A plan to address a dozen problem properties along two West Side blocks

On a recent tour of 19th Street, Niagara District Common Councilmember David Rivera and community leader Harvey Garrett highlighted a dozen long vacant or neglected properties targeted by several nonprofit agencies and private homeowners and investors in an effort to revitalize a two-block stretch between Rhode Island Street and New Hampshire Avenue.

These efforts are part of a larger campaign by residents and the West Side Community Collaborative to bring back Buffalo’s West Side. Essex Street is one of the success stories they point to, as is Chenango Street.

The WSCC plans to acquire and renovate two properties on 19th Street. Homefront, Inc. is tackling half a dozen more. With $240,000 from the Block by Block Initiative—funds set aside by Governor David Paterson to rehabilitate dilapidated housing stock in New York State—Homefront is stabilizing the structures, repairing damaged roofs and floors, replacing windows, installing new mechanicals. The six homes they are working on are 38, 100, 106, 110, 113, and 114 19th Street.

People United for Sustainable Housing is working on another two houses on 19th Street. Already, PUSH has rehabbed several homes on nearby Chenango and Massachusetts, and is currently working on the former Costello Paints building on Massachusetts. PUSH purchases properties on the West Side, rehabs them, and rents to tenants at affordable rates. The tenants are part of a program that teaches them how to become homeowners.

Without the help of residents, politicians, police, the Erie County District Attorney’s office, and Judge Hank Nowak of the city’s housing court, the current initiatives would be impossible. For the better part of three decades, 19th Street, ravaged by crime and blight, was one of the worst streets in the West Side. Then the DA’s office made 19th Street a “no plea zone”; drug dealers and other criminal elements have moved on. Nowak held landlords accountable for their tenants and for pkeep of their properties through code violations, inspections, and fines; as a result, properties have improved and are less likely to be neglected or re-occupied by drug dealers.

Meanwhile, the WSCC organized community cleanups on the first Saturday of each month. That is an especially busy day for buying drugs, when dealers make a significant portion of their income. During one of the cleanups, news media were invited to report on the neighborhood’s efforts. The sight of volunteers, camera crews, and reporters sent dealers and buyers scrambling.

“As a councilmember, I’m seeing a lot of resurgence and interest in the West Side, and it’s translating into a lot of homes being bought for rehab and reconstruction,” Rivera says.

The work being done in the area has a cascading effect, according to Garrett. “The collaborating is the key piece to this,” he says. “Homefront really couldn’t do this if PUSH wasn’t doing the work they’re doing. All these groups working together is making this possible. If the Collaborative wasn’t doing the work they were doing, if Dave Rivera wasn’t doing the work he’s doing, if the neighbors weren’t doing the work they’re doing, it wouldn’t make any sense to put in all this money—this million and a half dollars—into the area. So it’s all these elements working together and the neighbors doing their part. We’re basically taking every single vacant property on these two blocks and transforming them.”

“And it’s part of a long-term initiative that we’re doing right now,” Rivera adds. “It’s not going to happen overnight. We want to make sure that it’s comprehensive, that it deals with the needs of this particular neighborhood. Every neighborhood has different needs.”

Rivera has been working with the mayor’s office to focus on salvaging homes rather than destroying them. He is especially interested in turning money from Restore New York program, a three-year grant program in its final phase this year, toward rehabs and new-builds in blighted city neighborhoods. “For the last few years it’s been used primarily for demolitions,” he says. “Certain parts of the city need the demolitions. Now in the final year we’re asking the city to come up with a more comprehensive program, to deal with the unique problems we have on the West Side and Riverside, and that is rehabbing some of these homes.

“We’re saying we have beautiful homes that you can invest some money into, put them back on the market and the tax rolls, and you don’t have to demolish them. When you demolish these homes you’re not just losing taxpayers but you’re losing the fabric of a neighborhood. When you demolish all these houses, you lose the character of a neighborhood.”

On Essex, Chenango, and Rhode Island, homebuyers or investors have made an impact in making the area more desirable. The improvements have attracted Scott Washburn and John Crawford, for example. They recently sold their home in the Elmwood Village, a beautifully landscaped oasis on the Garden Walk, to purchase three properties on the West Side. They are in the process of acquiring a three-story brick building at the corner of 19th and Rhode Island, and will spend $450,000 to buy and rehab the properties. They say they look forward to living down the block from the Urban Roots Garden Center and both the Left Bank and Prime 490 restaurants.

Home sale figures over the last few years in the city show rapid price increases for the area. “The West Side is the fastest-growing real estate market right now,” says Garrett.

—lucy yau