A cold October rain poured down as people walked into the Buffalo Convention Center this past Monday. There was an eclectic mix of people—rich businessmen, middle class entrepreneurs, and others just looking to buy their first home—all convening there for the Buffalo City Housing Auction in the hopes of being able snatch up low-priced properties.

As they filtered into the large stone building in the heart of Buffalo’s downtown, they were met with an odd site—a group of 35 people milled about in front of the convention center holding up signs that said things like “PUSH out land speculators” and talking to the small amount of press that had shown up in an impromptu press conference.

The protestors were a mixed crowd of University at Buffalo students and community activists who were gathering on the behalf of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), a group that is trying curb the trend of large-scale developers buying up housing in Buffalo in order to rent out, rather than to live.

Since 1981, seized Buffalo homes have been auctioned off in an annual event. In the past, these properties have been foreclosed due to unpaid property taxes. This year, the city government had decided to foreclose homes based on outstanding water bills—meaning that a record 3,700 lots were put up on the auction block.

For Aaron Bartley, president of the Niagara Community Initiative (NCI), which is the mother organization of PUSH, this presents a big problem. Bartley and his organization are concerned when people come in from out of state to attend the Buffalo auction. According to Bartley, these buyers can purchase cheap property and then sell it for a higher price. As they wait for property values to rise, nothing is done to their plots, leaving abandoned homes and empty lots on neighborhood blocks.

“You can’t buy a home in any other major city for $3,000,” said Eric Walker, a member of PUSH at a protest held last Monday outside of the auction.

Buffalo government officials chalk the situation up to a case of simply following the word of law. “We would be remised of our responsibility if we didn’t do this,” said Bruna Michaux, Commissioner of the Department of Assessment and Taxation about the foreclosures. She said that it is her duty to collect property taxes. Homes are seized when owners cannot pay their taxes, and since the city still needs the lost revenue, they are auctioned off.

“We are here to work with the property owners,” Michaux said. Her department offers free services that help homeowners get the proper tax exemptions. One state program called Star Exemptions basically requires that a tenant live in the house they own. Michaux says that the exemption can be as high as $421 annually. “And it’s not money that’s lost to the city of Buffalo,” she says, because it’s a tax exemption on the state level, not city.

Michaux insists that Assessment and Taxation does all they can to inform residents of these money-saving options. They give literature to homeowners once they receive a deed, send out mass mailings, and post the information online. They even insert news into user fee bills. “What we don’t do is go to their homes,” she said.

Bartley said that most of the foreclosed homes are in Buffalo’s west side, where the poverty rate can be well above 40 percent. According to the 2000 U.S. Census data, just below 44 percent of all occupied housing units in Buffalo are actually owned by their residents, and over 15 percent of the city’s housing units are unoccupied. Most of these unoccupied homes are located in the city’s poorest regions.

PUSH is working—through grassroots activism—to reverse the trend of large-scale speculators buying these properties only to stand by as they are abandoned and the neighborhoods decompose. Bartley was recently chosen as a fellow for Echoing Green, a philanthropic organization that will support the NCI by providing them both technical assistance and a $60,000 grant.

PUSH’s ultimate goal is to regain community control of the city’s low income housing by placing it under the control of two NCI programs—a Community Land Trust that acquires and rehabilitates foreclosed properties before reselling them to low-income, permanent residents, and a Limited Equity Housing Co-op that allows low income residents to live in the house and build equity while paying very little money upfront.

PUSH also advocates on the behalf of “committed owner occupants” as Bartley terms them—residents who will live in the houses they purchase and hopefully revitalize the crumbling west side neighborhoods by doing so. They hold protests and demonstrations aimed to reform the public policies that they believe foster abandonment by landlords and hinder nonprofit redevelopment of inner-city homes. “If the city were really interested in affordable housing, they would be investigating the situation,” he said.

For the past 30 years, Buffalo has invested in what PUSH refers to as “silver bullet” projects to revitalize the city. These plans include things like the proposed casino downtown and a Bass Pro fishing store that are designed to bring people in from the suburbs and breathe life into dying neighborhoods. But according to Walker, smart development begins with residential development.

“Cities that have come back have invested in their neighborhoods,” said Bartley, who cites examples in the Elmwood and Hertel areas of Buffalo. Bartley said that when these neighborhoods were invested in and independent businesses were allowed to flourish, crime plummeted and they generally became much nicer.

As an adjunct professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, Bartley has encouraged his students to mobilize in the effort to educate the communities affected by the housing auctions. Many of the students in his Community Organizing class recently attended the demonstration outside of the Buffalo Convention Center to protest the auction.

For the past three weeks, senior environmental design student Matt Cummings has been going door to door in the west side. He talked to residents about PUSH’s efforts, gaining support for the protest.

By going door to door, Cummings said that he was able to see the situation he learned about in Bartley’s classroom. He viewed first hand the abandoned homes and vacant lots that blanket the area west of Richmond Avenue.

At one home, a woman on crutches answered the door. She explained that two days before, a man was shot in the head and had died on her front lawn. Nonetheless, she gave her word to show up at a community housing forum on November 12 that PUSH is hosting at the West Side Community Center to discuss the state of the west side.

“All of the neighbors are gung ho on trying to fix their neighborhoods,” said Cummings. The forum will focus on trying to increase owner occupancy in the area, and on plans to improve the general quality of life in the west side.

One of PUSH’s biggest targets has been Houston land speculator Scott Wizig. Three years ago Wizig bought just fewer than 400 Buffalo homes in one fowl swoop. In a July 2005 article in the Buffalo News, it was revealed that Wizig neglected most of the tenants who rented out these units. He was eventually prosecuted by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer after being “cited for numerous violations, including not making repairs after already being cited and requiring that tenants pay for repairs he was legally required to make.”

“Every one of those homes is a decaying shell of a home,” Bartley said of the Wizig properties. “Today the hundreds of homes that he bought in the City of Buffalo lay vacant and dilapidated. What our community needs now is wholesale reinvestment, like a Marshall Plan for the west side.”

Stories of reputed slumlords are widespread in a city that has been in an extended economic slump for decades since industry pulled out of Buffalo long ago. Earlier this month the Buffalo News reported that John Drati, a notorious Queen City landlord, was arrested in California on several arrest warrants filed last March after he failed to show up for a court date regarding charges on 56 Buffalo properties owned by him.

However, some landlords defend themselves and say that speculation and absenteeism are not the only problems facing Buffalo’s dying neighborhoods. “I try to help somebody out,” said one professional owner based in Maryland who currently controls three properties in Buffalo. She came to last week’s housing auction in hopes of purchasing more cheap housing that she could fix up and then rent out. She said that her main problem is actually finding people to rent her property.

Matt Sabuda, who works for Hastings Cohn Real Estate also owns three Buffalo properties and attended the auction. He viewed the whole event as way for him to pay under the market value for houses that he will fix up and then fill with tenants. He insisted that his property is rented out fairly.

“They put a bad name out for us,” said one landlord at the auction of owners who buy homes in bulk and then do nothing with them. He cited the example of Larry Cassada, a man who PUSH claims bought several properties over eight months ago, but has yet to do anything with them. He also argued that empty houses are not always the fault of the owner. “How can you find decent tenants?” the landlord asked rhetorically. He said that he wants to fix the community, but that it’s not all up to him.

Indeed it seems that the private ownership of a large portion of Buffalo’s housing in the hands of a few is a major contributor to the city’s housing problems—as well as their economic woes as a whole. And while righting some of the more grievous wrongs in Buffalo’s failing neighborhoods will help the city, it won’t provide the “silver bullet” that will fix everything. But for now, the people at PUSH think that it’s one of the best that can be taken.

“Our neighborhoods are not profit centers for people who don’t live here,” Bartley said. Fellow PUSH member Walker agreed, and painted a grim picture for the Queen City. “There’s a for sale sign hanging over Buffalo.”

Both Bartley and Comissioner Michaux agree that those in the younger generation, especially college students, will have to be the ones to address that sign.

“I really want to get involved in making Buffalo a better place,” said junior environmental design major Jayson Kowiak, who is involved with PUSH. It’s his hope that when he graduates from UB, he doesn’t have to leave Buffalo behind.