A nonprofit engages businesses and residents to create a sustainable community.
By Sally Kohn
By every measure, Buffalo, New York, is one of the poorest cities in the United States. In 2009, 28.8% of families in Buffalo lived below the official poverty line—meaning literally one in four people in Buffalo is desperately poor (since the official poverty line is set obscenely low) while at least as many are teetering on the edge. Buffalo, in other words, is perhaps the last place on earth you’d expect to find cutting-edge urban renewal programs – let alone ones that model the principles of corporate social responsibility.
But this was the vision of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), a grassroots organization in the heart of Buffalo that saw organizing residents as key to re-organizing the city’s economy. Many community organization groups mobilize people to demand action from government or business sector institutions. So does PUSH; but in addition, it organizes people to create their own institutions of economic power and opportunity.
So, for example, in addition to fighting for much needed housing policy reform and funding to subsidize low-income housing, PUSH has purchased over 50 dilapidated housing units to transform into affordable, green housing. PUSH is even wrapping up construction on a beautiful and completely sustainable “Net Zero” home that produces no waste and generates electricity for the surrounding community. Plus community residents have learned building trades and even joined up with construction units based on apprentice work refurbishing the homes. Edwin Ortiz was making $8 an hour at a grocery store but, after finishing his apprenticeship with the plumbers union while working on a PUSH home, Edwin will make $22 an hour as a licensed plumber.
Meanwhile, all residents in PUSH homes who volunteer for at least five hours per month with the organization get a $75 rebate each month put into an investment fund that can be used to buy a home or pay for education. In this way, PUSH is building human and financial capital that will continue to pay dividends in the Buffalo community.
As well as transforming dilapidated housing into community-owned and built affordable, green housing, grassroots groups in Buffalo are transforming the area’s food desert into a robust landscape of urban farming. The Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) has trained over 350 young people on gardening, food systems and business while using vacant lots to grow and sell over 5,000 pounds of affordable, fresh produce to residents in the community. MAP also packages its own chili starter and salsa, which are sold throughout the region’s grocery stores. A new aquaponics facility will yield 25,000 tilapia in the coming year. Young people get job training, a community organization gets revenue and the Buffalo community gets green landscapes and affordable, healthy food to eat – a winning strategy all around.
In a city where people live in extreme poverty and the government owns 40,000 vacant properties – a tough environment to make any economic progress – the work PUSH and MAP are doing is not only transforming the lives of people in Buffalo but pointing the way toward socially and environmentally responsible transformations of urban economies everywhere, led by the community residents who need change the most.
About Sally Kohn
Sally Kohn is a community organizer and political commentator. She is the Founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab.
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