Walton's blueprint counts on land trusts – not developers – for affordable housing

She’s not saying they can't be involved, but her policy wouldn't rely on them.

Instead, she would try other ways – largely land trusts - to provide affordable, permanent housing in poorer neighborhoods.

“I’m not anti-development. I’m anti-development with displacement,” she said at a press conference Tuesday.

Walton said she favors land trusts.

“Land trusts are democratically-run, community-based nonprofits that take ownership of land as a community, determine how it’s developed, focuses on affordable housing but also commercial development and cooperatively owned … resources,” said Walton, the Democratic nominee for mayor in the Nov. 2 election.

“Our method of development will prioritize working class people, close racial in-home ownership gaps, provide safe, healthy affordable housing for all residents of Buffalo,” she said.

Under the land trust model, the funds to pay for rehabilitating older properties or replacing them with new ones could come from a variety of sources, including City Hall, Erie County, New York State and the federal government, and because a land trust is a nonprofit, private grants are available, Walton campaign spokesman Jesse Myerson said.

For instance, New York State in 2019 awarded $800,000 to the F.B. Community Land Trust, a land trust for the Fruit Belt neighborhood – to create and preserve affordable housing in the neighborhood when Walton was the executive director of the organization.

The affordable housing grant was part of the state's Community Land Trusts Capacity Building Initiative, which acquires and renovates distressed properties and provides training and technical assistance to homeowners.

In addition, other funding came from grassroots fundraising and grants. The Common Council transferred vacant lots to the land trust for development of affordable housing. And the land trust also worked with Habitat for Humanity to build two homes.

“Building up institutions that are not-for-profit … just means that for-profit developers are going to be facing more competition in the market and are going to have to, if they want to develop in Buffalo ... they’re going to have to up their game and not just take and take and take,” Myerson said.

Byron W. Brown, who is seeking re-election to a fifth-term, lost the Democratic line to Walton in the June primary. Now he is running for re-election as a write-in candidate.

Brown has scoffed at Walton's housing record during her time as executive director of the Fruit Belt land trust, with Brown saying her claims of building homes in the neighborhood were overblown. She said her agency had built two Fruit Belt homes, while Brown insisted they were built by Habitat for Humanity and the land trust was now attempting to buy them.

"2 units of affordable housing vs. 2,200 units of affordable housing, I'm happy to compare our records any day of the week," he said in a Twitter post earlier this month.

Private developers would operate under a different set of rules than with the current administration, Walton said.

“Currently ... they get lots of preferential treatment from the mayor," she said.

"They get first dibs on lucrative contracts. They get subsidies. They get approval in all sorts of ways,” Myerson added. “Under an India Walton mayoralty, they’re still, of course, totally welcome to do their business, they just won’t get preferential treatment in the same way, and they won’t be able to sort of like have unfettered access to city funds and valuable pieces of land.”

Private developers will have to do more to ensure equity and affordability in the city of Buffalo. That means when they get public funding there will be more robust community benefits agreements, Walton said.

“I look forward as mayor to being able to expand that model into other neighborhoods that so desperately need infill housing, affordable housing and affordable opportunities for ownership for low-to moderate income families,” she said.

Walton’s plan also calls for extending financing to “small, hometown landlords to make improvements; no demolition of historic buildings; and rehab and preservation, she said.

“We will see the preservation of the fabric of our neighborhoods in building walkable, livable communities,” she said.