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Mar 14

2024

Mortgage lending lags to Black applicants in Buffalo

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This is the first of two stories on the impact of lending practices on homeownership by Black residents in Erie and Niagara counties. The second story, outlining possible solutions, is here. Black applicants are twice as likely to be denied a home mortgage as the overall population in Erie and Niagara counties, an Investigative Post analysis has found. What’s more, the region’s 18 percent rejection rate for Black applicants in 2022 was higher than in all but a handful of other major metro areas nationally.  The gap between the denial rate for Black applicants and the overall mortgage denial rate[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 13

2024

Buffalo’s tax auction limbo

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Last September Delaware District Council Member Joel Feroleto held up the city’s sale of a house on Amherst Street because he knew the city had acquired the property through a tax foreclosure. He wanted to be sure the children of the former owner, who died, got any surplus funds generated by the sale. Feroleto had reason for concern. In 2019, the Brown administration changed its process for handling the money generated at tax foreclosure auctions so that the city could keep more of the proceeds. As a result, millions of dollars that in the past might have been returned to[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 8

2024

Tricky finances, politics in Cheektowaga

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This column was adopted from Investigative Post’s weekly “Political Post” newsletter. Subscribe here and get “Political Post” in your inbox every Wednesday morning. We’ve reported a lot in recent years about the City of Buffalo’s troubled finances.  And most folks reading this have heard about the 11.4 percent tax hike in Amherst, as well as the  attendant uprising, now entering its fourth month.  Cheektowaga has a looming budget problem, too, according to the town supervisor, Brian Nowak, who took office in January after six years as a member of the town board. On Twitter/X this week, Nowak noted that the town’s expenses[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 7

2024

Judge rules in favor of industrial park construction

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The Orleans County County Courthouse in Albion. A judge Thursday tossed out a lawsuit that threatened continued development of a massive industrial park in rural Genesee County. Orleans County had sued in an effort to halt construction of a sewage transmission line through its jurisdiction that would route wastewater from the STAMP industrial park into Oak Orchard Creek. Orleans officials contend the wastewater would pollute the creek and potentially damage the county’s fishing industry.   State Supreme Court Judge Frank Caruso dismissed the case on procedural grounds. He ruled Orleans County waited too long to file suit. The case pitted neighbor[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 6

2024

Controversy around incoming Buff State president

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Editor’s note: Story has been updated to reflect new information and to correct the name of a faculty group. Some faculty at the University of Houston-Victoria are raising ethical concerns about their provost, Chance Glenn, selected to head Buffalo State University later this year. The concerns are over potential conflicts involving Glenn’s university position and his work with a private research corporation he founded, according to a March 2 article in Victoria Advocate. “We’re calling for an interim provost by the end of March,” Jeff Blodgett, a marketing professor at the Texas university, told Investigative Post. “We’re supposed to be[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 5

2024

Lawsuit accuses Erie County Sheriff of stonewalling

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Erie County Sheriff John C. Garcia. Photo by Garrett Looker. The Erie County Sheriff’s Office is being sued for jail records. Again. The Partnership for the Public Good, which asked for records last May, filed suit in December after its request for documents for the downtown holding center and Alden lockup was refused. It’s the third time since 2018 that the sheriff’s office has been sued over jail records. In the two previous cases, courts ordered the sheriff’s office to provide requested documents.  “They don’t give up stuff they should give up,” said Nan Haynes, who sued the sheriff in[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 4

2024

Julian Assange’s prosecution is an assault on journalism

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Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is locked up in a British prison and fighting an effort by Joe Biden’s Justice Department to extradite him to stand charges here of violating the Espionage Act. Hearings related to his deportation were held last week in London.  Assange was a hero to many for exposing leaks from Chelsea Manning and others involving U.S. military conduct in Iran and Afghanistan and U.S. diplomatic cables.  Others have villainized him for releasing the emails of Hillary Clinton and files and emails of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election. Suffice to say, Assange has[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Mar 1

2024

Demolition threatened for Buffalo’s ‘house from hell’

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Over a year after two dead bodies were found in a boarded-up Arkansas Street house, a city court judge is once again calling for demolition of the property.  Meanwhile, the owner is now facing similar issues with a burned-out house he owns in a different West Side neighborhood.  His attorney says Kwayo Ithe Bonkuka could afford to fix the problem properties if he gets back $80,000 he paid for a city-owned house, but never received ownership of. “If we enter into an agreement, money will be transferred back for properties,” attorney Daniel Tarantino said in a recent Housing Court appearance.[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post