Marine Drive residents prefer Paladino over BMHA as their landlord

Residents of Marine Drive Apartments — Buffalo’s largest public housing complex — prefer that Carl Paladino‘s Ellicott Development was their landlord, rather than the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority (BMHA), at a rate of more than 2 to 1, privately conducted polling suggests.

The polling data was shared with The Chronicle and suggests that 61% of residents of the public housing complex would support the sale of the complex to Paladino on the condition that rents will be stable and residents will not be displaced. More than 78% of respondents agreed that Ellicott Development would do a better job than BMHA in maintaining the property and its grounds.

The city’s badly run municipal housing authority has been blamed for mismanaging the complex, which includes more than 400 apartments adjacent to the city’s burgeoning Inner Harbor.

For several winters in a row the complex has had repeated heating failures and chronic utility problems. On a slew of issues the authority has been slow to address resident concerns: crime, lead paint, energy efficiency, and badly aging electrical and plumbing systems.

Paladino has offered to purchase the Commodore Perry Homes from the City for $1 dollar — located less than a mile from Marine Drive. That complex includes more than 400 apartment units, but more than 200 of them have been vacant for more than a decade — a benchmark for which the BMHA is badly penalized in federal funding formulas.