Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority denies tenants opportunity to raise concerns

Beginning with a public hearing held by the Buffalo Common Council in December 2025, tenants of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority (BMHA) and their supporters have been organizing to put pressure on the BMHA to address the deteriorating and inhumane conditions in the city’s public housing. They include lack of heat in the winter, hazardous mold, recurring sewage back-up and widespread vermin infestation. 

The BMHA has an over $13 million budget for maintenance, but it’s hard to imagine where the money is going given the current condition of the buildings. BMHA’s Board of Commissioners and CEO Gilliam Brown have followed up with many promises to “do better” but have not delivered substantively.

In the latest example of this pattern of evasion, at April’s BMHA board meeting, the commissioners discussed reintroducing a system for residents to give feedback on the quality of work done whenever a work order is filed. Board of Commissioners Chair Yvonne McCray said this suggestion would be followed up in the Board’s monthly Finance, Operations and Development meeting on May 14, only for this meeting to be canceled due to “lack of agenda items.” 

The following week, on May 21, the monthly Board meeting was also canceled an hour and a half before it was due to start due to “lack of quorum.” Tenants were unable to make public comments, which entitles them to a written response within 30 days from the BMHA meeting. 

While those at the top are able to opt out of facing any level of accountability, many tenants report facing retaliation for speaking up about the conditions in their homes and feel scared to speak out. Tenants have repeatedly voiced the contradiction between BMHA’s ability to immediately respond when tenants are even a day late on rent, while getting a response, let alone a fix, on a work order can take months or years.

‘Affordable housing’ = privatization 

The ongoing neglect of the city’s public housing must be understood in the context of the national trend of defunding public housing and moving towards a model of “affordable housing.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal office that oversees local housing authorities, has been facing extreme cuts since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. This is in line with a decades-long effort to defund public housing. 

The “affordable housing” model emphasizes the inclusion of private developers in the construction and redevelopment of public housing and the transfer of public housing into the hands of private landlords, in part through the Rental Assistance Demonstration. Far more public subsidies and funds are available to housing authorities that embrace this model than to support traditional public housing. 

So while Buffalo’s current public housing buildings are in a state of disrepair and neglect, a billion-dollar project is underway to build and redevelop over 1,250 public housing units. However, for all the shine and promise of these kinds of projects, they result in the reduction of the total number of public housing units and the turnover of public property into private hands.

Housing is a basic human need and is defined as a universal human right in the United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” In a system where rent prices and mortgage rates are skyrocketing, the availability of and maintenance of public housing serves to curtail exploitation by private landlords by providing an alternative to private renting and therefore reduces houselessness. Public housing is a public and social good.