Extreme Makeover Park Dedication

Thought I'd share this photoset in light of tonight's Buffalo-based Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Congrats to our neighbor Delores Powell, our fave organization PUSH Buffalo, and the rest of the crew that made it happen.

Y'all rock.

Lunch time rant: Erie County Holding Center

Bad news just keeps rolling in for the folks who run the Erie County Holding Center. Check out this article from the Buffalo News today:

Linda Arthur moves slowly on arthritic knees. She's 60 years old, 5 feet 5 inches tall, and a breast-cancer survivor who reaches for her medicine at noon
each day.

And she's dangerous.

Or at least she was treated as a danger to society for a weekend in December when jailed in the Erie County Holding Center. She was denied her medicine and other basics of civilized life: toilet paper, a toothbrush, soap, water, a blanket, a bed.

It all stemmed from a neglected parking ticket.

The sad thing is that this kind of treatment is a regular occurrence at the Holding Center. Just read the 14-page Justice Department report on the Center's deplorable conditions. My lawyer friends, a few of them acting as public defenders or assigned counsel, frequently share horror stories that match the report's findings: clients beaten in elevators, denied essential medication, and otherwise treated like garbage.

I know that there exists the sentiment that people in the Holding Center are criminals, deserving of whatever ill comes their way when behind bars, and I think it's crap. As the News' story demonstrates so well, people in the Holding Center aren't always mass murderers and child rapists. They are your neighbor, your kid who did something stupid, a family member who didn't pay her parking ticket. Hell, they are your favorite hockey player.

They deserve due process and they deserve humane conditions while being held.

I took a minute to write this while scarfing my lunch down because I wanted to get the word out about a related event happening tonight and every Wednesday in the near future*. If you can, please come out to demand some change and if you can't, at least drive by and give the crowd a good honk:

PRISONERS ARE PEOPLE TOO rally outside EC Holding Center

Every Wednesday during rush hour traffic - 5:00-6:00PM

Outside the Erie County Holding Center (Delaware & Church)

*I know, two posts from me in less than 24 hours? Is it still the same Whitney?

Slideshow! PUSH Houses on the West Side...

I swear that an update is coming soon but for now I wanted to share some photos I took on Monday. They're part of a project I'm doing with PUSH Buffalo.



These homes are all on the West Side: Chenango, Massachusetts, W. Utica, 19th.

News from the neighborhood...

Cross-posted at Buffalo Locavore.

This weekend was pretty darn exciting over on the West Side. Just a couple short blocks from my house Five Points Bakery opened its doors and sold out of bread within two hours. Sean and I walked over today around noon and were lucky enough to snag a loaf for our late breakfast. It was delish.

Besides the fact that Five Points is owned and operated by a couple living a block away from the bakery, besides the fact that their bread is 100% grain and made from locally-grown wheat stone ground on site, besides the fact that Five Points partners up with the good folks at Promised Land CSA (my CSA!) to purchase their wheat and products--THEY OFFER A BREAD SHARE.

I am so out of control excited about this share.

Five Points is offering a 13-week, $65 bread share. They'll have four shares every year, one per season. The summer share offers a multigrain pan bread, a honey wheat loaf, a cinnamon raisin, and a specialty bread. You select the kind you want and stop by one of the pick-up locations every Thursday to take it home. You can also add muffins, cookies, and their house-made pizzas to your share as well.

As we walked home from the bakery today, Sean and I talked about the summer ahead and how easy it will be for us to eat local. Between our CSA share, our new bread share, and an endless supply of deer meat from Sean's brother (that's for him, I'm a vegetarian), we hardly have to grocery shop.

Now, on to the chickens..

Alternative reads from your lazy hostess

Since I'm certainly not giving you enough to read this summer, try the following links for some Buffalo and housing-related reads:

• Where the Urban Dream Life is Going Cheap: What could make someone want to leave New York and move to Buffalo? You'll recognize some familiar faces in this New York magazine article, most notably our friend Aaron.
• Should you become a Co-ho? A Time piece on the growing trend of buying a house with a friend. We know a thing or two about that.

Studio city

Buffalo was recently named the #1 Arts Destination for Mid-Sized cities by American Style magazine. It shares the honor with big-size New York and small-size Santa Fe. I think, for the people who live here, this is a welcome but unsurprising recognition.

In their write-up (graciously passed along by my friend Melissa!), they mention Buffalo's efforts to attract and retain working artists with the subsidized Artspace Lofts housing project. While Artspace seems great--after all, I've got a soft spot for intentional communities--I'd like to see more attention placed on the easy opportunities for inexpensive work/live spaces in the City. Artists desiring studio and living space--hell, living quarters!--would likely find Buffalo's housing market a treasure trove.

Using our house and situation as an example, here's what's to offer:

• Two homes (both doubles) with a combined 4,000 square feet (roughly 2,000 ft. each
• Rental income on the front home
• Two apartments in the back house with 2-3 bedrooms in each plus a full attic
• A mortgage payment a little over $500 a month
• Less than a mile or two from the Elmwood Village and downtown Buffalo, both of which host art galleries, theaters, shops, and other points of interest
• Walkable distance to Grant Street with its family-owned Italian market, butchers, pharmacy, community center, and more

Before Steve and Sara moved to the downstairs apartment, Steve's music studio sprawled throughout the living room. We had an enormous home "theater" in one of the extra bedrooms and a "dead daughter room," which was for all intents and purposes a guest room. The kitchen was unused. In short, we had plenty of room. Even now, there's a lot of room down there and Steve has a small, magenta-painted music studio in one of the bedrooms. I still have, as I always have since we moved in, an office in which I write and store massive amounts of junk.

So, artists, come to our city and turn a vacant house problem into progress.

Questions about NACA: Round #2

Apologies for the delay in this next installment. I was unexpectedly out of town...

What's your experience with NACA's rehab department, HAND?

Not good--not good at all.

But before I launch into my tirade, let me give a little background: NACA members have the option of taking out rehab loans for their property at either a lesser, equal, or higher amount than the amount of their mortgage. Both loans--the mortgage and the rehab funds--get rolled into one payment. We took out a rehab loan worth a quarter of our mortgage loan. Follow me so far?

Prior to closing, buyers are required to get 2-3 estimates on each item of work they need done. This is difficult for a couple reasons: for one, it's hard to get into a house you don't yet own and for another, it's challenging to coordinate with 2-3 contractors per job. We had many jobs but luckily, we only needed to choose two separate companies to handle them all in the end. Still, a lot of groundwork.

After closing, we were told that work on the house needed to start immediately. Our contractors needed to fill out 5-8 pages of paperwork to begin their work and another 5-8 pages to complete it and receive payment. As if the paperwork itself were not enough, the HAND department is completely and utterly incompetent.

In year or so that we've been dealing with the HAND department, staff turnover has been high. Perhaps for this reason, very few staff members know what they're doing. Staffers often contradict each other or themselves, and they rarely seem familiar with NACA's own policies and procedures. You can forget about developing a relationship with someone in the department because they will either leave before you get a chance to call again or not remember you at all, despite the fact that you spoke for 15 minutes the day before.

(Can you tell I hate this part? Steve has often felt violent after hanging up with HAND; I relate.)

The very real consequences of this staffing problem come into play when it's time for contractors to get paid. In short, it takes forever. Both of our contractors have told us they will never again do a NACA job. My friend Michael, a contractor, said he will never again do a NACA job after he spent hours of his life on the phone with the idiots at HAND--and he's the one who recommended NACA to us!

So, I would not recommend getting a substantial loan for rehab from NACA. I'm glad we got ours--annoyances aside--because we would not have been able to afford the repairs out of pocket, but I am thankful that they were relatively small, done by two contractors and completed within six months of closing. I have a friend who took out upwards of $40K in rehab and her experience has been, it seems, a nightmare.

I hope to never interact with the NACA HAND department again.


I'm working with the NACA program now in Baltimore, and I want to give up. No one returns your calls or e-mails, and the turnover is so terrible you end up working with several counselors before you can close.

I've heard people in other cities, besides Baltimore, voice similar complaint about NACA offices. Just like any business, I'm sure much of the experience depends on the staff. I found Buffalo's office to be responsive, helpful, and reasonable both before and after we closed. Good for us, I guess.

When we were wrapping up with our counselor John and moving on to work more appropriate for our NACA-paid lawyer, I definitely got the sense that our progress was freeing up room for more people. John is no doubt a busy guy so I think it's even more incredible that he returns my calls.

All this being said, given my experience with the HAND department, I think NACA does need to do some top-level evaluation of its departments and regional offices. Inconsistency seems to prevail.

Q&A on NACA

There have been a lot of requests for our "honest take" on NACA in the comments section of this blog. I'm going to respond to them in a post on this blog over the next couple days.

If you have any lingering questions, please post a comment to this post and I'll include it. Thanks!

Instead of blogging this summer...

I worked 50-70 hours a week helping to elect these wonderful people to office:



My lovely friend, boss, and 6th District County Legislator Maria! She came in with 65% of the vote.



Mike LoCurto, Delaware District Council member, and film buff extraordinnaere.



And the real big winner, David Rivera for Niagara District Common Council!

Read about our races here and here. We worked our asses off and I'm so ready for some quiet time. And blogging!

Boarded up

This is the house next door to us. Earlier in the summer, the back window was removed and left wide open. We were nervous about it, especially walking back there at night, so Steve boarded it up himself.

Tune in

One of the great things about my job is that I get to meet people who are doing important work in the City of Buffalo and help hatch plans as to how we can collaborate. Case in point: we met yesterday with Mark Fuller from the Stop the Violence Coalition.

If you live in Buffalo, you've probably heard about this organization. In short, they have about 15 balls in the air, including responding to homicides, working with families of victims, putting themselves in the middle of urban war zones to create and keep truces, looking for missing persons, running a GED program, and launching economic literacy programs. Plus more.

I was and am beyond inspired by their work. Therefore, I'm making a plug:

Radio-thon today to benefit the Stop the Violence Coalition
WUFO 1080 AM - "Pledge for Peace" all day long

Scenes from an urban farm

When we first bought the house, both of my parents commented on the backyard of the house behind us. I specifically remember my dad saying something to the effect of, "I know where you can get a lot of shit." My mom consistently grimaced.

You see, two rottweilers live back there and from what we could tell back in February, they were free to fill up the yard with poop. No one picked it up and as the snow melted and the rain came pouring down in the spring, the backyard was one giant puddle of shitty mud. Here's a shot from a snowy April day:



We had suspicions though, due to the set up, that our neighbors were actually great. We suspected they were gardeners, of the put-everyone-to-shame category. Later in the month, after that last snowfall, they started to work the ground. Not only did they turn over the soil in their own yards, but they did the same in the two yards to the right as well:



Throughout the rest of Spring and now into Summer, we've been watching their bounty take over. It's really not fair at this point to say that they are gardeners--how trite! how self-indulgent!--because in all actuality, they are farmers:



Look at those rows! This is the third or fourth different vegetable they've harvested from the middle lot.



On the fence they're growing squash and that tree in the left corner is full of ripe pears. Show offs!



So you're probably wondering, who are these neighbors? We are too. We know they're old and we think they're Polish. We know they water their masterpiece every day and get lots of deliveries. We know they walk very slowly. We've never exchanged words.

Stay tuned though, dear readers, for I'm hatching a plan to become best friends!

Some not-so-good news

Last weekend delivered two murders in our immediate neighborhood as well as other violent incidents. The Buffalo News reported on it earlier this week. At 7 p.m. last night, there was a Stop the Violence rally/vigil around the corner and the News reported on it too. Here's our neighbor, Lona, speaking about the neighborhood:

Credit to Buffalo News

I don't know much else to say right now but to emphasize what a lot of my friends, co-workers, and allies have been saying: we can't stop violence unless we organize against poverty. Period. Own the word, use it.

Boundless energy

I told everyone about my first new friend in Buffalo, Michael Gainer, a little while back. Well, now you can see how everything has come full circle: he's on the cover of this week's Artvoice!

This lengthy profile is an adequate portrayal of Michael's boundless energy, his sincerity, and his vision. I'm so proud of him and of Buffalo ReUse--we've come a long way, baby!

Picking the Buffalo ReUse logo at a Board Meeting

Quick story about Michael: when the toilet overflowed last Friday and poured down through our tenant's kitchen, I panicked because Steve was at work and I didn't really know what to do. The first person I called was Michael.

"Where are you?" he asked. I told him I was at work, about to hop on my bike and ride home. "I'll meet you there in a minute."

Sure enough, when I pulled up, he was already there talking to the family, making jokes, and assessing damage. He mopped up the water in the bathroom upstairs, showed the kids how to turn off the water should the toilet overflow again, and helped me haul out the water-logged ceiling tiles. He did all of this while smiling.

You go, my friend!

So long, farewell

I raise a toast to my own vacation.

I leave tomorrow for one-week, stimulus-free vacation in the Canadian wilderness. Unless Steve suddenly remembers we have a blog for which he is a "co-author," you won't see any posts up here until I return.

In the meantime, check out these great things going on in and around our neighborhood:

Urban Roots. Cooperative garden center near our house. We bought potting soil and a rake here and they are by far the best potting soil and rake I've ever worked with.

Buffalo ReUse. Yours truly is on the board of this fine organization--it was the first project I worked on upon moving back to Buffalo. Check out our salvaged materials inventory and the pictures of the most recent deconstructions.

Black Rock Advocate. Newly discovered blog about the neighborhood to our north.

Homeowner club

It seems like a lot of people I know are buying houses. My boss and her husband just bought their first, as did my and Steve's friends Eric and Rebecca. A couple other folks are in the midst of the NACA process too, soon to be homeowners themselves.

One thing that's struck me these first couple months is all the money we're spending on stuff like lawnmowers, sump pumps, and hoses. Sometimes these purchases can be delayed but more often they are of the immediate variety. For instance, the basement has flooded. For instance, the grass is 3-foot high. For instance, the basement flooded again.

With all this in mind, Steve and I recently sent out an email to our homeowner friends, suggesting that we create an informal list of household and yard tools that we wouldn't mind sharing. We volunteered use of our painting supplies, Steve's toolkit, yard & garden tools, and lawnmower. I suggested too that we think about purchase bigger items as a group, like a ladder.

I grew up on a tight-knit block and borrowing stuff from the neighbors was a regular event. Anyone out there have experience with this sort of communal sharing of tools?

Across the street from us

Click the photo to see abandoned houses in their larger, more detailed glory:

Also, ignore the bad job I did melding these photos together. You can tell I messed around with their tints as the house in the middle doesn't match itself anymore!

Anyway, the brown house on the left is abandoned and that roof is seriously scary. The middle house is maybe empty and the white house on the left with the door wide open is definitely vacant. The white house way on the right is the start of a block of 4-5 houses belonging to Burmese refugees. Their kids sell lemonade.

Here Comes the Neighborhood

I moved back to Buffalo in March 2006 after a year of living on a farm and travelling all over the damn planet. At this point I knew Steve and I were going to actually make good on our "house idea" and so I did what any rational person would do: I tried like hell to make friends.
One day at the coffee shop, I picked up a copy of Artvoice, Buffalo's free weekly, and on the cover was a group of men and the headline, "Here Comes the Neighborhood." I quickly understood that it was about housing in the city--something I knew I should learn about because hey, I was looking to buy a house in the city--and began reading the cover story. The project sounded interesting and necessary, the issue riled me up, and after reading that PUSH Buffalo needed volunteers to help clean out its first cooperative house, I dialed their number.

Aaron picked up that day and gave me the run down on volunteering. I showed up, got really dirty while tearing out some old flooring, and met my dear friend Michael Gainer for the first time. Michael not only told me about this thing called deconstruction and this organization he hoped to start--tentatively called Buffalo ReUse--but he also told me about NACA. I went home that day and called Steve.

The rest is history.

I have a point though in retelling this history: I owe PUSH Buffalo my every happiness! Steve and I quickly identified PUSH and its members, organizers, and supporters as the community of which we wanted to be a part. Through volunteering five or six Saturday mornings at the PUSH house--Steve would drive an hour and a half just to paint some walls--we then found other communities, other friends, other paths. I'm sure we would've eventually found our ways to where we're respectively at today but the process probably would've been longer and less fun.

Hell, I met my boss at a PUSH barbecue!

With all this mind, I implore anyone in the New York City area to come on out to the PUSH fundraiser party in Manhattan on June 9th:



I will be there, working off my debt this amazing organization. If you're interested in hopping a bus from Buffalo to Manhattan for the party, give me a shout: whitneyarlene@gmail.com.

Discuss amongst yourselves

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm The Only One Trying To Gentrify This Neighborhood

The inaugural gentrification post

So I've been hesitant to write about this from the get-go--despite knowing that it is an absolutely unavoidable topic given our situation--because I know that it is a sprawling, heated subject and because I am honestly overwhelmed by its layers and history. I'm talking, of course, about gentrification.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for "gentrification:"

Gentrification, or more specifically urban gentrification, is a process in which low-cost, physically deteriorated neighborhoods experience physical renovation and an increase in property values, along with an influx of wealthier residents who typically displace the prior residents.

I don't bring this up because I'm coming from a defensive place. I don't seek pats on the back and encouragement, "Oh you guys aren't gentrifying, Whitney." I'm simply trying to open up a discussion about what's inevitable and what's not when two young, white kids buy a house in a predominantly Hispanic and black neighborhood.

And let's be totally honest here too: we're not from the neighborhood. I grew up in suburban Amherst for the majority of my childhood, and Steve lived downstate. I've got a lamp from IKEA in my bedroom, too.

I also won't say that we didn't move into the neighborhood with an idea to improve it and I think maybe in here lies the crux of the gentrification question. Herein lies the unexposed racism, the misguided good intentions—the real sticky stuff.

I find myself talking about our plans for the house and our desires for the block differently depending on with whom I’m speaking. I tell my family members that of course I want to see our property values rise and that it’s really an up-and-coming neighborhood. I hear myself using words like “pioneer,” as if I’m some sort of savior out there in the ‘hood dealing with shit that thousands of poor and disenfranchised people have been dealing with for years.

Other times I’m less ambitious, it depends on the audience.

The truth is that I don’t have any sort of conclusions about our situation and the larger question of gentrification except that it is a complex tangle of racism, classism, and institutionalized disinvestment. I can’t decide if I’m fighting it or joining it—maybe both.

Bring on the discussion, this is just the start as I will write more soon. Thoughts?