley said.
He also is a proponent of Buffalo’s Living Wage, which pays public employees $9.90 an hour with health benefits, or $11.11 without.
“Having a job that pays enough to live on remains the No. 1 one anti-poverty program that any society can have,” Bartley said.
Other factors to consider, for those ready to work:
• Parents need access to affordable child care. Otherwise, they may have to drop out of the workforce.
• Public transportation needs to find more efficient ways to connect
poor workers — many of whom don’t own cars — to jobs outside the city.
Attacking blight
One of Buffalo’s most daunting challenges is its glut of vacant, derelict housing.
Mayor Byron W. Brown has a five-year plan to demolish 5,000 structures and recently accepted People United for Sustainable Housing’s initiative to rehabilitate 500 homes in the same time period.
Another program, Blueprint Buffalo, proposes turning blighted areas into a “living laboratory,” in which local governments, universities and businesses would experiment with community- driven redevelopment approaches.
Michael Clarke, program director of Local Initiatives Support Corp., a not-for-profit that works with local governments to revitalize neighborhoods, says the lab would be a bold stroke for Buffalo.
“The living laboratory is intended to encourage a whole different way of looking at the city. There would be competitions to bring experts from around the country, and even internationally, to see if we can get some innovative redevelopment ideas,” Clarke said.
Also:
• To strengthen neighborhoods and create jobs, the Partnership for the Public Good calls for supporting small businesses with training and start-up funds and for cultivating immigrant businesses.
• Local advocates say Buffalo should target federal Community Development Block Grants more effectively. Millions of dollars have been squandered through the years on projects that are not directly fighting poverty or blight as intended.
Off the drawing board
The question now is whether such a campaign will ever start.
Brown this year designated one of his deputy mayors, Donna Brown, as the point person to develop a comprehensive anti-poverty plan. But she was reassigned for several months to run another city agency and has yet to present a poverty plan to either the mayor or the public. She says a plan is in development.
That’s not to say the city and its nonprofit sector haven’t already made efforts in this area. From welfare payments and food stamps to thrift stores, food pantries and homeless shelters, the poor can find relief on the most critical issues of food, clothing and housing.
Head Start and other reading programs serve at-risk children, while the city’s Afterschool Work Experience and summer jobs program provide work for older youths, at least for a few months.
There are also groups and agencies that provide free legal help, free tax preparation and free counseling on accessing government relief programs. There’s even a low-interest loan program to help people buy cars specifically so they can get to work. Some of the city’s biggest philanthropic foundations have targeted financial aid to anti-poverty initiatives.
Together, the city and county give out tens of millions of dollars to attack poverty, but even those who run some of these programs question their long-term value.
“It’s not that things aren’t working. You’ll see positive outcomes, but they’re all small programs that only touch a very few people,” said Brenda McDuffie, president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League.
And all too often those programs operate in a vacuum, without regard for or referral to what else is out there that might be overlapping or complementary.
“As the area gets poorer, as people move out, we have more and more nonprofit organizations, and I’m not sure that’s in anybody’s best interests,” said Robert G. Wilmers, M&T Bank Corp.’s CEO and a vocal advocate for change in the city and county. “There are too many people involved, too much competition doing the same thing.”
Hence the calls for a master plan.
“If we put more money into the pot, it needs to be done in a very strategic, very well-thought-out manner,” Wesolowski said. “Just throwing money at the problem doesn’t make the problem go away.”
What’s really needed to eradicate poverty is a broader focus on better living and working conditions: a school system that works, neighborhoods that are safe, homes that are affordable, and especially jobs that pay a living wage. Then people won’t need government aid.
“If you can get someone a stable job and a career and an education, it’s the foundation for a life that is not in poverty,” said Arlene F. Kaukus, president of United Way of Buffalo and Erie County.
Down to business
Critics say public money aimed at the private business sector also has been mismanaged. They say economic development agencies wrongly dole out tax breaks to businesses that don’t create quality jobs, revive blighted neighborhoods or help people move out of poverty.
“We’ve seen instead the perpetuation of low-wage jobs and the movement of businesses out of our urban core,” said Duwe of Coalition for Economic Justice. “So work is needed to improve the quality of the jobs that are being created.”
Other observers say that the government should focus on helping small businesses locally that will stay here, rather than cultivating the next big employer that can move at the drop of a hat.
“We’re always working on that big silver bullet that’s going to bring in a big company,” Garrett said. But “there’s almost no funding at all coming from the city, county or state for entrepreneurship.”
It is also suggested that the private sector can do better on its own, by ensuring that business practices and employment policies support its workers in tough times. That means paying fair wages and benefits, and providing access to health insurance.
“Employers have a responsibility to watch over their own house and make sure they’re doing whatever they can,” said Kaukus, the United Way director.
Ultimately, advocates say, the public, private and business communities need to come together to address the broader issues behind the poverty that is such a drag on our area. They want Mayor Brown and County Executive Chris Collins to bring together various local coalitions and leaders to develop solutions and move in the same direction.
As Kaukus says, “We didn’t get here overnight, and we’re not going to get out of this overnight. It’s going to take a sustained communitywide effort over a period of time to begin to see the kinds of change that all of us would want.”
And if we don’t realize that, as McDuffie said, “We’re kidding ourselves.”
msommer@buffnews.com and jepstein@buffnews.com
