Fruit Belt Eviction Risk: High , Buffalo

Cost burden runs 58% here against 44.6% across Erie County. 25% are severely burdened past the 50% mark. That cohort absorbs no shock: one repair bill or one cut shift converts straight into arrears.

Housing insecurity runs 33.1% against 14.2% nationally. Set annual rent against average income of $28,090 and the ratio lands at 36%, above the conventional 30% ceiling.

What pushes it up most is local political climate at 8/10. Inability to pay a utility bill runs 24.4% against 9.2% nationally. Utility arrears usually lead rent arrears by a month or two. On the high side, eviction-process difficulty reads 8/10.

On the softer side, supply constraint reads 2.2/10. At $841 a month, rents run 20% under what the rest of Buffalo commands. The poverty rate is 19%. Judgments in high-poverty tracts are collectible far less often than filing counts suggest.

In the 1930s the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation graded this ground C ("Definitely Declining"). Redlining cut off mortgage credit to whole blocks for decades, and the areas graded D still carry measurably lower ownership and higher rent burden today. On the national scale it lands near the 96th percentile of the 84,120 tracts scored.

Tract-level figures come from the ACS 5-year release and are rebuilt whenever that, the court-record feed, or the statutory ledger behind the score changes.