Buffalo Rising Online

I wonder if a petition signed by the residents of the LBJ would convince HUD that they actually DO have a voice.

This would require the demo of the derelict Amherst Bowling Center. A real eyesore as you cross Main St. I guess this would add to all the other public housing and slumlords there.

This is a very promising development.

I have long been angered by Banko's eloquence on his opposition to war (with which I fully ageee), as he has been deafeningly silent on Bflo's massive problems with poverty & housing blight . . . which he is paid so well by HUD to address.

Here he is finally quite honest & eloquent:

This is a Medaille and developer-driven project,” says Banko. “The developers are using everyone’s money but their own. This project has nothing to do with residents and what is best for them

Sadly, then he badly shoots himself in the foot:

He declares, "Public housing tenants are the poorest of the poor. They have rights but no voice. HUD is that voice"

As a longtime advocate for the poor, BMHA AND HUD have been my major adversaries.

I will be impressed if Banko finally publicly reveals how much "developer driven" (& patronage driven) HUD funding pours annually thru Bflo. Last I tried to find out, it was about $150 million annually.

Banko needs to blatedly propose an honest cost-beneifit analysis of HUD funding outcomes . . in the second poorest, & second most "vacant", US city.

Also, BMHA tenants have long been used as "tickets" to faciliate dubiously & costly "development". The sad truth is that tenants too often succomb to efforts to destructively "divide the poor".

BMHA spends about half of City Hall's poverty housing funds on about 10% of Bflo's poor, while keeping them in permanent costly dependency. Roughly speaking for every low income housing dollar that City Hall channels, a BMHA tenant "facilitates" 50 cents, all the rest of Bflo's poor get less than a nickel each. It is all those 10's of thousands of Bflo's poor in forsaken neighborhoods who truly have no voice.

That is blatantly unfair, as ever more of Bflo's poor live in blighted & dangerous neighborhoods.

Mr Banko, more eloquence (& honesty) please!

the Amherst street site has a roller rink across the street though

I support the sale of the LBJ and I think it will eventually happen....everyone knows that th BMHA is more about politics than poverty (if it was about poor there would more vouchers which could be spread out over thousands rather than actual housing which can only serve hundreds)

here is an idea......with Millard Fillmore Gates closing why not move Sisters Hospital over to Millard Fillmore Gates and sell Sisters Hospital to Medaille or Canisius.....that seems just as much of a rabbit in a hat

I think that long term one of these colleges has to consider leaving for another section of the city and its probably going to be Medaille.....there is plenty of space on the eastside and south buffalo for a new medaille campus and frankly if the light rail was extended to the airport or the South Park Botanical Gardens as it was envisioned then I think medaille might just consider it.

so again it comes back to when this city extends its light rail!

That rendering had better be impressive!

The proposed 200 apartments costing $36.5 million amount to $180,000 each. That is $180,000, plus heavly ongoing operating subsidies, for one elderly person each . . . in the second poorest US city . . which also has at least 25,000 housing vacancies, including many vacancies in other heavily subsidized elderly complexes.

Banko is half right. This has little or nothing to do with the poor. BMHA tenats have long served heavily as "tickets" for developers.

That makes Banko's claim that HUD is "the voice of the poor" laughable.

I am most saddened that this obscenely costly project is the first major act of new BMHA Executive Dawn Sanders. I introduced her to Citizen Action's campaign for "BMHA reform" well over a decade ago when she was lead organizer at Citizen Action, where she, Crystal Peoples, Byron Brown & Maurice Garner launched their political careers.

BMHA remains unreformed, & now Dawn Sanders is leading its latest insult against Bflo's ever growing 10's of thousands of poor, ever more of whom live in dangerous blighted neighborhoods.

Richard Kern

This is a typical problem in Buffalo. Connected developers like the head of EI Team give a lot of money to elected officials, the mayor being one. Then EI partners up with Centerstone, which is the company of John Giardino, who sits on the Buffalo control board, and the control board oversees the BMHA's finances. Conflict of interest you ask? These same 2 developers were given the rights to the old Kensington Heights project by BMHA. How many ways is this a problem? Please don't someone suggest that if Giardino abstains on control board votes related to his project, or anything related to the BMHA, that everything is OK. He still is in a position to give the mayor favorable votes at control board sessions, and do we really know whether or not it's a trade-off for his getting designated as developer of projects like this by boards like the BMHA, which the mayor appoints? Giardino should be asked to resign from the control board and the BMHA should prove that any developers were clearly, competitively and openly selected. None of this has anything to do with the merits of the project that is proposed, and HUD seems right on this. I believe that HUD requires tenant input into relocation and replacement housing too. Maybe the tenants, who are mostly elderly and with some disabled there, won't feel that trading their current location for one that is much more a part of a lower-income, predominently minority area, is a good deal. It's not good financially for HUD or the BMHA.

Wunder:

Thanks for pointing out the massive conflict of interest in Giardino being the "favored" developer, as he sits on the City Control Board . . . in the second poorest US City.

Instead of looking for how to lift more of Bflo's plentiful poor out of poverty & blight . . . Giardino appears to be thinking about how profitable poverty can be, for the chosen few.

Why is there not outrage from liberals & conservatives alike at the prospect of Bflo govt's major welfare program proposing spending $180,000 to house single elderly person, plus heavy annual "operating subsidies until they die?

Having spoken to those more knowledgeable than I am about the inside workings of HUD & BMHA, here are a few points to consider:

Banko's statements were stronger than would have expected from HUD. Insiders have long discussed that HUD didn't like this deal at all.

Was Giardino also designated for Commodore Perry? What other "poverty housing " projects? Have any idea who Medaille plans to hire to do the dorm work? Is it the same guys?

It all raises some important issues but who will ask the questions about those relationships between the electeds, the BMHA, HUD, the State, the BFSA?

Why is the Buffalo News so quiet on major issue in a desperately poor city?

Where's the Common Council on this? Especailly as more Council Districts are slipping badly? The flippers & scammers are now heavily moving into North & University Districts.

Obviously $180,000 units for single persons will suck more elderly folks out of already struggling neighborhoods. Major efforts should support elderly remaining in their homes, not enticing them out with sparkling new$180,000.

Will Byron Brown's new "poverty & blight" aide Donna Brown finally publicly address BMHA's dismal failure & need for massive reform?

What about Steve Banko? He has at least finally open the door . . . very slightly.

And will new BMHA ED Dawn Sanders ever be required to discuss her "vision" for a longtime wasteful, costly & troubled? I am praying that does not include more $180,000 apartments for the city's poorest elderly singles.

Dick Kern (in Mpls)

Peripatetic . . .

This is indeed troubling news, especailly after Banko made it sound that the project would not easily move forward.

I posted this response on SpeakUpWNY, where the only response was that I don't understand, or care about, the poor.

One would hope that liberals & conservatives alike would be upset about a costly proposal to house a single elderly person in $180K apartments in the 2nd poores & 2nd "most vacant" city . . . where building heavily subsidized housing everywhere in a shrinking city is, in Harvard professor Glaeser's words, "counter-intuitive".

Bflo may get the govt it deserves?

COPY: SpeakUpWNY.com

$180K BMHA apartments for the poor

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This is the incredible BMHA proposal to sell LBJ Apartments on Main & Humboldt to Medaille College for about $3 million, then move to this $36 million site.

Almost all the elderly LBJ tenants are singles, so the city is building apartments for the poor costing $180K each for ONE person.

The plan is made more ironic for its location adjacent to the struggling 84 townhouse complex on Bennett Village Terrace (BVT), where small attractive 2 BR units are selling for well under $20K. The last sale in foreclosure on 4/21.08 of 52 BVT was $15K.

Former BMHA executive Sharon West, now working for HUD in Tampa, still owns her former home at #41 in the BVT complex, which she bought in 1986 for $50K, now assessed at $20K. She moved into public housing at Stuyvesant on Elmwood & Summer when the BVT neighborhood became too dangerous.