On May 14, 2022, the City of Buffalo’s history was rewritten. It was a new chapter of darkness born from a racially motivated mass shooting at 1275 Jefferson Avenue: A Tops Supermarket, one of very few large grocers on the city’s predominantly Black East Side.
With Buffalo on the world stage, thousands of people poured in condolences, tributes and promises to help devastated members of its community. They also poured in money. Lots of it.
But four years after the attack that claimed 10 lives, injured three others and left lasting harm across Buffalo’s Black community, some of those most affected are still asking: What is there to show for all of the promises and, more importantly, the money?
This is Part III of our investigative series titled "Where Did The Money Go?" Read Part I here. Read Part II here.
JOE BIDEN: We have to resolve here in Buffalo that from the tragedy -- this tragedy -- will come hope and light and life. It has to.
KATHY HOCHUL: We’re here to help you heal; this is not just, put up a memorial and we walk away. We're committed to helping you rise up once again.
BYRON BROWN: Even in the pain that we're still experiencing, we feel a sense of hope and optimism for the future of this community and for where this community will go.
SEAN RYAN: We can begin to fix the problems that made this neighborhood a target in the first place.
In the days, weeks and months after May 14th, 2022, the promises of a better future for Buffalo’s East Side came rushing in, almost as quickly and abundantly as the tens of millions of dollars devoted to helping the community recover.
Four years later, many residents are still waiting to see results — or, at the very least, to get a timeline for when those results might come. What does healing look like for a community re-traumatized by the feeling that it still hasn’t received what it was owed?
We conclude "Where Did The Money Go?" by looking at what has changed — and what hasn’t. We see how much of the funding set aside for specific purposes, organizations or people actually got where it was supposed to go. And we ask what could realistically come from the long-term investment plans now on the table — and what history tells us is unlikely to happen.
Those who suffered most from the attack have different visions for where the community should go next — and different ideas about what accountability should look like. Some are demanding answers from the organizations that raised and received money in response to 5/14. Others are still waiting to see whether long-term plans will turn into something they can actually feel in their daily lives.
This is the space between promise and proof.
"Accountability: What does that look like? How are you going to hold somebody accountable? What are you going to do that's going to be different, that's going to help heal the community?" — Dominique Calhoun, Ground Zero Speaks
There’s a Ghanaian principle called Sankofa that often resurfaces in Buffalo around May each year. It’s rooted in the philosophy that we must look back and learn from the past so we can better understand what comes next.
To make sense of the money that came after May 14, we have to unpack the economic conditions that existed before it.
"Peyton Gendron did the studying, he studied America, he read about segregation, he read about home values, he read about food deserts, and what did he find? He found Buffalo, New York, and he found Jefferson Avenue," said John Washington of Ground Zero Speaks.
Buffalo’s East Side was never struggling by accident. For generations, Black residents were shaped by policies and decisions that limited where they could live, where capital flowed, what neighborhoods were invested in, and what kind of wealth families could build.
The Kensington Expressway is one of the clearest examples. Its construction damaged Black neighborhoods, displaced homes and businesses, and weakened families’ ability to build wealth through property. In recent years, that history has become especially visible.
The billion-dollar Kensington Expressway project predated the May 14 mass shooting. However, government officials increasingly discussed it alongside the East Side’s broader recovery — as part of a much larger conversation about disinvestment, structural harm and what it would take to repair communities that had been divided long before the shooting.
"My view is sometimes you can't carve out a better future until you right the wrongs of the past, and that's exactly what we're doing with the Kensington Expressway project," Governor Kathy Hochul said.
In 2021, researchers at the University at Buffalo looked back at the state of Black Buffalo over three decades and found little meaningful progress on some of the most basic measures of economic well-being — poverty, income, homeownership and employment. Dr. Henry Taylor helped lead that work through "The Harder We Run," a report that connects those outcomes to a long history of disinvestment in Black Buffalo.
"The Black lament, 'The harder we run, the further we fall behind,' seems appropriate for Black Buffalo," the study reads. "Black Buffalonians have not made progress over the past thirty-one years."
So when a racist attack targeted the Jefferson Avenue Tops, it did more than devastate a community already carrying grief. It exposed an economic reality present long before the shooting. The closure of the area’s only supermarket highlighted structural inequities that could only be attributed to the city itself.
That’s the context the post-5/14 money entered.
Projects, but little progress
Another thing to consider: Those economic barriers and years of disinvestment have stalled a lot of progress East Side communities were promised over the years.
That’s why some residents like Delores Jackson are hesitant to believe the new 5/14-era projects will come to fruition.
"Until everybody starts taking their responsibility and being accountable, nothing’s going to change, it's going to get worse, and I think it's intentional," Jackson said. "Personally, I do."
The revitalization of Jefferson Avenue dates back decades, with references made in The Spectrum — the University at Buffalo’s student newspaper — dated April 29, 1974.
In the 1990s, there was the Jefferson Alive/Renaissance plan led by the group 50 Women with a Vision.
In the early 2000s, there was UB’s Masten District Neighborhood Plan.
In 2020, there was Jefferson Avenue Complete Streets — the framework for the Jefferson Avenue Streetscape Project that saw construction begin this March.
Residents of the East Side are no strangers to promised investments that only begin to manifest generations later, if at all. It leads to questions for individuals and organizations with post-5/14 funding saying it’ll take time before residents see the results of their long-term community investment strategies. Namely, how much time are we talking?
Buffalo Together’s plan spans five years, but as steering committee member Garnell Whitfield, Jr., explained, the work to bring it to fruition doesn’t follow a simple timeline.
"You talked about all the millions of dollars that have come through the East Side and have not made an impact, so people are aware of that, and they have a lack of trust, lack of hope, even for anything better than what they've seen," he said. "It's our job to make sure that we build trust and build capacity with them, and build a relationship with them that builds confidence and allows them to hope and dream again. That's going to happen over time."
Critics of Buffalo Together say it's had four years to build trust and relationships with the community, but that its plans for the fund's remaining $6.1 million — which is growing interest — doesn’t explain how the money’s being invested right now. LINK
That criticism speaks to a larger tension in post-5/14 recovery: The money was meant to respond to harm that was immediate, visible and devastating. But many of the plans attached to that money are long-term, complicated and still difficult for the public to track.
"This event has the potential to harm Buffalo's already economically disadvantaged Black community and further grow inequality." — Byron Brown, former Mayor of Buffalo
Just weeks after the attack, Buffalo’s recovery was already being discussed on a national stage through the lenses of grief, public safety and economy.
"We looked at different channels. One of the first channels that we look at is consumer sentiment or the way people in these communities feel about their economy about local businesses and we find in the months and years after mass shooting these become more pessimistic and negative," said Abel Brodeur, an economic professor at the University of Ottawa.
In July 2022, a congressional subcommittee held a hearing — called "Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough" — focused on how mass shootings can damage communities, local economies and long-term growth.
The hearing drew attention to how the impact of a mass shooting can cause widespread devastation in a city, even beyond the immediately impacted neighborhood. Government leaders and economists discussed the role of public policy in determining how to help communities rebuild after being impacted by a catastrophic event.
"Productivity is going down," Brodeur said at the hearing. "People are missing work, missing days of work and are less productive at work, so we need policy — public policy to provide financial support but also medical support not only in the short run, but also potentially in the medium and long run helping these communities financially and to provide them medical care."
The post-tragedy public funding we’ve seen in Buffalo — committed or contracted at the city, county, state and federal levels — covered several areas. That money supported the 5/14 Memorial and Healing Center, expanded mental health services, efforts to combat food insecurity and more.
But was the net cast too broadly? Should the financial response have been more targeted?
Craig Rogers is an associate professor of economics and finance at Canisius University, which is less than a mile from the Jefferson Avenue Tops Supermarket. He’s been with the university since 2001 and his research spans poverty analysis, economic development, population change and more, giving him a close view of the area and what’s changed since May 14.
He said the question isn’t just whether the money was spent across different recovery efforts; it’s whether public dollars meant for low-income communities are actually reaching those communities in ways that last and whether anyone is held accountable when they don’t.
"We have systematic issues that predate this tragedy," he said, "where funds that are targeted for low-income communities have been misappropriated, the goals and objectives have not aligned with the needs of the community, and I, unfortunately, think this is symptomatic of that much larger, broader problem."
In a response this large — with money coming from government, corporate and philanthropic sources — Rogers said coordination matters.
"You would hopefully want all these entities to be at a minimum on the same page, not necessarily the same paragraph, because that's probably unrealistic, but we have to be on the same page, though," Rogers said. "You cannot be on page 17 and I’m on page 71."
Communities already facing hardship, like Buffalo’s East Side, can become especially vulnerable to exploitation when a significant amount of money is on the table. If the community isn’t benefiting from the money being poured in, who is?
"It is a murky world we live in, and it speaks to, on the more sinister side, the profitability of poverty, where entities and people may exploit vulnerable communities for personal gain," Rogers said. "We see this played out, not just in our communities, but other communities. But it is, to some degree, more vicious in our communities."
The market for more markets
When Jefferson Avenue temporarily lost its only supermarket, public officials and community leaders framed the area as an opportunity zone for grocers to invest in a community that had both a market and a need for greater food access.
"This will open the eyes of other supermarket executives, other corporate leaders, that there is a tremendous market in this community," said Byron Brown shortly after the shooting.
Unfortunately, the continued disinvestment four years after the mass shooting suggests the market Brown envisioned might have been seen, but still has yet to be served. This isn’t lost on residents, nor local businesses that want to help fill that gap, like the African Heritage Food Co-Op.
"Tops has opened since 5/14 ... but a lot of people are definitely afraid to even go in Tops," said Reverend Kinzer Pointer, CEO of the African Heritage Food Co-Op. "Before 5/14 we had eight what we would call traditional-serving supermarkets in the City of Buffalo, and guess what? Today we still have eight."
The housing discussion
In addition to food access, housing was another area that came with a lot of promise and large figures, particularly within Governor Kathy Hochul’s $50 million dollar investment in Buffalo’s East Side.
The state has reported progress in some of its programs, including homeowner arrears assistance, serious home repairs and down payment support for first-time buyers. The down payment assistance program was exhausted by early 2025, and NeighborWorks Community Partners reported completing 102 East Side home-repair projects through the Buffalo East Homeowner Improvement Program.
But what’s harder to find is the bigger outcome picture; how many longtime East Side homeowners were kept in their homes, how many Black residents were able to become first-time homeowners, and whether these investments changed the larger housing conditions in the neighborhoods they were meant to stabilize.
The broader $50 million announcement was framed as a response to the short- and long-term needs of Buffalo’s East Side after an anti-Black, racist attack. But the housing programs themselves were not race-based. They were largely place-based — tied to target ZIP codes, income limits, homeownership status and specific property needs. That makes it harder to determine whether the money primarily benefited the people it was meant to help — Black residents with deep roots on the East Side — rather than newcomers, outside buyers or real estate interests drawn to the neighborhood after new investment was announced.
Statistics can’t tell us exactly who benefited from post-5/14 housing investments, but it can shed light on concerns from longtime residents. Data from Census Tract 33.02, where the Jefferson Avenue Tops is located, gives a snapshot of life in the area before and after the mass shooting. It’s a region with a 78% Black population, with nearly a third of its population living below the poverty level.
Census Tract 33.02 has remained largely renter-occupied over the past decade. As of 2024, the most recent year for which American Community Survey estimates are available, renters make up an estimated 61% of occupied housing units. The renter share appears to have grown since 2021 by about four percentage points, while the owner share declined. That shift doesn’t prove more homes are being bought up by investors, but it does add weight to concerns that, as new investment comes into the neighborhood, longtime East Side residents might not be the ones best positioned to benefit from it.
"This is the start of the gentrification process," said Mark Talley, the son of 5/14 victim Geraldine Talley. "The East Side of Buffalo may be called something else, but it's going to help those residents when the ones currently there get kicked out of their homes because they can no longer afford to rent there."
Renter households have been under serious pressure before and after the massacre; nearly half of all renters in Census Tract 33.02 were rent-burdened. By 2024, more than a third were severely rent-burdened.
That’s important to note because several post-5/14 housing programs were framed around stabilization and wealth-building, helping residents stay in their homes, repair their homes or become homeowners. But in a neighborhood that remains majority-renter, the question is whether those programs were enough to shift the conditions residents already were describing.
The governor’s website says funding for all of the housing-related programs were exhausted, but there’s no clear account on how many people have been helped overall. BTPM NPR requests under New York State’s Freedom of Information Law to get more specifics on how effective the governor’s targeted investments have been are expected to received responses by late June.
"The May 14 shooting in Buffalo will impact an entire generation of children." — Byron Brown
For some East Side residents, the harm that followed 5/14 cannot be separated from the violence young people were already living with — or from the way white supremacy, trauma, poverty and public safety collide in neighborhoods like 14208.
A key theme at the Ground Zero Speaks forum was the impact of Buffalo’s systems on young people, especially young people growing up with repeated exposure to violence, trauma and disinvestment.
Mercedes Overstreet leads the HEAT youth program and spoke about what happens when children and young adults on the East Side are forced to carry trauma without enough support.
To her, the consequences are not theoretical.
She said they show up in real time, in mental health struggles, in community violence and in young people being left to survive problems they did not create.
"They're kids dealing with adult trauma and not being helped by those that's supposed to help them," Overstreet said. "That's a problem, a huge problem."
An incomplete puzzle on mental health
Mental-health funding is one area where we can see some concrete activity, even though measurable outcomes are harder to find. State and federal grants helped fund culturally relevant wellness programs, psychological first aid training and BestSelf’s Black Mental Health Response Team, which the state says treated more than 200 people and engaged nearly 1,000 others.
Public funds also supported both early and current resiliency center models, with much of that money intended to expand mental-health services for survivors, victims’ families and others directly impacted by the attack. But as we’ve heard, experiences varied among people who sought that care.
The New York State Office of Victim Services also made nearly $3 million available to help victims’ families and survivors access financial assistance and to help service providers access funding. But much of the public money tied to the crisis came with restrictions, which makes it harder to determine how much of the money was actually used, who received sustained care and what outcomes were produced.
There was also more direct aid with less red tape than some of the public funds. Black Love Resists in the Rust, a former grassroots collective led by Black and POC organizers, created an application process for $500 microgrants to help Black people in Buffalo access mental-health services.
Other philanthropic aid included part of Highmark’s $300,000 investment, which supported behavioral-health resources, as well as Buffalo Together grants that representatives say helped organizations providing mental-health services to the community.
But the larger picture is still incomplete. Public records often show what the money was supposed to do. However, how many people received sustained care, how much was spent by service type, or whether the support was enough to meet the long-term trauma needs created by 5/14 aren't accounted for in the records.
A deadline to spend $2.7 million
Records from the Department of Justice retrieved via a FOIA request show awards to different agencies in response to the mass shooting.
ECMC received more than $400,000 to advance hospital-based victim services in 2022.
The City of Buffalo received two grants, one in 2023 and another in 2024, each over $200,000, to increase police patrols at select large-scale events to protect against terroristic threats and gun violence.
As previously discussed, the Community Health Center of Buffalo received nearly $4 million to operate a resiliency center. But the DOJ records add some new context. About 70% of those funds have not yet been drawn down. The CHCB has until May 2027 to spend the remainder — more than $2.7 million.
COO Al Hammonds explained in Part I these are not in-hand funds. The roughly $1.1 million that have been drawn down was reimbursement for expenses related to establishing and operating the center.
Hammonds said the shooter's impending court proceedings are the immediate focus.
"We really can't see beyond that at this point in time, because it doesn't look like that's going to be a short-term thing," he said. "It's going to last for a while. So we're preparing and gearing up to be a support and be there for what's coming up."
Finding the true amount available
In the cases of both the CHCB’s resiliency center and the African Heritage Food Co-Op, we’ve seen how government funds – whether state or federal – come with conditions, and several factors can determine when, how, or even whether that money is actually disbursed. In some cases, money that isn’t drawn down doesn’t stay available forever.
This would probably be a good time to make a few distinctions in the types of funding that composes this large pot of post-5/14 money:
- Promised money: These are funds that were publicly announced to benefit specific individuals or causes in response to the shooting but can be hard to track later.
- Awarded or contracted money: This accounts for many of the public dollars awarded by government agencies to different causes and organizations. Those funds often come with specific rules, timelines and limits on how they can be spent.
- Drawn down or reimbursements: In simple terms, some grants don’t work like a check handed over all at once. The money may be available, but the organization has to spend on approved expenses, submit documentation, and then draw down or get reimbursed for those costs. So “awarded” doesn’t always mean the full amount has already been spent or received.
One example: The Resource Council of Western New York’s early contract as the initial candidate to run the state-funded resiliency center. The organization’s executive director, Catherine Roberts, said the organization received an advance of $160,000 from the Office of Victim Services on Sept. 14, 2022 – just 11 days before the funds were set to expire. By the following January, just under $97,000 in unused funds were returned to OVS, while nearly $37,000 were approved for contract reimbursements related to staffing and victim services associated with the Jefferson Avenue site.
Finally, is money with an unclear path. For example: Ryan Brandenberger, a mortgage advisor in Florida with Buffalo ties, and developer Brad Termini were publicly noted as having donated $50,000 to help cover funeral expenses for the 10 victims. But when asked who he wrote the check out to, Brandenberger couldn’t recall exactly who.
Each of these money categories tells us something different. A promise, an award, a reimbursement and a deliverable all count toward the total, but they do not tell the same story about what reached the community.
So when dealing with things like allocations instead of direct awards and organizational reimbursements instead of new money for expanded services, that paints a more complicated picture. More than $90 million sounds like a lot. But when not all of that money was disbursed, or even meant to fund new services or programs, the pot shrinks.
It suggests the long-term investment promised to Buffalo’s East Side and to the Black residents most harmed by the attack may have been smaller, more restricted and less flexible than it first appeared.
"it is a really incredibly nuanced world of incentives and disincentives that more times than not lead to low-income communities not benefiting significantly," the Canisius economics professor, Craig Rogers, said. "I don't say there haven't been benefits ... I think it's been random pot luck, certainly not systemic and sustainable."
That lack of progress Rogers is talking about gets at something bigger than accounting. It also shows up in questions about who gets to decide what recovery should look like in the first place.
"What you don't know, they say, can't hurt you, but what you don't know will hurt you," survivor Delores Jackson said. "In this instance, I'm affected, and my community has been affected."
Going the legal route
Jackson is not the only one asking for accountability. For Dominique Calhoun, those questions have moved beyond frustration and into legal action. She filed the petition in Erie County State Supreme Court on May 11, just days before the fourth anniversary of the May 14 attack, against Buffalo Together, along with two early stewards of its funds — the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County. She’s seeking a full accounting of the money raised by the fund, and what measurable outcomes have been produced.
"We didn't want to live in the past, we want to see what you can provide in the future," Calhoun said. "Unfortunately, the Buffalo Together funds didn't even want to be transparent about that, so [the lawsuit] is the only way."
Aaron Saykin, a partner at Hodgson Russ, which is representing Buffalo Together Inc. and the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, called the lawsuit baseless. He said implementing the plan will take time and patience. He also added that all of the planning costs were covered separately, ensuring fund dollars directly support this work.
"Transparency is not hostility," Calhoun said in response. "Accountability is not an attack. Asking for a full accounting of charitable funds raised after a nationally recognized tragedy is not 'baseless.' It is a reasonable expectation from the very people whose trauma was used to inspire the donations in the first place."
This work doesn't stop
There are a few answers to the question of “Where did the Money Go?” Unfortunately, none of them are satisfying or definitive.
Donations made to funds were given to victims’ families, survivors and organizations. But it’s possible not everyone who might have been eligible, on paper, received what they were entitled to.
Different levels of government offered support as well, but many of those large figures announced in press conferences and releases didn't reach the city. They were tied to specific criteria, restrictions and timelines, and in some cases, subject to being returned if time or circumstances did not allow them to be spent.
Many nonprofits received direct financial aid but widely within the context for covering services and resources already used in the aftermath of the shooting, not necessarily to create new avenues of relief for residents. For some organizations, providing a direct accounting or ledger is complicated — maybe too complicated to fully capture on paper.
Some funds promised publicly were reduced, difficult to verify or, in some cases, not given at all.
There are still millions of dollars being held for long-term investments, but many of the people who still need help say they’d rather see the money invested into the community right now.
With calls for investigations on the horizon, more may be revealed over time.
The task of following the money doesn’t end here.
The search for accountability will continue.
Revisit previous parts of "Where Did The Money Go?" here.
