Aaron Bartley and Eric Walker are the co-founders of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), which advances sustainable development by mobilizing residents to support cutting-edge sustainable public policy and building a model of a sustainable neighborhood on Buffalo's West Side. Aaron has been a community organizer for the last fourteen years, working for economic and social justice by improving labor conditions and gaining community control of resources. Eric has been a community organizer since 2000, when he graduated from the University at Buffalo.
Aaron has spent much of my life in Buffalo's neighborhoods, which face the challenges confronting all post-industrial communities, including poverty and physical deterioration. Aaron feels an affinity for Buffalo's West Side because of its incredible diversity, (it is home to one of the nation's largest communities of refugees resettled from Burma, Somalia and Sudan), its historic Victorian-era housing stock and its miles of waterfront. Eric came to Buffalo for college and saw its incredible potential as a place to simultaneously address problems of entrenched poverty while establishing new modes of sustainability.
The choices are clear. We can build an economy based on high-road labor standards and living wages, renewable energy and efficient transportation systems or we can continue on a path where short-term exploitation of finite resources and people lead to greater poverty and climate change. At PUSH, we're creating a scalable model of a sustainable society by investing in cutting-edge green housing technologies and creating good jobs and green career training pathways in the process.
Aaron Bartley is the co-founder of People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH), which mobilizes residents to envision and implement sustainable development projects that improve housing conditions and living wage job opportunities in Buffalo. PUSH's Green Development Zone combines cutting-edge green construction practices, green jobs training and community organizing around high-impact
sustainable economy initiatives. PUSH was founded in 2005 with help from the Echoing Green Foundation.
PUSH has advocated successfully for two state-level community development initiatives over the last year: the Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative, named by Governor Paterson as his top housing priority, and Green Jobs/Green NY, which dramatically expands access to residential weatherization and is projected to create 30,000 green jobs over the next five years.
Aaron grew up in Buffalo and attended Buffalo Public Schools. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, he co-founded the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, which advocated on behalf of more than 2,000 of the university's service workers. The campaign resulted in $10 million in annual wage and
benefit increases for the low-income workers it represented.
Eric is Director is Director of Organizing and Policy for PUSH Buffalo, which leads community campaigns and develops vacant housing on Buffalo’s West Side. Eric recently helped to launch PUSH’s Green Jobs and Housing Campaign, which establishes specific goals for public and private investments in green neighborhood infrastructure, weatherization and green housing rehabilitation. Eric is a native of Beacon, NY and is a graduate of the University of Buffalo.
