A formal connection between the Center for Urban Studies and the Community Health Equity Research Institute at UB is sharpening the focus on Buffalo’s built environment and its impact on the city’s social determinants of health.
Read the full article from University at Buffalo, here.
BUFFALO, N.Y. – To more powerfully address and reverse Buffalo’s entrenched health disparities, a University at Buffalo center dedicated to regenerating underdeveloped neighborhoods is joining the Community Health Equity Research Institute at UB.
Reporter Mark Scheer interviews Henry-Louis Taylor, director of the Center for Urban Studies, on “The Harder We Run: The State of Black Buffalo in 1990 and the Present,” a 2021 report to the Buffalo Center for Health Equity.
“That’s a joke: $500 for 1,600 families that are probably making about $15,000 or $16,000 dollars a year?” Taylor said.
Some 68% of African-American residents in the city are renters, along with about 78% of the Latino population and 62% of the Asian-American community, he said, citing census figures.
“These families are faced with two issues: They’re paying 40, 50, 60% of their income on housing, and … many of these families, especially those who don’t own a car, have almost no money left over to do anything with,” Taylor said.
“This victory reflected the people’s power. It was made possible by the millions who drew a line in the sand and said ‘enough.’ But history teaches us, the retrogressive forces in this country will resist. Even as they say, ‘justice was served, and this is the beginning of a new beginning,’ they will block efforts to defund the police and recreate policing as we know it. These same forces will fight reforms to improve the quality of neighborhood life among Blacks, Indigenous and people of color. They will work tirelessly to maintain the status quo. And the fightback will continue. The people will build on this ‘shining moment.’ The people will continue to the quest for that day when BIPOC will cry ‘free at last, free at last.’ This victory will cause them to keep the faith and raise the battle cry, ‘Remember George Floyd. Power to the People.’”
“‘The partnership between the task force and the Community Health Equity Research Institute was instrumental in partially mitigating the deadly impact of the pandemic in communities of color in Buffalo,’ Murphy says. The vision of the website was guided chiefly by contributions from three members of the institute’s Steering Committee: Henry Louis Taylor Jr., professor of urban and regional planning, School of Architecture and Planning, and associate director of the institute; Kelly Wofford, community engagement coordinator in UB’s Center for Nursing Research in the School of Nursing; and Christopher St. Vil, assistant professor in the School of Social Work.”
Read the full article from Democrat and Chronicle here.
“Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies,said expungement ‘begins to close the road from the neighborhood to the jail.’ But to create substantive change, he said, the funding set aside in the legislation must include connecting people who were incarcerated to job opportunities and other resources, as well as repairing harms done to communities by marijuana prohibition.The changes, he said, that need to come from funding have to be transformative and may include items such as housing subsidies for communities and cooperatives.Importantly,he said, the community should have a say in how the money is spent.”
“Experts say the racial slur is meant to describe people who are mixed race and it dates back to slavery and the practice of raping female slaves. ‘Rape was institutionalized, and it meant that women were the plaything of the plantation owner to be taken whenever he chose to. As I always say, when I look in the mirror I see the color of rape,’ said Henry Louis Taylor Jr., UB director of the university’s Center for urban studies. ‘It’s a reminder of a time when African American women had no control over their bodies.'”
“Collier credits the medical school’s interdisciplinary Health in the Neighborhood course taught by instructors including Henry L. Taylor Jr., director of UB’s Center for Urban Studies, and the Rev. Kinzer M. Pointer of the African American Health Equity Task Force…She ticked off a number of such social and economic issues that can impact health: redlining, older homes with lead paint, transportation inequities that make it hard to seek care, living in a food desert or a neighborhood that makes it impractical to exercise. ‘You can’t say to a person, “Go run outside” if they don’t have sidewalks,’ Collier said.”