Advancing Affordable Housing in Buffalo and Beyond

Although the City of Buffalo is experiencing a resurgence, it has inadequate high-quality housing that is affordable to a significant portion of its population. For over 50 years, UB’s School of Architecture and Planning, in partnership with other schools at UB, has made practical work in, with, and for communities in Buffalo and the upstate region a central experience in the education of student architects, planners, and real estate developers.  This webinar will describe UB’s Affordable Housing Initiative and the newly created Advanced Graduate Certificate in Affordable Housing.  It will also review the efforts underway by the UB Regional Institute to strengthen one of the most distressed neighborhoods in Buffalo through the East Side Avenues initiative in partnership with the City of Buffalo and Empire State Development.   

About Matthew Roland
Matthew Roland, AICP, joined the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning as Assistant Dean for the Real Estate Development program and Clinical Assistant Professor. He has a Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies from Cornell University and a Master of Regional Planning with specializations in land use, real estate and economic development from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Matt has over 20 years of real estate experience, working on real estate and planning projects in most municipalities in Western New York and in over 20 states. Over the course of his career he has worked through the entire life cycle of real estate projects - including project conception, site selection, financial analysis and modeling, contract negotiation, due diligence, land use approval, financing, construction, property management and asset management. Matt began his career focusing on public-private partnerships and subsequently he has been a member of teams working on projects spanning every possible use in the real estate field, including but not limited to: mixed-use, retail, hospitality, office, industrial, multi-family, senior living, and military housing.      

He is a member of the American Planning Association (APA) as well as a certified planner through the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He is also a member of the Urban Land Institute, participating on the Executive Committee of the Western New York Chapter and acting as Chairperson of the UrbanPlan Committee. As a professional he has served as an UrbanPlan facilitator and teaches UrbanPlan throughout many of his courses. Matt is also a member of the Upstate New York Chapter of NAIOP (Commercial Real Estate Development Association).  

Matt is excited to apply his professional knowledge, experience and affiliations in urban planning and real estate to enhance the real estate program at the University at Buffalo and to further cultivate the symbiotic relationship between the students in the urban planning, architecture and real estate programs. Matt’s professional expertise will help students at UB understand the fundamental real-world forces and complex interdisciplinary tradeoffs in real estate. He believes that careful planning and design, along with better financial and economic policies, may help address some of the past and ongoing inequalities created in the real estate industry, and help foster a more inclusive and sustainable pattern of development in the future.