Generation Magazine

By JOSHUA BOSTON

As students come and go each year and their homeowner neighbors remain, the University Heights are the front lines of a culture war as constant as class schedules. Every year the relationship is as tense as it is predictable — at least it was, until a recent uptick in casualties dismayed residents on both sides.

Now more and more people are saying it’s time for peace and trust in the Heights.

Javon Jackson, a May 2009 graduate of UB, became one of the most recent victims of the ongoing plight when he was gunned down on Main Street near Highgate Avenue, just hours after receiving his bachelor’s degree.

Promises for change have been made before and were made after Jackson’s murder.

“[The] tragic death of Javon Jackson reminds us of the importance of this collaborative approach,” UB President John B. Simpson and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said in a shared statement. “We have agreed to review our partnership and find ways to build upon it.”

Less than three weeks later, after UB and the city increased their efforts to bolster safety and crime prevention, Jesse Garnett was murdered less than two miles away from the site of the Javon Jackson tragedy. The shooting murder took place on Yale Avenue in Amherst, just a few blocks north of the University Heights border.

Though Garnett was not a student of UB, he had ties to the university through his twin brother, Richard Garnett. And though public officials have made it clear that the two murders were not connected, both Richard and Jesse were roommates with Javon Jackson.

“My roommate, now my brother, everything is taken away from me,” Richard Garnett told local news station WIVB shortly after Jesse’s death. “My dream is gone.”

### An Effective Absence

Over the past two decades, the University Heights has endured a transformation for the worst. County Legislator Betty Jean Grant, who is also a former City of Buffalo Common Council representative for the University District and City School Board member, recalled a transfer of criminal activity to the Heights area during the late 1990s.

“The migration (of crime) was caused by the availability of nice, attractive, single homes from absentee landlords,” Grant said. “I think that was the biggest contributing factor – that there were not owner occupied homes.”

Absentee landlords, who remain a problem in the Heights to this day, generally receive rent payments through the mail, with little regard for the well-being of their tenants. Poverty-stricken single mothers continue to rely on welfare programs that subsidize private rentals.

Grant believes that these women came to the Heights from other areas near Fillmore Avenue and the Broadway Market because of the inexpensive cost of living. Consequently, the drug dealers might be staying with the single mothers as well.

Despite the migration, “I know they had not stopped selling drugs. They’re still doing the same things,” Grant said.

Students, similarly, benefit from low rent through their absentee landlord, and David Ellerbrock, Ph.D., president of the University Heights Collaborative, has been working to try to identify the inadequacies of leasing situation.

We want to “work with any students who are having issues with their property, finding out where they’re sending their rent checks to absentee landlords, and getting that direct contact information,” Ellerbrock said.

Moreover, members of the Collaborative strive to communicate to students that outsiders, especially teenagers, will enter neighborhood houses when they know students are away on campus or for holidays. As a result of her growing concerns about drug dealing and youth crime, Grant decided to act.

“I saw a potential degeneration of the area and I formed the University District Anti-Crime Task Force,” Grant said.

Legally qualifying as a subcommittee of the Common Council, the Task Force had rotating meetings at area community centers and downtown, in City Hall. The group came together to establish strategies to decrease crime and blight in the neighborhood. Grant believed that Task Force was working until Common Councilmember Bonnie E. Russell, Grant’s successor, disbanded it.

Increased police patrols, one of the strategies of the Task Force, are a problem to this day, as the city has had difficulty maintaining them.

“Although we’ve added 125 police officers, through attrition and retirements, we’re actually at a deficit,” said Michael P. “Mickey” Kearns, South District Common Council representative and candidate for Mayor in the Sept. 15 Democratic primary. “What we have now is only about approximately 400 patrolmen on the streets for the whole city. You don’t have the numbers to adequately do the foot patrol.”

Kearns went on to say that, “because we don’t have the numbers, calls are being prioritized. And the calls that are sort of being forgotten or are falling through the cracks are those quality of life issue calls.”

### The Blurred Border

The jurisdictional boundary that divides the University Heights from UB South Campus has long been an area of contention. Residents, students and university officials all have legitimate claims of both responsibility and negligence.

Over time, however, permanent residents of the Heights have not allowed the pangs of the university’s former indifference to diminish. William Greiner – the immediate past president of UB and present-day law professor – is infamous in the Heights for reneging on his plan for university projects in the neighborhood.

“Classically, stereotypically I would say, the blame is on the university and President Greiner for pulling out of the proposed housing project back in the ’90s,” Ellerbrock said. “That really burned a lot of the homeowners in the area. They still remember that. In some respects, I would say that UB still has not responded appropriately.”

Grant has seen, empirically, that UB has similarly responded in the past. She has heard university officials respond to calls for action by saying that the University Heights are, “a Buffalo Police issue…not a University at Buffalo issue.” Grant strongly believes, nevertheless, that the university has a strict responsibility to monitor and bolster the safety of students off-campus.

“These are your students who are getting robbed and these are your students who are creating the problem,” she said.

The unorthodox intersection of the Buffalo, Amherst and the university communities has made for a police authority nightmare.

“SUNY Police are limited by law to having jurisdiction over the campus and the adjacent streets,” a university statement said. “However, UB police officers are authorized to assist Amherst, Buffalo and NFTA officers during patrols, arrests and investigations, and they often do.”

The University Police have added officers between 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. – the time period when both Jackson and Garnett were killed. Despite the investments being made on campus, the situation off campus remains questionable.

Kearns, who has a 10-year-old daughter, suggested that people might look elsewhere for safe housing, despite the convenient access to south campus.

Parents are “not going to put their most precious asset, which is their daughter or son, in harm’s way,” Kearns said. “They’re going to go somewhere else where they feel their child is safer.”

Though UB President John B. Simpson has made his administration more approachable to engage community members, Ellerbrock has emphasized that the time for action is now.

“I’m not sure if the decision makers at the dean level and the VP level…really understand that we have to move away from this academic mindset and just start doing gritty work that’s on the streets,” Ellerbrock said. “This is a time when everyone needs to get their hands dirty and understand the time for studying and planning is over. The homeowners aren’t interested in a study. We know what the problems are.”

### The Need for Communication

The ongoing violence, criminal activities, and permanent residents’ frustration with a transient student population have culminated in the need for trust and communication between all the engaged parties.

While many have proposed that increased use of police patrols and crime enforcement cameras would improve safety in the Heights, Kearns has proposed a drastic communication overhaul in order to diminish neighborhood blight.

“We’re missing is the communication gap between the police department, the city and the neighborhood,” Kearns said. “I think, through the Quality of Life Centers, we’re going to be able to bridge that gap and start a consortium where we’re working more collectively to address some of those minor quality of life issues.”

Organizing the neighbors of University Heights into block clubs and neighborhood watch groups has been one of the most important grassroots building blocks for Ellerbrock and the Collaborative.

“We need to interact with students more to let them know there’s a block club on your street,” Ellerbrock said. “The homeowners are around to look out for your property while you’re away. In the meantime, just make sure parties are quiet and respectful.”

While the University Heights Collaborative has been dependent on small grants, money hasn’t been Ellerbrock’s primary concern. Instead, he wants to build bridges between civic leaders, residents and university officers to streamline the strategies to foster neighborhood revitalization.

“What we need is trust in the relationship,” Ellerbrock said. “When there’s an issue, let’s all have the sense of urgency – not panic – that we’re going to help you out and have a win-win here. The university does need a stable and, I would argue, clean neighborhood for the success of UB 2020.”

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