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From Flint to Baltimore: Clean Water, Environmental Racism & Infrastructure In Our Cities

Re-Post From the Marc Steiner Show

 

We discuss our cities from Flint to Baltimore, looking at clean water, environmental racism & infrastructure. With: Dr. Lawrence Brown, public health consultant and Assistant Professor of Public Health in the School of Community Health and Policy at Morgan State University; Mijin Cha, consultant and fellow at Cornell University’s Worker Institute and adjunct professor at Fordham Law School; Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Buffalo and Director of the University of Buffalo Center for Urban Studies; and Jacqui Patterson, Director of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at the NAACP.

Click here to listen to Podcast

 

How Flint, Ferguson and Baltimore are all connected

Re-Post From The Washington Post

 

Flint, Ferguson, New Orleans and Baltimore — cities now inseparable from the national news stories centered there — became calamities for separate reasons. One was a natural disaster (made worse by human error), another awholly man-made crisis. The two others began with police violence, but in disparate settings: the newly impoverished suburbs and the long-distraught inner city. Flint and New Orleans were failures of infrastructure, Baltimore and Ferguson a collapse of human relationships.

“On one level,” says Henry Louis Taylor, “they all look and appear to be very, very different.” But, argues the professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, it’s about time we begin to talk about them in the same breath. “These are places that are left behind, forgotten,” he says. “They’re places we’ve gotten very good at shielding from view.”

Together, he argues that these cities — and recent events there — point to the endurance in the United States of structural racism, of minorities disproportionately left vulnerable to the economy or the environment, of communities abandoned by taxpayer dollars, public interest and government oversight.

[Flint’s water crisis reveals government failures at every level]

“Flint is what I call ‘a throwaway city,’ ” Taylor says, to take one example. “It was left by the big industries. It was left on its own, by the state, by taxpayers, by the county.”

And then such places must strike terrible financial bargains — ticketing residents in Ferguson to generate money, downgrading the water supply in Flint to cut costs. The same shortage of funding also affects schools. The quality of schools alters children’s futures. Those children remain in poverty as adults. And their own families live with the environmental costs of decades-old decisions on where to put highways, factories and power plants.

These kinds of places are frequently home to minorities. And they often exist, too, within larger regions that do have resources — but where the neighborshave been quite ingenious in making sure they don’t have to share them.

“Across the board, when we start to probe deep into these forgotten places, we start to see a trend emerge,” Taylor says. “We start to see the different ways in which racism impacts African Americans, and we also see the different ways where it impacts the places where they live.”

[What your first-grade life says about the rest of it]

In the heat of an unfolding news event, it appears as if we’re looking at something else, or something smaller — a problem of EPA leadership, or aging pipes, or bad apples among police officers.

“We’ll see police brutality in Ferguson, and we’ll see police brutality in Baltimore, or Cleveland, but we’re confused about the places,” Taylor says. “Well in Ferguson, you had whites in control. But in Baltimore, you had blacks in control, so maybe that’s not racism, maybe that’s something else. We’re not sure exactly what we’re seeing. Or you see Flint, and people are really confused, because we don’t know what’s going on. Maybe those were just a bunch of bad decisions people made, and it doesn’t have anything to do with race.”

What we should be seeing, he suggests, are links between all of these events and the larger structures that contributed to them.

 

Buffalo’s incomplete, inequitable rebound

Re-Post From Investigative Post

 

Has Buffalo really gotten its mojo back?

That was the question posed by Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney during a panel discussion Tuesday at Allen Street Hardware attended by an overflow crowd of 80 people.

The panelists were Newell Nussbaumer, editorial director of Buffalo Rising, Rocco Termini, president of Signature Development, and Henry Taylor, professor and founding director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo.

They did agree that the Queen City has made strides, but most of its work still lies ahead, and not everybody is sharing in the recovery. Much of the night’s discussion centered around Buffalo’s struggling East Side and what can be done to ensure it isn’t left behind in the rebound.

Termini said that Buffalo is still in the infancy of regaining its mojo. He said real progress happens when a city is economically sustainable and doesn’t rely on subsidies to incentivize developers.

“Whether it is historic tax credits, whether it is brownfield tax credits, or it’s direct infusion of cash from the state of New York or some other governmental body, I think you get your mojo when you don’t need any of those subsidies,” said Termini.

Termini said Buffalo’s biggest challenge is boosting its low median annual income, pointing out that it is $14,000 less than Rochester’s.

“You really need to have more income in this city to get rents up so that you can start doing things without government subsidies. And I think when you start seeing that happen in Buffalo, then you really have your mojo back,” said Termini.

Nussbaumer has been covering Buffalo’s growth since Buffalo Rising’s launch in 2004. He said Buffalo is seeing more new businesses sprout up than he can cover.

“I gauge how we’re doing, a lot of times, based on how I can keep up with what’s going on. And for the first time ever, I have a really hard time keeping up with what’s going on,” said Nussbaumer. “I can’t cover the stories fast enough.”

Taylor rejected the premise of Buffalo getting its mojo “back,” arguing that Buffalo’s task is to identify the kind of city we want to build and create a new mojo from that vision.

“The template we should be aiming for is a just city. A city anchored around social, racial and economic justice. A city in which we are looking at prosperity and growth not as ends within themselves, but as a means of creating and building a new way of life,” said Taylor.

All three panelists agreed that one of the city’s greatest assets is the number of young people choosing to stay or move back to Buffalo.

“Think about five years ago. It was like, ‘Everybody’s leaving Buffalo, you can’t get any young kids to stay in Buffalo.’ Now, you go to Connecticut Street, you go to 15th Street, you go to Rhode Island, you go to Vermont, you see young kids buying houses,” said Termini.

“They were buying them five years ago for $15,000, $20,000. Now those same houses are $150,000. They’re putting their sweat equity into these houses and they’re building a community of young people.”

The panel also agreed that the East Side is being left out of Buffalo’s resurgence. Taylor said more needs to be done to renovate the East Side without displacing residents.

“In 1970, 9,000 African Americans lived in the Fruit Belt. Today, less than 2,000 live in the Fruit Belt,” he said.

“Since 2000, when the Medical Campus was launched, the population in the Fruit Belt has dropped more than 45 percent. In that same period of time, since 2000, the number of vacancies has increased by 42 percent. I mean, how can the number of vacancies increase in the hottest neighborhood within the framework of the city?”

He said that 88 percent of those vacancies today are not for sale or rent, instead being held for development.

“That’s not your granddaddy’s gentrification. Your granddaddy’s gentrification is where one high-income group comes in and replaces another group. Some of that is starting to occur. But most of that is just erasing the people to make way for other forms of development,” said Taylor.

Nussbaumer said he understands why residents of the East Side would be wary of outside groups developing in their area. He thinks that if the right conversation is struck “sensitively,” they could see the same kind of rehabilitation movement that is occurring on the West Side.

“The East Side is filled with opportunities. If you look at the East Side of Buffalo, it is mind-blowing. You have beautiful buildings and a lot of them are in jeopardy right now, which is so sad,” he said.

“And you’ve got beautiful neighborhoods, beautiful people who are trying to make a go of it, and they want to be welcoming, but they’re afraid that certain areas and certain properties are going to be bought up for the wrong reason.”

Taylor said a movement that works in favor of the East Side must grow organically from within the community.

“You do not want a West Side organization developing the East Side,” said Taylor. “You’ve got to build the capacity on the East Side in order to do that.”

Buffalo’s failing educational system was also seen by the panel as one of the city’s plights.

Termini said that until something can be done to improve the educational system, Buffalo will have no mojo. He said the failing system affects everybody, especially the poor. He called for radical change to Buffalo Public Schools, suggesting to throw away the current system and “start from zero.”

“These kids are not dumb kids, it’s just that they’re kids who have been educated by the Buffalo Public Schools that don’t prepare them for anything except McDonald’s,” Termini said.

“And that’s the big problem in Buffalo, and that’s one of the reasons why our median income is so low. We don’t prepare people for life after school.”

Termini wants to decentralize the schools, assigning four or five schools to each college in Western New York and having those colleges run the schools.

“Then you have an opportunity for all the students in these colleges to be mentors to these kids,” he said.

“And some of these kids really need mentors because there’s really a lack of guidance at home. Until we re-imagine our whole school system, we’re going nowhere, and I think that’s probably our biggest problem right now.”

The panel discussion was part of Investigative Post’s “At Issue” series sponsored by William C. Bernhardi Law Offices, the M&T Bank Foundation, Talking Leaves Books, WGRZ and The Public.

Upcoming events include a luncheon Jan. 13 that will consider conditions on the city’s East Side, a trivia night Jan. 27 featuring Kevin O’Connell of WGRZ, and another happy hour discussion Feb. 10 on a topic yet to be determined. Tickets will go on sale soon.

Those who know Buffalo say the city is getting its mojo back, but still needs a lot of work

Re-Post from WBFO

 

A writer, a professor, and a developer walk into a bar. There’s no punch line to follow because that’s actually what happened during a panel discussion on Tuesday night at Allentown Hardware. The main question – is Buffalo getting its mojo back?

Investigative Post editor Jim Heaney moderated the conversation between Buffalo Rising Editor Newell Nussbaumer, University at Buffalo Urban Studies Professor Henry Taylor, and developer Rocco Termini.

Nussbaumer said the city has come a long way from where it was, but hasn’t made a full rebound yet. He said he often gauges how Buffalo is doing on how well he can keep up with what’s going on in town.

“For the first time ever I have a really hard time keeping up with what’s going on,” said Nussbaumer.

Nussbaumer fields constant emails and conversations with people moving back to Buffalo and engaging in new activity.

Termini said the city is in its mojo infancy. He pointed out that every project in Buffalo has a subsidy associated with it, from tax credits for historic properties and brownfields to cash injections from state or local government.

“I think you get your mojo when you don’t need any of those subsidies,” Termini said.

Termini said the real problem is that residents can’t afford to pay market-rate rent with Buffalo’s low median income.

As for Taylor, he took issue with the concept of getting mojo back. He said the mojo of the past should not be a present concern. Instead, Taylor believes residents should focus on the task of creating a new mojo.

“A part of that task is to identify the kind of city that we want to build,” said Taylor. “We don’t know what kind of city we want to build.”

Taylor said the city template should be anchored around social, racial and economic justice. He said prosperity and growth should be looked at as a means of creating a new way of life.

In regards to the best thing Buffalo has going for its resurgence and areas in which it can stand for improvement, all three agreed that the most positive asset is a new wealth of young residents.

“Young people are reenergizing this city,” explained Termini. “They’re coming back. They’re not leaving. And they’re not leaving because they see the possibility of opportunities here, which five years ago, people didn’t see those opportunities.”

Among the items thought to be negative were an underperforming education system, failure to develop the city’s east side, and a lack of vision for accommodating minority and low income residents.

The conversation quickly turned to the question of how to revive Buffalo’s East Side neighborhoods and a key issue.

“Who on the East Side will be the catalyst?” asked Nussbaumer. “Will it be the reverends? Will it be the community? Will it be the block clubs? Will it be the commercial businesses that are over there? Who is going to lead that conversation?”

All three panelists generally agreed that the conversation needs to come from within the east side community, but debated over whether outside help would be appropriate. Taylor said the person or entity hasn’t yet emerged who can take charge of the issue.

Poloncarz appoints members of poverty committee

Re-post from Orchard Park Bee

 

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz recently announced the appointees of the re-established Welfare Advisory Board, which will function as a Poverty Committee to advise Erie County on how to reduce poverty, according to a release.

Poloncarz called for the establishment of the committee earlier this year as part of his health and human services plan, Initiatives for a Stronger Community.

“Although numerous indicators show that the County as a whole is better off than it was a few short years ago, our community cannot truly be prosperous if a significant portion of our community is unable to take advantage of these opportunities,” Poloncarz said in the release.

Although the poverty committee will be staffed and supported by the Department of Social Services, it will be engaged with all county departments that work with individuals in or at-risk of poverty.

The poverty committee will advise county government on measures to reduce poverty and its causes, including access to employment opportunities, the high cost of safe and secure housing, substance abuse, mental illness, discrimination and disability.

The Erie County Charter directs that the board, which had been inactive for many years, be made up of seven members. Poloncarz introduced the members along with the chairperson of the board, the Rev. Kinzer Pointer.

“Re-establishing this important committee to ask and seek answers to reducing poverty is our responsibility to our fellow citizens,” Rev. Pointer said. “This is vital work in returning the entire region to better days, and I am pleased to join this effort.”

Rev. Pointer, of Buffalo, and a graduate of Canisius College, is the pastor of Agape Fellowship Baptist Church.

The other new appointees are:

Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, the founding director of the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo. His research focuses on understanding distressed urban neighborhoods, the redevelopment of shrinking cities, and issues of social isolation, racial justice and class facing people of color.

Anna Falicov, who has focused her law practice and activism on representing and advocating for working people. She is the chairwoman of the Coalition for Economic Justice, an organization that works on issues of equitable economic development and workers’ rights.

Dr. Myron Glick, the chief medical officer of Jericho Road Community Health Center. The center provides a culturally sensitive medical home, especially for refugee and low-income community members, facilitating wellness and self-sufficiency by addressing health, education, economic and spiritual barriers.

Rev. Frank Cerny, board chairman of the Rural Outreach Center in East Aurora, which provides a centralized facility where those in need in rural areas of Erie County can receive acute assistance when dealing with sudden traumatic events, along with empowerment and training programs to elevate their status.

Dr. Yvonne Minor-Ragan, president of Buffalo Promise Neighborhood. The organization is a public/ private partnership seeking to improve academic performance at the neighborhood’s three schools while revitalizing the surrounding community.

Marlies Wesolowski, executive director of the Lt. Col. Matt Urban Human Services Center, a multifaceted human service organization, since 2001. She previously served as Buffalo School Board president.

Latest Census stats show minorities now Buffalo’s majority

Re-Post From WIVB

 

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) —  For the first time in its history, those who make up Buffalo’s minority population have become the majority. And while the result is a more racially or ethically diverse population, some officials say it also signals something else.

“We have worked to be more inviting of all people,” said Mayor Byron Brown at City Hall Tuesday. “People of all backgrounds, of all races, of all faiths, we are working together collectively in this community to build a city of opportunity for all people.

“We are very pleased that people are embracing the diversity of this community,” he said. “We are celebrating our diversity. We are learning about the different cultures that exist in our community.”

Brown exemplified that mentality Tuesday while welcoming members of a business contingency from China that operates a company at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. They’re considering an expansion.

“Communities that support and respect their diversity are more vibrant, they’re more progressive, and they see more economic development and job growth, and that’s what we’re seeing in the city of Buffalo,” Brown said.

Resident Gina Davis, who lives near Martin Luther King Jr., Park, agreed.

“I look it as a positive thing because at one time, Buffalo looked like it was a forgotten city,” Davis said. “And now with such diversity, it’s beautiful.

“There has been a lot of racism in the city of Buffalo, and I think with them moving back into the city, I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s a good start for unity,” she said.

While celebrating diversity is an important step toward equality, such population shifts also signal inequality, when it comes to resources, says Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., professor of Urban Planning and History, and the director of the Center for Urban Studies at UB.

“We should celebrate the upward trajectory of this place,” he said. “But at the same time, we should condemn metropolitan inequality. We should condemn the fact that people can escape their responsibilities as citizens of Erie County simply by changing their addresses.

“Whites are continuing to move out into the suburban region,” Taylor said. “It means its overall tax base is still declining, while the challenges it faces are continuing to increase. Which means less money that will be available for struggling suburbs like Lackawanna, or even places like Cheektowaga, where problems are much greater, and the inner cities.

Whether it’s white flight or a chance to celebrate diversity, experts believe the trend will continue. And only time will tell whether it’s in the best interests of the city of good neighbors.

Link to full article: http://wivb.com/2015/09/22/latest-census-stats-show-minorities-now-buffalos-majority/ 

 

Erie County Executive forms Poverty Committee

Read the full article from WBFO here.

“While we hear time and time again about Buffalo’s economic renaissance, there remains many living in poverty, not just in the city but throughout Erie County. A new panel of volunteers is being formed by the Erie County Executive to help address the problem.

County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s panel, named the Poverty Committee, is a re-establishment of what used to be the Welfare Advisory Board. Members of the panel, whose backgrounds include academia, clergy and not-for-profit human service providers, will voluntarily explore ways the county can take on the issue.”

Reducing poverty in Erie County is focus of new community advisory panel

Re-Post From The Buffalo News

 

One is a University at Buffalo professor with expertise on distressed urban neighborhoods and the redevelopment of shrinking cities. Another runs a West Side health center whose main clients are refugees and others of low income. A third is chairman of an agency dedicated to meeting the needs of the rural poor.

The three are among seven appointed Thursday to a new committee tasked with advising Erie County on ways to combat poverty countywide.

According to County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, reducing poverty will be accomplished, in part, by keeping a sustained focus on the problem, even as the county’s overall economic fortunes begin to look up after decades on a downward spiral.

“Although numerous indicators show that the county as a whole is better off than it was a few short years ago, our community cannot truly be prosperous if a significant portion of our community is unable to take advantage of these opportunities,” Poloncarz said.

The announcement came a day after new U.S. Census Bureau data showed a slight decrease in the percentage of Buffalo children living in poverty to 47.3 percent last year, down from 50.6 percent in 2013.

The overall poverty rate of 15.2 percent in Erie County was unchanged between 2013 and 2014, while for senior citizens countywide, the poverty rate had a slight uptick to 17.3 percent last year, from 16.2 in 2013.

The new figures show that Buffalo’s children, as a whole, remain the third-poorest among kids in the nation’s large cities.

“Right now, to be poor in Buffalo means to live in a dilapidated and rundown neighborhood or … living in poor housing. It means having limited access to health care services and very often dying prematurely. It means not getting an adequate education,” said Henry L. Taylor Jr., founding director of UB’s Center for Urban Studies and one of those appointed to the committee.

“We may not be able to eliminate poverty, but we can eliminate what poverty means in a place like Buffalo.”

The new committee is, in essence, the re-establishment of the long-defunct Welfare Advisory Board, which is required under the County Charter. Poloncarz called for the establishment of the committee as part of his Initiatives for a Stronger Community plan that was released in March.

“The Welfare Advisory Board operated more as an entity that looked at how we can better provide in the context of the one program related to welfare, and how we could get information out to more people about what they may qualify for,” he said.

The new committee, on the other hand, will meet quarterly with officials from the county’s Departments of Social Services, Health, Mental Health and Senior Services to see how each can more effectively combat poverty using the resources they already have.

“Each has a niche area that they work in,” Poloncarz said of the seven appointees.

“What we want them to do is to come together to not only make suggestions how we can do things better, but also let us know when we’re doing things right and where we have shortfalls in areas that we haven’t even focused on before.”

Poloncarz added, “I think the key is to bring in individuals who are not beholden to any elected official or, for that matter, commissioner, and really tell us what we need to hear, even though it may be something we don’t want to hear.”

One of the appointees is the Rev. Kinzer M. Pointer, pastor of Agape Fellowship Baptist Church, who lauded the effort and noted that there was little will to reconstitute the old Welfare Advisory Board under previous administrations.

“There has been some thoughtful consideration on the part of the county executive, which entails a level of courage, because no one really wanted to talk about it,” Pointer said.

Other appointees are: Anna Falicov, chairwoman of the Coalition for Economic Justice, which focuses on creating good jobs and equitable development and advocating workers’ rights; Dr. Myron Glick, chief medical officer of Jericho Road Community Health Center, which provides culturally sensitive medical treatment targeted to refugees and low-income residents; and the Rev. Frank Cerny, chairman of Rural Outreach Center board in East Aurora, which focuses on poor people in the county’s rural areas.

Also appointed to the poverty committee are:

Dr. Yvonne S. Minor-Ragan, president of Buffalo Promise Neighborhood, a public-private partnership aimed at improving economic conditions and schools in a 97-block area around Bailey Avenue just south of UB’s South Campus in Buffalo; and Marlies A. Wesolowski, executive director of the Lt. Col. Matt Urban Human Services Center, which provides a range of human services in the Broadway Market area.

“This is not just going to be focused on the East Side or the West Side of Buffalo, but the entire county,” Poloncarz emphasized.

Erie County Legislature Chairman John J. Mills, R-Orchard Park, said he had not been apprised of the new committee but agreed that poverty in Erie County needs to be addressed aggressively.

“I hope it isn’t just window dressing for the sake of forming a committee,” Mills said.

email: hmcneil@buffnews.com

Buffalo-area homeowners love their homes, and they’re not going anywhere

Read the full article from Buffalo News here.

“[T]here is another factor also at work in these neighborhoods where people stay – and stay, Taylor said. ‘You have folks there, who are determined to build a strong neighborhood,’ he said. ‘They’re operating under a different set of notions…They stay – not because they are stuck, but they stay because of a commitment to the African-American community, and a determination to keep that part of the city vibrant,’ he said.”

NPR Interviews Center for Urban Studies’ Director Henry Louis Taylor Jr.

Listen to the full interview from Here and Now here.

“However, these potential improvements are not without risk. Here & Now‘s Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Henry Louis Taylor Jr., a professor and director of the Center for Urban Studies at SUNY Buffalo in New York, who has visited Cuba every year since 1999 to interview Cuban citizens about life in the country.

He warns that while there are major positives to the deal, it has its negatives as well.”