Housing project makes old homes new again

By Amanda O’Leary and Sametra Polkah-Toe

Bengal News reporters

 Across the West Side are many old homes that once gave families shelter. Now those same homes wait for the day when the city comes to knock them down. Some of those buildings  are getting a second chance to house families once again.

 As part of a $3 million project, PUSH Buffalo and HomeFront Inc. are taking broken down homes and giving them a face-lift by providing them with new roofs, landscaping and complete exterior rehabilitation making them more energy efficient and, at the same time, making them more safe to live in.
 One of the houses at 10 Winter St. is becoming more energy efficient by making its own energy through geothermal heat, and solar power for electric and solar thermal power for the hot water.  The houses at 398, 397 and 460 Massachusetts Ave. are also being made energy efficient but also more affordable.
 PUSH’s goal is simple: it wants to make bright neighborhoods to help bring in employment    opportunities for Buffalo. To create strong neighborhoods, people need good and affordable housing.
 On 19th Street there is a home that is not just getting a complete rehabilitation, but also a structural repair.

A HomeFront spokesman talks about progress on 19th Street:


 Before anything can be done,  PUSH and its partners need funding.
Stimulus funds from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program are being used to purchase and stabilize vacant houses. They also received New York State funding to perform major upgrades on three structures as part of the Massachusetts Avenue Development Plan.  Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, New York State Housing and Community Renewal have played a role in this project.
 How did PUSH choose what houses to work on?
 Many of these homes were once abandoned by the State Bonding Agency after it was learned that the houses’ liens were greater than the value of the homes.
 “Our advocacy forced the State to give the ownership rights to the houses back to the City of Buffalo,” PUSH member Sean Ryan said.
 Ryan gives examples why the area by Massachusetts Avenue and 19th Street is the main focus of their work instead of renewing homes around the whole city.
 “This zone, as it builds off the strength of Richmond Avenue and its attempt to take scarce housing rehab dollars,” Ryan said. “To concentrate them in a single area is an attempt to bring back a neighborhood and not scatter the funds around which could lead to a dilution of the funds.”
 Richmond Avenue recently underwent a renaissance and the goal is to move that renaissance to the nearby neighborhoods.  
PUSH isn’t doing this project by itself.
 It partners up with groups like Habitat for Humanity; they are putting on a new roof at 60 Lawrence Place.
 It biggest partnership however, is with HomeFront Inc.
 “Everything is made so much easier because we have a capable partner in PUSH,” Program Director Jean Berry said. “They, like us, have a vested interest in the betterment of the community, which shows through all their hard work.”
While PUSH receives the homes for the project, HomeFront’s job is to turn those fresh newly rebuilt homes into just that, homes. They place families into these homes.
 Like PUSH, HomeFront believes to help the local economy you need to make the area around a business more desirable to help make the businesses successful.
 “You can build a Taj Mahal anywhere, but if people don’t want to locate in that particular area, they aren’t going to buy it,” Bryan Cacciotti, executive director at HomeFront, said.
 Not just anyone can move into these homes. Before offering someone the opportunity to purchase one of their homes, there is a comprehensive counseling and education process.
 If all goes well, what once were deserted family homes could once again be opened up to families.
 “This is going to be one of the most successful housing development projects because we’re using a neighborhood approach rather than just doing one rehab here and another on a different street,” Cacciotti said. “By doing this, we aren’t just beautifying our communities but sustaining them as well.”

Edited by Kevin Hoffman and Craig Learn

PUSHing the limits of energy efficiency

PUSH's Clarke Gocker and architect Kevin Connors in front of 10 Winter St.

By Jeffrey Heras and Kevin Hoffman
Bengal News reporters

 Even with the current economic downturn there is an apparent trend in the rehabilitation of the West Side with the latest PUSH project bringing a new optimism for going green with a self-sufficient energy home.

 The long-vacant home was originally obtained from an elderly man who moved away, said Clarke Gocker, project manager for the Net-Zero home. People United for Sustainable Housing saw a great opportunity to develop a “green” home at the vacant site because of the lot next to it.

 

At approximately 1,198 square feet, with two bathrooms and three bedrooms, the Net-Zero single family home located on 10 Winter St. stands as a model of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, showcasing the ability to sustain itself year round. To make the project possible PUSH solicited the help and donations of many local construction agencies and labor unions.

 The nearly $185,000 rehabilitated home features several concepts that most modern homes do not, like solar electricity, geothermal heat and solar powered hot water.

 “The Net-Zero concept is, at the end of construction we will have created a space that produces as much energy as it consumes on the annual basis,” said Gocker.
Instead of using natural gas to heat the home, a geothermal system will deliver heat throughout the house with a floor heating system. The heating system will be installed in a vacant lot adjacent to the home and cost approximately $30,000.

 

“The heating will be supplied by the geothermal system, which in this case the house sits adjacent to a vacant lot that is about 150 feet deep, and in that vacant lot we’ll dig a trench about 6 feet deep, 6 feet wide, and 100 feet long,” said Gocker. “The bottom of the trench will run a series of piping, polyethylene piping, that will cycle through an antifreeze-water mixture that comes back into the house.”

 

Along with the geothermal system, PUSH has also installed a solar electric system to power the “green” home. 

“We had to factor in some cutting-edge renewable energy resources into the renovation of the building and those have included a solar electric system that will be mounted on the roof, 22 solar panels, 4.5 kilowatts and that will provide most of the electric load on the property,” said Gocker.

 

According to Gocker, whoever ends up living in the house will pay anywhere from zero to $100 a year in utility costs.



 The halfway-completed project is the first of its kind on the West Side, thus giving PUSH the opportunity to get the rest of the West Side community involved in the development of the home.

 Gocker said that project will involve using people from the local community to help with construction.

 
“We see a community benefit…during the renovation phase in which the house is served as an on-the-job training site for about 20 young people down right from the neighborhood, many who left high school without a diploma or graduated from high school but were not quite ready for college,” said Gocker.

 
Working with Western New York AmeriCorps, PUSH has received funding from the U.S. Department of Labor to run a YouthBuild Program that combines High School Equivalency classes with on-the-job training in the construction trades. Many of the program participants are black and Hispanic, emulating the ethnic diversity and gender composition of the West Side community.

Gocker speaks about community involvement in the Net Zero home:



 According to Gocker, PUSH has also deemed the area in which the Net Zero home is being constructed as a Green Development Zone, due to the density of proposed energy efficient and sustainable energy design elements.The Green Development Zone is a section of Massachusetts Avenue devoted energy-efficient housing projects.

 

“The next step after completing this project is to figure out how to do it to scale, meaning that we could replicate it and that we could do it in a relatively affordable manner,” said Gocker.

 

To architect Kevin Connors, this project resonates with hope for the future of the West Side, especially with its distinctive diverse population and the willingness of many in the community to help rehabilitate the West Side. 

The project is scheduled to be completed by late winter 2011 or early spring.

Edited by Heidi Friend and Kristine Starkey

War-torn family finds place to HEAL

Hassan Farah opened HEAL-International Inc. to help immigrants get acclimated

By Mike Gambini
and Ken Obstarczyk
Bengal News reporters

 Rewind your memory back to the fall of 2001. It’s been 10 days since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Hassan Farah, 13, and his family have just arrived in Buffalo.

 Civil war broke out in Farah’s birthplace, Somalia, in 1990 and after living in the war-torn city of Mogadishu, he and his family fled Somalia for Kenya then Uganda before deciding enough was enough.

 Now, nine years later, Farah, 24, has something special on the West Side at 233 West Ferry St.

 HEAL-International Inc., which stands for Helping Everyone Achieve Livelihood, was founded by Farah in September of 2007. It is a center that helps refugees from all over the world with education, employment and social services.

 HEAL’s basic functions are to help refugees get accustomed to their surroundings and to teach them to become viable members of the community. It has five divisions it focuses on accomplishing Women’s Empowerment, Youth Services, Education and Training, Community Services and Conflict Resolution.

 HEAL also offers a Summer Enrichment Program in which students, from the ages of 14-21 years old, are taught skills in leadership, communication, Finance, law enforcement and Buffalo’s history.

 Students attend workshops and complete community service, receiving pay for their work. Compensation is possible because HEAL received a grant from City Hall.

 The fact that Farah and his family were fortunate enough to come to America and given the chance to succeed was a big part of his motivation for starting HEAL, he said.

 “The opportunity to give back,” Farah said. “There were so many people who helped us get to where we are today, it is only fair that we pay them back by continuing to help others.”

 It seems like a simple story about refugees helping refugees, but it goes much farther than that.

 Farah’s father, Awil Karshe, and his mother, Hawa Hersi, always stressed the importance of education to their children.

 “We had the parents to put us in place and say, listen, this is it, you guys are the future and you have to do it,” said Farah.

 Farah stayed true to his parent’s advice, earning a bachelor’s degree from the University at Buffalo in economics and international studies. He was also very active in student government and his strong educational foundation allowed him to start a refugee center at just 22 years old he said.

 Hassan Farah’s sister, Fadumo, a junior bio-chemistry major at Buffalo State College, volunteers at HEAL filling out welfare forms, providing job opportunities and playing a major role in the Summer Enrichment Program.

 Farah said two specific factors led to the creation of HEAL.

 “It was because for one, the need was there, and for two, I was developing the leadership skills and the social skills to do the work,” said Farah.

 Students that participated in the Summer Enrichment Program said it was a great experience and helped them get a better understanding of life in the U.S.

 Mariam Abdo, a junior bio-chemistry major at Buffalo State, said the program really helped her with communication skills and she was “really thankful for them.”

 Faduma Muhammad, a freshman at Erie Community College taking up general studies, came to Buffalo in 2007 from Syria. She said it was great working for the summer program because it was a great opportunity helping people and cleaning up streets on the West Side, which is now a place she calls home.

 Besides expanding its workforce, which is a non-paid staff consisting of 11 officers and countless volunteers, HEAL hopes a bigger, better facility will improve operations, Hassan Farah said.

 The new building in the works is located right across the street from their current office at 240-244 West Ferry St.

Farah surveys the potential new office for HEAL

 On June 3, HEAL held a fundraiser at Buffalo State to buy the property for the price of $20,000. The fundraiser generated $26,000. Renovations will take about four to six months and will cost between $55,000 and $85,000 depending on the amount of volunteers.

 “The project started in early July and for the past three months, we’ve been working on interior demolitions,” said Hassan Farah.

 Hassan Farah hopes the new building will be open soon and for that to happen, he knows money still needs to be raised.
“Besides our banquet at the end of the year, we will continue working with the city of Buffalo for funding,” said Hassan Farah.

Edited by Heidi Friend and Kristine Starkey