I’m doing something a little different today. First is an excerpt from an article I wrote two years ago, which I will follow up with what has happened since.
What it’s like to live in Buffalo
Depending on which report you look at, Buffalo hovers just above the bottom of the piggy bank, jostling spots with other perpetual bottom dwellers Miami, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and of course Detroit. As little as a week’s pay can raise or lower a city’s standing. According to the most recent surveys, Buffalo is second poorest city in the United States, a title that doesn’t boast quite the same excitement or good feeling the second richest city does. It’s best described as a shaky breath of relief, like paying the cell phone or cable bill just before it’s shut off.
After living here a while I’ve tried to justify the regressive and oppressive nature of things, to tell myself it’s not that bad living in Buffalo. But every time I visit another city, reality slaps me in face and reminds me that yes, it is THAT bad. Most people I’ve met here call Buffalo their hometown. Those that don’t rarely stay long enough to put down roots.
You can read the article in it’s entirely here.
I recalled this article because of a report I heard on the radio about a group of people meeting to discuss ways to combat Buffalo’s “poverty crisis”. The good news is that Buffalo has moved up in the world to being only the third poorest city in the United States, the bad news is that third worst is still a lot of poor people.
All too often, people and groups state they are working to eliminate poverty. A search of that term yields around 750,000 results. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not against their work, but their goal is an unrealistic one. Poverty as well as it’s inverse, prosperity have been present in all forms of society since the inception of the community. What makes this Buffalo workshop such a worthwhile program, is rather than trying to beat something so complex and enduring, they work to identify the areas of need and work to improve those, such as access to fresh vegetables or better and affordable health care.
In the few years since I wrote article above, incremental change of both positive and negative ways has occurred. Long-standing abandonments were torn down, others made empty and now hold the title of big empty. Houses that have been abandoned generally stay that way. Downtown is still quiet at night, and it’s not known if the hundreds of police cameras have made any effect on crime. The recession hurt an already struggling city, Buffalo suffers a 1:6 job ratio.
But as I said, there is some evidence of change. Most notably one house and a neighborhood underwent a huge and well deserved upgrade. As for the more commonplace, a stretch of Amherst Street, once home to only a couple mid-range businesses, now has over half a dozen. The multiple yearly festivals and events soldier on, unchanged. Every weekend, scores of Canadians cross the border to spend money at Buffalo’s, albeit suburban, malls. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s the standard here to cling to growth in just about any positive form.
And so Buffalo trudges on. People come, people go. Some days Buffalo feels familiar like home, other times I want to keep things at arm’s length. I do hold hope that Buffalo will get better, but most likely I’ll never see that transformation.
