"A $12 million housing initiative aimed at bringing 50 rent-to-own homes to Buffalo’s East Side has been derailed, apparently due to opposition from a faith-based community development group whose president told top city officials the project isn’t good for the community. The housing plan received initial support last year from Buffalo, which led to it receiving funding from New York State as well as a private investor. But since March, when it won city planning board approval, the project has been stalled. City officials haven’t authorized the in-lieu-of-tax agreement the project requires and haven’t transferred to the Cleveland-based developer the vacant lots in the city’s Cold Spring and Masten districts that the project needs.

City housing officials were not immediately available to discuss the issue, but it appears the main opposition to the NRP project comes from the Jeremiah Partnership, a collaboration of seven African-American churches working to revitalize the East Side that is headed by the Rev. Richard A. Stenhouse. Jeremiah Partnership favors targeted development over the scattered site housing NRP is proposing. Jeremiah prefers home ownership to rent-to-own homes. Jeremiah also objects to the city using $1.6 million of its federal housing funds on the project, and doesn’t think the NRP project fits into the Jeremiah Partnership’s strategic plan for redeveloping East Side neighborhoods. The city set up a meeting between NRP and Jeremiah during which Jeremiah asked to be responsible for minority hiring on the NRP project, and to set up a mentoring program supporting future minority developers.

NRP in late 2007 entered into a contract with Belmont Shelters of Buffalo to serve as its local development partner on the project. Given concerns expressed by Stenhouse and the city during the March 2009 meeting, NRP agreed to also establish a minority component. NRP issued a Request for Proposals, asking those interested to submit their plans for involving minorities in the project. Jeremiah Partnership was invited to submit a proposal and did. Several others also submitted proposals.

The one selected came from University at Buffalo’s Professor Henry Taylor, working with UB’s Center for Urban Studies, in conjunction with J. W. Pitts Planning and Development Co., owned by former Common Council President James W. Pitts. The proposal was superior and less costly than the Jeremiah proposal. Stenhouse was involved with a rent-to-own project that Belmont Shelters Corp. developed on the East Side three years ago. It involved 29 scattered homes using the same financial mechanism that NRP is using. It’s partly because of that that he opposes further scattered site housing. It’s preferable to do targeted development in neighborhoods where there has already been development. And home ownership is preferable to lease-to-own homes." M. Scott Allen of GAR Associates, Inc. completed a market study for this project in 2008. 

The Buffalo News
July 2009