Life on a Nickle’s Edge: Struggle and Dignity in Buffalo’s Fruit Belt

Date: June 2, 2017
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Historian John Marsland has completed a project on the Fruit Belt neighborhood and its quest for a community land trust. Marsland, a 2016-2017 Humanities New York Public Humanities Fellow, is presenting his work at a conference in New York City in June.

Marsland's project includes interviews with Fruit Belt residents Zaid Islam, Dennise Barr, and Nathaniel Cole, as well as footage shot at a fundraiser for the FB Community Land Trust. Marsland also prepared a fact sheet on the Fruit Belt, highlighting some of its history, demographics, and current struggles to avoid displacement and to control its own fate. For further reading, check out PPG’s policy brief on the land trust and its asset inventory of the Fruit Belt. The FB Community Land Trust has successfully incorporated and has already raised substantial funding toward its goal of reserving vacant land in the Fruit Belt for affordable housing and other community priorities.