The first time I ever heard the term “social housing” was at a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) meeting in Buffalo, NY, in the fall of 2024. A former colleague of mine invited me to the meeting, which was hosted at Crane Branch Public Library in the Elmwood Village neighborhood where I live. Convening that day was the infrastructure subcommittee in the DSA’s Buffalo Chapter. They were discussing housing issues, which have been a professional interest of mine since my first job in public policy in 2016.

The Crane Branch Public Library in Buffalo. (Photo: Steve Peraza)

At this meeting, I met Tom, co-chair of the Infrastructure Committee. As the meeting facilitator, he briefly discussed the 2023 New York State Senate Bill S8494, which seeks to establish a Social Housing Development Authority. All this was new to me. Eyes wide open, I asked Tom a bunch of questions and requested that I be included in informational meetings related to social housing. My quest to investigate social housing as a viable housing reform for Buffalo had begun.

The idea that New York State would finance a public-private partnership for housing development in order to build new mixed income housing that would be set at permanently affordable prices - well, this captured my imagination. It also struck me as problematic that the “social housing” concept was largely absent from public discourse about housing, urban planning, and economic justice.

I decided to learn more and share what I learn in public discourse. I pitched the story to my editor at Weave News because this senate bill had gone underreported in New York and because social housing had been successful in cities outside the United States. Here was a chance to study a global phenomenon which could radically improve lived experience in my locality. This is sort of what we do at Weave News…

Buffalo’s Housing Crisis

Buffalo continues to face a demoralizing housing crisis characterized by houses on the decline but housing prices on the rise. Much of the Buffalo housing stock is aging and deteriorating, driving down the value of properties across the city. Many homes have been left abandoned for years, while others have been condemned and demolished, leaving behind vacant lots that pockmark every neighborhood in the city.

Scenes from vacant lots in Buffalo. (Photos: Steve Peraza)

Despite the decline in status and value of Buffalo properties, local renters and home buyers encounter astronomically high prices in the housing market. These prices have far outpaced the availability of living wage jobs, such that low- and middle-income workers can barely afford to buy and rent houses, even in historically impoverished neighborhoods.

One final feature of Buffalo’s housing crisis, as I’ve explored previously, is a well-documented history of residential segregation. Racist housing practices (e.g., redlining) from the 1920s and 1930s have continued to shape the city’s housing patterns. It is not uncommon, therefore, for non-white Buffalonians to live in racially homogenous communities, paying above market rate rent prices for dilapidated housing.

False Hopes and Big Dreams

On February 26, 2025, I sat down with Tom from the DSA at Spot Coffee on Delaware and Chippewa to talk about social housing. We discussed the issues facing Buffalo’s housing market and the benefits that a New York State Social Housing Development Authority (SDHA) could bring to Buffalo.

I asked Tom three big questions: What benefits would the SHDA bring to Buffalo? What about Buffalo and its housing market would make it an attractive site for SHDA developments? Finally, what could Buffalo DSA and allied organizations do in Buffalo and Albany to help advance the SHDA bill in the NYS legislature?

I’m glad I finished my chocolate chip lava cake before we started talking, because Buffalo’s bleak housing market is anything but appetizing.

“If the SHDA builds high quality housing that attracts mixed income residents while remaining affordable for them, it is likely that there will be white and non-white tenants living together in rapidly improving neighborhoods across Buffalo. Within a decade, SHDA mixed-income housing projects will have decreased residential segregation in Buffalo substantially. ”

Tom explained why developers in Buffalo were failing to repair the housing market. Yes, he admitted, “Buffalo needs new housing,” but the reality is that “[It’s] very expensive to build new housing.” The high cost of development incentivizes property owners to increase the price of buying and renting properties. In a city like Buffalo, where living wage jobs are rare, most of the new real estate developments are too expensive for local residents.

The conventional wisdom of the housing market, Tom continued, claimed that high-income home buyers would purchase new, expensive houses, leaving behind their high-quality housing stock for tenants. These newly vacated properties could thereby “trickle-down” to middle-income buyers and renters at prices more affordable than they had been when the properties were first purchased.

But in Buffalo, these properties remained too expensive for middle- and low-income buyers and renters. While newer, higher-quality houses remained too expensive, older, declining housing stock became increasingly unaffordable, too. In this way, the best homes stayed vacant - too expensive for most residents in the housing market. At the same time, middle- and low-income residents competed for mediocre and subpar housing, driving the cost of housing higher and higher beyond their means to pay for it.

For this reason, thought Tom, the SDHA’s biggest benefits to Buffalo would be, first, “to buy homes with good bones” and, second, “to build [new properties] everywhere [in the city], for everyone.” In short, the SDHA could either rehabilitate older properties or construct new ones, then market the SDHA housing units to mixed- and low-income residents at sliding-scale prices, thereby ensuring affordability to “a wide social base.”

“Dense Mixed Income Social Housing”

Beyond the issue of affordability, said Tom, the SDHA could make a significant impact in Buffalo by jumpstarting the process of residential desegregation. “Building dense mixed income social housing,” he opined, ”is a great way of addressing segregation concerns.” The key would be to build houses where middle class white and nonwhites want to live and where the units remain affordable for low-income residents, too.

The Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority (BMHA) works “to provide 21st-century housing opportunities for no-income, extremely low-income, and low-income persons while striving for diversity, inclusion, and opportunity for all residents.”

Here I should stress the fundamental difference between social housing and public housing. Public housing creates housing opportunities for low-income residents exclusively. Middle-income residents are not allowed to live in public housing.

Two problems emerge in public housing as a result of renting to low-income tenants alone. First, the housing generates less revenue than other developments, keeping rents low enough for tenants to afford. In turn, maintaining the development becomes a heavy cost on the municipal budget. Second, the housing is developed on undesirable land; it is designed with the intention of reducing cost above and beyond attracting tenants; and it is administered with ever decreasing public funding, resulting in subpar maintenance services and rapid deterioration of the buildings.

Social housing, on the other hand, would be marketed to mixed income residents. In practice, this would mean charging higher income tenants higher rent prices than lower income tenants. The increased revenue could thereby “reduce the burden of keeping up the property,” Tom insisted. It would help reduce public scrutiny as well, “[taking] ammo away from opponents” who attack low-income and public housing as fiscal liabilities.

If the SHDA builds high quality housing that attracts mixed income residents while remaining affordable for them, it is likely that there will be white and non-white tenants living together in rapidly improving neighborhoods across Buffalo. Within a decade, SHDA mixed-income housing projects will have decreased residential segregation in Buffalo substantially.

Conclusion

Talking with Tom from DSA was illuminating. He introduced me to the concept of social housing months ago, and since then I’ve been trying to figure out what it means and how useful it can be for the City of Good Neighbors (a.k.a. Buffalo). Reconnecting with him allowed me to understand the gravity of the Buffalo housing crisis and beneficial ways that a New York State SHDA could address it.

What I want to know now is how social housing has impacted other cities. I’ve heard great stories about social housing in Vienna, Austria, for example, but I do not know much about how social housing operates in other cities around the world. To what extent can case studies of social housing in cities like Vienna help me and others understand the benefits of social housing for mid-sized US cities like Buffalo?

To be continued…