Rally to Defend McCarley Gardens and More to Come

Both tenants and supporters from around the city showed up on Thursday, August 19th for a rally at McCarley Gardens, located across the street from the St. John Baptist church. The gathering turned out about 60 people to voice their opposition to the sale of the property to UB, or to anyone else in the case that UB can‘t purchase it. McCarley Gardens has a contract with HUD to remain affordable housing until 2035 and Buffalo Tenants United plans to make them stick to that agreement.

Speakers at the rally included Lorraine Chambley, President of the tenants association at McCarley Gardens, Debra Rose, Vice President, Gwen Walker, Secretary, Byron McIntyre, Firefighter/Substitute teacher, running against Darius Pridgen for the Ellicott district common council seat, and Colin O’Malley, a Buffalo Tenants Union organizer. Speakers from the tenants association at McCarley spoke about how safe a place it is for their children, and that many of them have been there long enough that they consider many of their neighbors good friends or even family. Colin from the Tenant Union spoke on how important it is for tenants to band together to defend affordable housing because it is quickly disappearing in this city. He also cited public money being used on projects such as the Avant building to build luxury condos while 2,000 people in Buffalo remain homeless. 

Reverend Pridgen was also seen on the property. When talked to he said he was collecting signatures for someone. A resident pointed to the group gathered for the rally for signatures but he would not speak to them. 

Petition cards were also distributed at the rally. They are going to be collected and brought to HUD on September 30th for a rally to demand that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) keeps its agreement that Reverend Chapman should keep McCarley Gardens affordable housing until 2035. The proposed goal is to get 5000 signatures by September 17th. 

Another reasonable goal is to get members of the McCarley Gardens tenant association on the board that is making decisions in the negotiations for the land. This basic demand for democracy in development is something that should be involved in any community development plan, and Tenants United plans to be there to fight for it.

Lessons from the Take Back the Land Movement

Housing is a human right, not a privilege. And, if we’re going to fight for just housing conditions in Buffalo, we should take some lessons from the groups making this demand.  The nationwide Take Back the Land Movement and Boston’s City Life/Vida Urbana provide excellent models for housing rights groups to follow.

The Take Back the Land Movement has called for elevating housing to the level of a human right.  To do this, we need to create a great economic change – the decommodification of housing.  Housing shouldn’t be a commodity that can be bought or sold; it should be a human right that local communities have the power to distribute based on people’s need.

Even more important than Take Back the Land’s idealistic vision for a future world, is their plan to get there.  To arrive at this point where housing is a human right, they understand that we need a large grassroots movement to make it happen.  They also understand that this movement will have to challenge the unjust system of housing for profit that we currently live in.  They will do this through direct action and this is where groups like City Life/Vida Urbana enter the discussion.

For years, City Life/Vida Urbana has been organizing direct action for housing justice in Boston, MA.  When a house has gone into foreclosure, and the bank tries to remove the tenants, City Life/Vida Urbana has organized people throughout the neighborhood to blockade the eviction.  These events will draw dozens of people to hold a sit-in in front of the house being evicted to force the bank that now owns it to renegotiate with the people living there and allow them to stay.

Take Back the Land Movement has action groups in many other cities throughout the country.  In those cities they have encouraged homeless people to take over vacant properties and turn them into adequate housing, defended the attacks on public housing, and taken over plots of unused land for community use.

 

It’s exactly this sort of movement that Buffalo Tenants United should become.  Get involved and begin fighting for housing as a human right!

McCarley Gardens Under Threat!

If you were to go to McCarley Gardens today, you would find an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. Why are the tenants of this historical affordable housing complex worried? The complex, on Michigan Avenue, separating Roswell Park and Allentown from the East Side, was the vision of late Rev. Burnie McCarley to provide affordable housing for low-income, single parents. That vision has been successfully maintained for thirty years.
 

Unfortunately today the complex faces a couple of different visions. SUNY at Buffalo sees the area as the future of their downtown medical campus and the new pastor of St. John Baptist Church, Rev. Michael Chapman, seems to see a serious profit in selling this land to the university. At a meeting with tenants on December 5th, Chapman made it clear that he plans to sell the land where McCarley Gardens is located. The 150 units, with nearly 500 residents, would be spread out throughout 22 different housing sites on the east side, effectively destroying their community. According to residents, Chapman also threatened the tenants with allowing the property to deteriorate if they refused to leave.

The Tenants Association at the Gardens is planning to resist being evicted from their homes. Will they succeed in keeping a strong, affordable community intact? Or will another set of tenants be forced from their homes to make way for “development”? The answer is the same as always. We will get what we are willing to fight for. Tenants of the city need to stand behind the residents of McCarley Gardens and demand their right to stay. Only in standing together will any of us find true housing justice.

Buffalo Tenants and Homeless Need a Movement

In recent years, the question of housing quality and affordability has become a central question to the Buffalo poor and working class.  Despite living in a city with a huge number of vacant houses, there are hundreds of homeless people struggling to survive each night.  Meanwhile, public money is used to build new luxury condos and affordable housing at places like the Shoreline Apartments is under constant threat.  In one of the poorest cities in the nation, a powerful demand for housing justice needs to be made.  As has always been the case, a demand for that justice will only be achieved by a movement of those most involved.  Buffalo tenants and homeless need to build a movement to demand that their needs be met!

       

It should be no surprise that there is a need for a movement of low-income people to struggle for greater housing justice.  For most people, housing is a basic need for survival.  However, for many people, housing is a way to create massive profits.   It’s these landlords, development agencies, real estate companies, and banks that have a great deal of power in creating the unjust situation that faces many Buffalo tenants, homeless, and even small home owners today.

        

Fortunately, there is a history of struggle that has won huge gains toward securing a right to quality, affordable housing for all, and the tenants of Buffalo need to start learning from those past struggles.  As far back as 1915, when over 30,000 residents of Glasgow, Scotland went on a city wide rent-strike to stop landlords from the massive rent increases they were demanding.   These tenants held large-scale protests every time eviction was threatened for one of the strikers.  They won ground breaking rent control laws and created a strong tenants union that exists to this day.  Closer to home tenants in New York City have maintained a strong movement for decades that resists unjust evictions, gained rent control, and fights the destruction of public and affordable housing.

          

Only in a truly sick economic world could housing be considered a market for people’s profit rather than an inherent right of all people.  Buffalo tenants and homeless need to learn from these past fights and build some unity.  Let’s stop wasting time and ceding ground!  Let’s build a City Wide Tenants’ Union!