In our city, housing is a human right guaranteed to everyone in the city of Buffalo. Over the past decade, gentrification in Buffalo has been taking place at an unprecedented rate due to the influx of public dollars through Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion economic development program. This has created the conditions for an unaffordable housing crisis that is now taking place and threatening to displace longtime residents from their homes. This developer-driven economic development is driven by profit margins. The City of Buffalo has the power to support renters, working-class homeowners and people experiencing chronic homelessness. The following are our three priorities for Housing Justice:

Buffalo Tenant Bill of Rights - Buffalo is roughly 58% renters. We live in a city with the second oldest housing stock in the country, where houses can be found with lead paint, flooded basements, no insulation, bed bug infestations, and many other unconscionable conditions. It’s not right that residents should have to live in substandard living conditions in the middle of a global pandemic. It’s not fair that tenants are regularly harassed by corporate landlords and slumlords who put profit before people. It’s immoral that people are rent burdened and overpay to live in places that elected officials would never consider living in or letting their loved ones live in. The passage of this landmark legislation would protect tenants in Buffalo, including policies like Good Cause Eviction, creation of the Office of the Tenant Advocate, the Right to First Refusal and the Right to Return, as well as the right to timely repairs and $1 million rent fund, for generations to come. See here for more info: Tenant Bill of Rights
Cancellation of Rent – COVID-19 has exposed the systemic inequities and gaping holes in the social safety net, as well as exacerbated those inequities. Our system has been pushed to a crisis point and families who have been living paycheck to paycheck are now drowning in debt and housing precarity. Rental relief and assistance are far too vague and ineffective to protect everyone who needs to be protected during this exceptional moment. The call to cancel rent has been shouted from the rooftops for the past 9 months and still there has been no movement by elected officials to rectify this glaring oversight. Cancelling rent and establishing a hardship fund for landlords who can prove financial hardship is the only way to ensure that no tenant is on the hook for rent while millionaire and billionaire landlords continue to profit. Instead, that’s money that should go to assist tenants and small landlords, especially owner-occupied doubles in Buffalo, who risk having their house foreclosed on and the generational wealth that they’ve generated vanish instead. For more info: Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act of 2020
City of Buffalo Opt-Out of 485-a – For far too long, the rich have been allowed to exploit tax subsidies and exemptions due to loopholes and tax laws that benefit the wealthy outright. Section 485-a of the Real Property Tax Law, at local option (meaning the municipality has to opt-in), authorizes a declining 12-year partial exemption from real property taxation for non-residential property converted to a mix of residential and commercial uses. This has been a major source of gentrification of the city of Buffalo. The City of Buffalo needs to recognize that and instead of forcing those in the neighborhoods to foot the bill through an unjust tax reassessment process, opt-out of 485-a and make corporate landlords pay. Click here to learn more: State Document for 485-A Tax Exemption