Buffalo, N.Y., residents fight gentrification

Threatened with displacement by the relentless development land grabs occurring all around them, residents of a historic Black neighborhood in the midst of Buffalo’s “medical corridor” building boom are fighting back.

The Fruit Belt/McCarley Gardens Housing Task Force has been tirelessly struggling for decades to save their neighborhood from demolition and gentrification by bankers and developers.

A press conference and rally held on Aug. 5 right in the Fruit Belt neighborhood demanded a community land trust (a nonprofit that holds land in trust for the permanent benefit of low-income residents) to give residents — who are mostly tenants — final control over land use in their own neighborhood. The organizing group intends to grow bigger and stronger and not back off until they win.