On a recent trip home from the City of Buffalo, I decided to drive down the snowfilled streets of the first ward. I wanted to take in the houing stock of the first ward and just take a look at what types of housing the first ward has to offer. The vast majority of housing is the 2.5 story wood frame with a small front yard and tiny driveway. The homes are old, very large, and falling apart and some even vacant. From reading the latet census data. I found that the first ward has many low-income/middle-low-income families. Ironically the satelite dishes were scattered everywhere. Homes are not kept-up, as long as we have our dish.
In my travel through the first ward I began to think about the Lackawanna Municiple Housing Authority. Even through the controversy and conflict I am not sure this group has done very much for housing stock in lackawanna. I know of the various home ownsership programs they run. I think using HOPE VI as a best case model from even the City of Buffalo's projects (west side) we can begin to transform the appearance of the city.