Community Organizations Highlights - May 2012

The flavor of this month's COH are the city's neighborhood housing services.  These organizations work to get people into home, and keep people in homes, thereby stabilizing the markets and neighborhoods.  These organizations do great things for the city, and help prevent the spread of blight.

If you look for strong neighborhoods, you'll see strong NHS's.  This is because of a well known fact:  Owner occupancy is what creates a strong neighborhood, not high rates of rentals, or absentee land lords.  The National Association of Realtors agrees: "Importance of Home Ownership"

HomeFront of Buffalo

HomeFront of Buffalo is a home ownership counseling, and assistance organization that serves the entirety of the City of Buffalo (Unlike the other two organizations here that service individual neighborhoods).

They offer home buying counseling, first time home buyer financial assistance, and basically cater to the entirety of the home ownership lifetime.

Their stated mission:

Welcome to HomeFront, Inc.’s HomeOwnership Center of Buffalo on-line office. The HomeOwnership Center of Buffalo’s website is a convenient one-stop shop for information and services related to relocating to Buffalo, purchasing and maintaining a home as well as an excellent resource for consumers seeking an advocate and advisor as they make their way through the homeownership process. Our goal is to strengthen neighborhoods, increase homeownership in the City of Buffalo and to increase awareness and knowledge of the home buying process.We achieve this by guiding you through each step of the home buying and home ownership process by addressing the following topics through our programs: managing personal finances, pre-purchase education classes, individual counseling, down payment and closing cost assistance, post purchase education and counseling, acquisition and rehabilitation programs and owner occupied programs and services.

This organization aims to get all of Buffalo stabilized.  For better or worse, I feel this is too scatter-shot of an approach, but nevertheless, when the rubber hits the road:  They are doing something to aid this city's outlook.

Every home sold creates two full time workers...  So, for every $5000 grant they hand out, we get a direct ROI of two newly employed people.  I call that a win-win for everyone!

West Side and Blackrock/Riverside NHS

WSNHS is an organization that I've dealt with in the past.  Didn't have to end up using their services, but the staff there are very helpful, and really hard working folks looking to change the West Side/Riverside/Blackrock neighborhoods.

They offer grants and loans to help with closing costs and home improvements, and home buyer education services.  They also offer services to help keep homeowners in their homes (Foreclosure counseling, etc).

From their site:

Mission We are private, not-for-profit corporations dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of Buffalo's neighborhoods by providing safe, affordable and sustainable housing opportunities for all.
Programs We are full-cycle lending agencies, with programs carrying customers through the entire process of buying a home--from financial fitness education before purchase, to closing cost assistance, to post-purchase education and home improvement loans.
By focusing on successful home ownership, these programs build and protect assets in low-income neighborhoods, making those neighborhoods stronger by encouraging investment and improving confidence.

This organization is also one of the longest living organizations like this in Buffalo, and I believe it was used as the model for the city-wide plan to implement the various neighborhood services.  And, they also have 3 years of their annual statements on the website as well for all to review.

NHS of South Buffalo

NHS of South Buffalo focuses on stabilization of the neighborhood(s) it covers, which I think is a great plan for that area.  Blight hasn't hit those areas nearly as hard.  They really just need to keep the areas stable.

They accomplish this by offering loans for rehab, commercial facades, and manage eight rental units.  They also offering a swath of various counseling programs such as financial counseling and workshops.  And, if that's not enough:  Weatherization audits and other services, such as Lead Assessments.

The mission they are working towards:

NHS of South Buffalo's Service Area

To aid and assist in the preservation, stabilization and revitalization of economic and aesthetic conditions of residential and commercial zones as to promote a higher quality of life and social existence.  

Thankfully (I'm not one to snub my nose at those doing well), this group is the best positioned (In my opinion), since they just have to work to keep the blight at bay, not to reverse decades of blight.

Now, their website was just redesigned, so there may be more on there that I missed.

Conclusion

These organizations are working day and night to keep these neighborhoods viable, and livable.  They are also members of the NeighborWorks America network, which providers for the underlying resources (Such as training, instructors and such).  By allocating $1000 dollars in funding for any of these organizations, we  would reap a better return on investment than handing Paladino a tax check of $1.4 million...

They actually show results.