Mar 27
2025
A new approach to East Side development
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Henry Louis Taylor of UB presents plans for Census Tract 166. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel
Census Tract 166 — an economically devastated community situated in the heart of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood — will be ground zero for a new approach to revitalizing the East Side.
The census tract is peppered with 1,300 vacant lots, more than any other neighborhood in the city.
Only 25 percent of its adult residents work, according to 2022 US census estimates. More than a quarter of its households live below the poverty level.
Henry Taylor, director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies, likened neighborhoods like Census Tract 166 to “factories that produce uneducated workers that are channeled into the low-income labor market and into the prison-industrial complex.”
The center’s plan to revitalize the area — described in a study called How We Change the Black East Side — calls for more accessible health care, redevelopment of vacant lots and properties, and a self-governing resident body.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomThe five-year pilot program is estimated to cost $10 million. Organizers — including Back to Basics Ministries, the African American Health Equity Task Force, the East Buffalo Development Corporation and Habitat for Humanity — are working to secure funding.
Previous efforts to revitalize the city’s East Side failed to address root causes of the problems that plague the East Side, according to Taylor. He said past redevelopment plans were designed for, but not with, neighborhood residents.
According to the project’s framework, “people actually living in the neighborhood will lead the planning and development process and be engaged in all aspects of the neighborhood’s growth and development.”
“That’s what makes this plan different,” Taylor said. “We have no illusions. We see what we must do, and we understand the profound and difficult challenges facing us.”
The plan calls for a self-governing neighborhood, with a “democratically elected neighborhood council” composed of representatives from block clubs, community-based organizations and neighborhood businesses. Residents will make up 70 percent of the council.
The project also proposes a community land trust to help residents acquire property where co-op housing can be developed, built and inhabited by residents.
To that end, organizers say they hope to work with both the city and private owners to acquire vacant lots and properties. While the plan envisions some new-build housing, the priority will be rehabilitation of existing dwellings, whether vacant or occupied. Planners anticipate helping residents to tap into government-funded programs to help pay for the work.
Taylor’s coalition considered five census tracts and settled on 166 in part because residents there were the most engaged during a surveying process that gauged community optimism, expectations and concerns.
Organizers cited other factors that made the neighborhood ideal, too, including established community anchors like the King Urban Life Center, which will serve as “ground zero” for the project’s operations, according to Taylor.
The neighborhood also includes Martin Luther King, Jr. Park and Broadway-Fillmore Neighborhood Housing Services, a not-for-profit that focuses on providing affordable housing.
The number of vacant lots and out-of-town speculators who own many of the neighborhoods’ properties also made the neighborhood stand out.
The Center for Urban Studies created what it calls a “Hardship Index” to measure the struggle faced by residents living in city neighborhoods. The index ranks a neighborhood’s underdevelopment by measuring eight indicators derived from census data.
Tract 166 ranks fifth countywide on the Hardship Index with a score of 69.98 out of 100, a score the center defines as “severe hardship.”
Out of more than 2,000 residents aged 16 and over living in the census tract, nearly 60 percent are not in the labor force, census data show. Of the 813 individuals in the labor force, 15 percent are unemployed.
“What we believe is happening and occurring inside of these neighborhoods and communities is, a growing number of people just give up. They don’t believe that there are meaningful jobs,” Taylor said.
Among the goals outlined in How We Change the Black East Side is fostering partnerships that can provide on-the-job training programs for residents — within and beyond the neighborhood. For example, he’d like the Buffalo Bills to open “a training program where they train a significant number of workers who live on the East Side to work on the stadium.”
Another objective is to create community wealth. Millions of dollars have been invested in East Side development projects, but the jobs and contracts provided no benefit to residents, according to Taylor.
“There are no mechanisms in place where any of that money flows through the East Side in ways that benefit the people who live inside these neighborhoods and communities,” Taylor said.
The pilot project also plans to provide more healthy home environments through new construction and renovations to, among other things, end exposure to lead-based paint.
“We believe that if we can upgrade the quality of housing in that neighborhood, we should also see a positive impact upon health outcomes in that same area,” said George Nicholas, co-convener of the African American Health Equity Task Force.
The project also aims to “decentralize health care” by bringing clinics, rehabilitation centers, physical therapy, nutritional support and social services directly into the community. This would be done through partnerships with existing organizations and establishing community-based centers.
“There’s a scarcity of primary care physicians in the region in general, and then certainly in those communities. So we have to improve access by getting more partners,” Nicholas said.
Taylor documented the East Side’s continuing struggles in his center’s 2021 report The Harder We Run. The report found that since 1990, the city’s Black residents have made little to no progress. Household incomes below the poverty line remained at more than 30 percent. Homeownership rates actually decreased in that time period for 33 to 32 percent. And fewer than 20 percent of the city’s Black population holds college degrees, the report found.
Taylor’s objective is to use Census Tract 166 — whose population is 83 percent Black, according to census data — as a proving ground for a development strategy that can be replicated in other neighborhoods.
“As we build this neighborhood, we’ll move on the East Side Neighborhood Transformation Project and begin to build up other neighborhoods,” he said.
The project has gained the support of key political figures like Ellicott District Council Member Leah Halton-Pope, State Senators April Baskin and Sean Ryan and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, according to Taylor.
No matter who wins this year’s mayoral election, Taylor said he anticipates the project will be supported by City Hall.
“We know that if we build our base of operations inside of the neighborhoods and the communities, we’ll leave City Hall with no other option but to support us,” he said.
“This will not be a project that is dependent on the government. It will be a project that attempts to build relationships with the government, and we will fight for what we deserve.”
