By Elliot Brandt
BUFFALO — Erie County wants a permanent home for the emergency shelter that keeps hundreds of people off frozen streets each winter, and it has picked a shuttered charter school on South Park Avenue to be that home. It has also told City Hall, in writing, that it does not believe it needs the city’s permission to open it.
That combination is now running into resistance from the Buffalo Common Council’s second-ranking member. In an Oct. 22 letter filed for the Council’s Tuesday session, Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope said she learned of the plan without any notice to her office or her constituents and asked the county to stop until a joint meeting can be held.
The dispute pits two problems that both sides agree are real against each other: a homeless population that county officials say keeps growing, and a long record of neighborhoods learning about shelters after the decisions have been made. Winter is days away. The county’s cold-weather season formally begins Nov. 1.
The Buffalo Chronicle reviewed the county’s Oct. 6 letter to Mayor Sean M. Ryan, the county’s environmental review determination, the county’s request for proposals for a shelter operator and Ms. Halton-Pope’s letter, which appears in the Council’s Oct. 27 agenda packet.
What the county wants to do
According to the county’s letter to the mayor, the Erie County Legislature “is considering entering into a lease with option to purchase” six parcels at 514, 516, 518, 522, 528 and 534 South Park Ave. in the Old First Ward. The parcels total about three-quarters of an acre and hold two vacant buildings with 30,162 square feet of space, the letter says. They sit across South Park from the Commodore Perry Homes.
The owner is J-P Group LLC, which the letter describes as “a related entity to Ellicott Development.” The buildings were most recently home to Buffalo Creek Academy, a charter school that closed abruptly in March 2025, The Buffalo News reported.
The letter, signed by County Attorney Jeremy C. Toth and Assistant County Attorney Richard E. Stanton and addressed to the attention of Deputy Mayor Benjamin Swanekamp, says the county has been searching for a permanent shelter site since 2023. It says the nonprofit providers the county has contracted with “have been unable to secure the City authorizations” needed to operate in a fixed location.
“The winter’s imminent arrival now necessitates our urgency to secure a suitable permanent facility,” the county attorneys wrote.
The Buffalo News, in an Oct. 9 report by Sandra Tan, put numbers to the proposal: a lease of $455,000 a year for the first five years, with options to buy the property at the end of the third, fifth or tenth year for between $5.6 million and $6.8 million. The News reported that the county would also take control of vacant land across the street at 513, 515 and 523 South Park, that the cost from November through April would be about $1.8 million including the lease, the operator and insurance, and that about $100,000 in renovations, including six showers, were planned. The News described the site as a 200-bed shelter.
Eric Tower, special assistant commissioner for the county Department of Social Services, explained the reasoning to The News.
“The location of this shelter has fluctuated from year to year, based on the ability of nonprofit providers, that we’ve contracted with, to secure facilities that are both zoned and permitted for this purpose,” Mr. Tower said.
“So, approving this lease will stabilize the Code Blue program by enabling the county to secure a permanent facility that we can bring a provider into,” he said.
He also told legislators the goal goes beyond a warm room for the night. “The entire point of having Code Blue is to not just get people off the streets, but to stabilize them so that we can get them off the streets permanently,” Mr. Tower said, according to The News.
The numbers behind the urgency
A footnote in the county’s letter says the Buffalo City Mission counted as many as 330 people living on the street during the 2025-26 Code Blue season. The letter says the Department of Social Services helps place about 600 households in emergency housing every night.
The county’s request for proposals for a shelter operator, RFP A2026-053, says Code Blue “historically serves a total of approximately 150-180 clients on an identified night.” The cold-weather season runs from Nov. 1 to April 30, 181 nights, “with about 150 Code Blue nights per season,” the document says.
Under state rules, a Code Blue night is declared when temperatures fall below 32 degrees, including wind chill, for more than two hours. This winter’s plan goes further. “This year services will operate 24/7 regardless of temperature,” the RFP says.
That choice has a price tag. The RFP notes that only nights meeting Code Blue criteria are reimbursed by the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. “Local funds will cover the costs of days and nights above 32 degrees,” it says. The document adds that “the City of Buffalo may also have funds available,” and allows bidders to budget from both sources.
The operator would run an overnight shelter from about 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. on two floors, one for men and one for women, with a daytime warming center on one floor, according to the RFP. The county anticipates “a minimum of 4 staff (6 staff in peak hours)” plus one security officer during the day and two overnight. Guests sleep on cots. The building itself “will be provided and maintained by Erie County,” the document says.
Proposals are due Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 4 p.m. The contract term is one year, with renewals possible.
Providers say the demand is not easing. Jean Bennett, who manages the county’s Code Blue response, told Spectrum News 1 earlier this month that the system never recovered from the pandemic.
“Numbers have grown significantly. This community provided a really, really good system during COVID, but we’ve never really rebounded from that,” Ms. Bennett said. “The numbers just continue to grow.”
‘Not subject to’ city approvals
The most consequential passage in the county’s letter is legal, not logistical.
The South Park parcels are zoned N-2E under Buffalo’s Green Code. According to the letter, an emergency shelter there is a special use that would normally require a Special Use Permit from the Common Council after a Planning Board review and a public hearing. The Green Code also caps emergency shelters in that zone at 15 beds, the letter says, meaning a shelter of the size the county envisions would also need a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals.
The county says none of that applies to it. Citing the state Court of Appeals decision in Matter of County of Monroe (City of Rochester), a 1988 ruling that lets courts weigh whether one government’s project can be exempted from another’s zoning, the letter concludes that the county’s interest outweighs the city’s.
“The County respectfully asserts that it will not be subject to any City discretionary authorizations,” the county attorneys wrote.
The Monroe test is a balancing test, not a blanket exemption. Courts weigh factors including the nature of the government using the land, the kind of use, the public interest served and the effect on neighbors. The county’s letter says it applied that test and that the balance favors the shelter. The letter also commits the county to create a way for neighbors to raise concerns, with a formal point of contact. No court has ruled on the question.
The county’s environmental review sidestepped a lengthy process as well. In an Oct. 7 memo, Chief Planner Mark P. Rountree classified the lease as a Type II action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, a category for actions presumed to have no significant environmental impact, citing 6 NYCRR 617.5(c)(1), the provision for maintenance or repair involving no substantial changes to an existing structure. The memo lists the planned uses as a Code Blue shelter, emergency shelter support, temporary housing assistance, domestic violence housing support and ancillary services.
That list is broader than a winter-only warming site, and it is one of the details Ms. Halton-Pope wants spelled out.
The county letter frames the site as part of a larger plan for the neighborhood. It notes that the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority is pursuing a redevelopment of the Commodore Perry Homes estimated at more than $250 million and calls the shelter “a critical bridge to more permanent housing.”
The majority leader objects
Ms. Halton-Pope, who represents the Ellicott District, sent her letter to County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz and County Legislator Lawrence J. Dupre, whose district includes the site. It is filed as item 26-000926 on the Council’s agenda for Tuesday’s 2 p.m. meeting, and copies went to Mayor Ryan, Council President Joel P. Feroleto, Social Services Commissioner Karen Rybicki and BMHA Executive Director Gillian D. Brown.
She wrote to express “strong opposition” to the shelter as proposed.
“What is particularly troubling is that neither I, as the elected representative of the Ellicott District, nor the constituents I represent were advised of this proposal,” Ms. Halton-Pope wrote.
She was careful to separate her objection from the program itself. “Let me be clear: this is not about denying services to individuals experiencing homelessness,” she wrote.
Instead, she argued, the timetable has squeezed out the public. The urgency of winter “should not come at the expense of thoughtful planning, transparency, and meaningful community engagement,” she wrote.
Ms. Halton-Pope asked that no further action be taken until a meeting is held among the county executive, Mr. Dupre, the Department of Social Services, city officials, the Council and the housing authority. She asked the county to answer, in writing, the full address of the site, its capacity, its hours of operation, its staffing and security plans and where it stands in the approval process.
The location sharpens the concern. The site faces Perry Homes, one of the city’s oldest public housing complexes, where the housing authority’s redevelopment is meant to change the neighborhood’s trajectory. The county sees the shelter as a bridge for people moving toward that kind of housing. The majority leader’s letter suggests residents should have a say in whether the bridge is built across the street.
What happens next
Several pieces are still unsettled.
The lease needs the County Legislature’s approval. Public records reviewed by The Buffalo Chronicle did not show that the Legislature had taken final action as of early Tuesday. The county’s own letter describes the Legislature as “considering” the lease.
The operator has not been chosen. Bids close Wednesday afternoon, and the county will need a provider in place in time for a season that begins Sunday.
The city’s position is unclear. The county’s letter invited the city to comment as part of the environmental review. Whether Mayor Ryan’s administration accepts the county’s immunity argument, contests it or negotiates conditions has not been announced. Ms. Halton-Pope’s letter is before the Council as a communication at Tuesday’s session.
And the scale is still a matter of record-checking. The Buffalo News described a 200-bed facility. The RFP describes a nightly census of 150 to 180, on two floors with cots. The county’s environmental memo describes a range of housing uses beyond Code Blue. Ms. Halton-Pope’s questions about capacity and hours go directly to those differences.
For the people who sleep outside in a Buffalo January, the question is more basic. In past winters, the shelter has moved from site to site as providers ran into zoning and permit problems, according to the county. The county is betting that a building it controls ends that cycle. The majority leader is betting that a few more weeks of conversation will produce a plan the neighborhood can live with.
Both bets are now running against the calendar.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked Ms. Halton-Pope’s office and the Erie County Department of Environment and Planning for comment and will update this story with any response.
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