Report: Conditions worsen for Blacks in Buffalo

by UB Center for Urban Studies · 10/18/2021

A number of indicators – including health, housing, income and education – show little improvement, and in some cases, decline in the city’s East Side over the past 30 years.

In 1990, researchers at the University at Buffalo took a comprehensive look at what it was like to be Black and living in Buffalo. They found large numbers of African Americans were out of work, living in poverty, lacked a college degree and were renters rather than homeowners.

The report predicted that the “downward trend” for the city’s Black population would continue unless an action plan was put in place to halt the decline.

The “portrait of Black Buffalo remains unchanged” more than 30 years later, a follow-up study released this week has found.

The report concluded that Black Buffalonians “have not made progress over the past thirty-one years.”

The problems are actually getting worse on the city’s predominantly Black East Side, researchers found.

“We have to do something different and, if we don’t, 31 years from now it will be the same way,” said Dr. Henry Taylor Jr., the study’s lead researcher and director of UB’s Center for Urban Studies.

Mark Scheer October 14, 2021

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