I have been working on a project on the East Side for the past week, and after driving in and out of the the area several times, I was more shocked than usual at how it looks. Entire city blocks have vanished since I was last there, and the few that remain have decayed dramatically.
This entire city block is marked for demolition. City crews will come with bulldozers, level the houses, fill any basements, and grade the empty space. This has happened over and over again on the East Side of Buffalo over the past 20 years.
Decay accelerates as homes are abandoned. This can be seen in a pattern repeated over and over again. A few houses on a block become empty, and drug users, squatters, school kids, vandals, and others quickly move to stake a claim on the now available property. This quickly makes the empty buildings, and thus the surrounding neighborhood unsafe. More people move out and more houses become vacant, and now nearly impossible to sell. Once a block gets to a tipping point, entire blocks empty pretty quickly of all who can still afford to move out.
The problem began years ago, long before the country’s current economic troubles, which unfortunately have rapidly increased the rate of decay here the past few years. Business began to slow down here two years ago. What the rest of the country save Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and a few other rust belt cities are now experiencing, we have already gone through.
The devastation on the East Side is now clearly apparent, not in what is crumbling, but more so in what is missing. Neighborhoods have vanished, streets with no occupants now dot the area. Lone houses dot plains of block after block of empty lots. I saw a small herd of deer while I was out taking photos the other day. Deer. A few blocks from downtown Buffalo. That’s how desolate some of these areas are.
What remains of three city blocks. Most of the remaining houses are abandoned.
Continue reading ‘What economic loss looks like in Buffalo.’
