The Buffalo in Transition series offers a collection of clear, community-driven policy ideas for Buffalo’s next chapter. Each brief highlights practical ways to reduce poverty, advance racial equity, and build a more just city. The first four briefs focused on safe and affordable housing, vacant land use, and community safety response teams; now PPG turns its attention to fixing our broken water system, supporting the critical arts sector, providing fuller services for New Americans, and cleaning up our city’s government. 
 
These briefs, and the practical solutions they present, come out of the work of PPG’s 380 partner organizations. Together these papers offer well-researched policy recommendations and imaginative paths forward.

The latest briefs are available below:

• “Making Water Affordable and Accountable” outlines how Buffalo can restore public control, prevent shutoffs, create income-based rates, and treat water as a public good–not as a commodity.
• “Renewing Support for the Arts” shows how–and why–Buffalo should commit to steady, substantial arts funding, re-establish fair and transparent grant distribution, and support the frontline arts organizations that contribute directly to community safety, equity, and opportunity.
• “Building Better Services for New Americans” calls for a comprehensive language access law, renewed investment in the City’s Office of New Americans, and steps toward achieving Certified Welcoming status to ensure Buffalo remains a safe, inclusive, and supportive place for all residents. 
• “Restoring Trust in City Hall” discusses practical, common-sense steps to rebuild ethics and trust: enforcing transparency laws, preventing conflicts of interest, strengthening oversight, and ensuring meaningful public participation in local governance.

The first four reports in the Buffalo in Transition series, released in May, are available here:

• “Putting Vacant Land to Good Use” discusses Buffalo’s abundance of publicly-owned vacant land, and proposes ways we could be putting it to use for community benefits through comprehensive community planning, a large-scale Clean and Green Program, and changes to the City’s land disposition policies to facilitate sale and transfer of vacant lots for beneficial purposes such as affordable housing and community gardens.
• “Supporting Low-Income Homeowners” spells out several reforms the city should make to help struggling people keep and maintain their homes, a real problem as economic pressures mount, including expanding low-income property tax exemptions, reforming the In-Rem Auction to protect low-income homeowners, and allowing payment plans for property tax bills and debt.
• “Fixing Rental Housing Starts with Tenant Protections” puts forth critical strategies to protect renters, including using inspections to ensure that families have safe, lead-free homes, and shielding tenants and landlords alike from unfair and disruptive evictions.
• “Community Safety Departments are the Future of First Response” shows why–and how–we should put community responder teams, civilian officers, and violence interrupter teams in place to respond to the many low-level situations that call for compassion, care, and community support. 

To schedule an interview with PPG about this series or any of these report topics, please contact Dejia James, 716-507-7295, dejia@ppgbuffalo.org.