(Sandra Tan – Buffalo News)
Forgotten and forsaken.
That’s how residents feel in census tract 16, the southern end of the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.
The rectangular census tract between Broadway and William Street lost 47 percent of its population — more than 2,000 residents — over the past decade. That’s the biggest population drop of any census tract in Erie County.
Fewer than 2,300 residents remain.
Sitting in the shadow of soaring and venerable churches — St. John Kanty and Corpus Christi — are weary old homes with broken and missing windows, boarded-up doors, faded paint, sagging rooftops and broken-down porches.
In between stand vacant lots and lived-in homes struggling to fight the tide of desolation. The old Central Terminal and railroad tracks line the southern boundary of the tract, bounded by Smith Street to the west and Bailey Avenue to the east.
“It’s a wreck now,” said 58-year-old Clark Street resident Ed Kijania, who left the neighborhood in 1987 for Florida and returned in 2000. “It used to be beautiful.”
This area was once home to a large Polish population. Most left decades ago. In more recent years, residents — both black and white — have left to flee the crime and overall neglect that has taken hold here. Others passed away.
“They’re not moving,” said Coit Street resident Diane Kilanowski, 57. “They’re dying.”
Kilanowski’s home was built in 1816 and has been in her family for three generations.
With the city’s help in 2001, Kilanowski got a redevelopment loan to side and reroof her house. But the contractors did such a shoddy job that moisture leaked into the walls and she can’t live on the first floor anymore because of all the mold.
Nobody wants to help, she said, despite the countless calls she’s made for assistance.
That’s the story in a neighborhood where the remaining habitable homes sell for $1,000 or $2,000 a pop. Redevelopment programs here have failed so far, she said.
Since 2000, this part of town has lost 1,094 blacks and 893 whites.
Morton, an M&T Bank clerk from Coit Street, doesn’t blame people for leaving.
Her own home is modest but warm. She owns it free and clear and is glad she has a working alarm system.
But the area isn’t safe, and there’s no sense of community pride. She’s embarrassed to tell co-workers where she lives and doesn’t invite them over.
Just recently, she said, someone came through the neighborhood and scraped the inspection stickers off people’s windshields to resell on the street. Her car was one of the ones left with a cracked windshield.
“If opportunity allows, and I can get enough money where I can afford to, I’d live somewhere else,” she said. “I’d move, too.”
[Read full story in the Buffalo News—>]
It is a shame about the old neighborhood. The problem is as I said before, the people who live there have no pride in their properties, and the politicians from city hall. Even though I moved out years ago I still support the Broadway Market and other remaining businesses in the area and still am a very active member of Saint Stanislaus Church were I am 4th generation from my family to be a proud member of the church.
With regards to reclamation and restoration of the neighborhood, the loss of population should only be viewed as a postive change. It has always been accepted that the core of B-F’s problems is, in fact, its residents. And now many of these residents are leaving, in many cases abandoning or leaving vacant the properties. Since restoring the population is at front and center in rehabilitating the neighborhood, the departure of the people and the abandoning of these properties should be considered a blessing. Property values, although unable to plummet because they don’t have far to fall, will certainly decrease. Of course, the lack of money is one of the biggest prohibitive things working against B-F – “enough ideas, too little money,” so to speak. But, again, should the right people come along, it’s a whole lot easier to restore or convert a neighborhood when no one is living there . . .