VISIONARIES: Stephanie Simeon
Posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010
by block club
Take a walk or drive through the city and you’ll see some neighborhoods with dense retail and residential districts. Take a turn down a side street and within minutes you might see something entirely different. Many West Side neighborhoods are seemingly functional, offering basic amenities to its residents. But others lack a core blueprint for healthy urban life.
As executive director of Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Stephanie Simeon and her small staff work to make sure occupied homes are well-maintained externally and that abandoned properties are put into the hands of those who will take care of them. One property at a time, Stephanie and her agency are making these neighborhoods more attractive. -Ben Siegel
For a few years now, there has been this push on the West Side for housing reform. Are you all working towards the same goal?
We have a collective group. It’s called the West Side Housing Partnership. We all have the same goal to make sure that these neighborhoods are sustainable. Harvey Garrett’s approach is to work on the block club level saying, look, stop waiting for the great white horse to come in and fix your neighborhoods. You have to do this yourself. PUSH Buffalo has the same model: You have to bring the power back to your neighborhood and say what you want and we can get the resources for you.
What specifically does Heart of the City Neighborhoods do for residents on the West Side? We acquire vacant properties that have been sitting around for a long time and we gut them down to the studs. We do a complete rehab and then we sell them to first-time homebuyers. We also have an advocacy component. We work with the Buffalo City Housing Court, working with people who own their home and maybe their focus hasn’t been on keeping the exterior of their home maintained. The housing court gives them resources to help.
What are some important characteristics of a safe and functional neighborhood?
Do they have proximity to a park, to a place they can play with their kids, to a grocery store? Do they have access to healthy food or do they have to walk to the corner store and buy something that’s not healthy and costs a lot of money? It’s difficult because my job is housing, but I can’t do that until the other stuff is done. They’re all interconnected.
Is it hard to convince residents that their properties need help?
It’s very, very difficult because people work. They say, ‘It’s not my job. I should only have to be worried about 122 Whatever Street. Why should I be worried about what’s down the street?’ The thing is, long term, what happens down the street is going to help you.
