GREAT article! Thank you for doing all this research, so indepth! and heartfelt. Love you! Anyway we all can help, my heart just breaks for these people. My husband and I eat at Nine and Night after your review and invite our friends to meet us for dinner there. Please keep mentioning these restaurants so we can support them. And, the food is terrific!
I started The Rogue Cellar with a WEDI loan, roughly the same time Heinrich and his family did. Lots of promises, zero follow through.
They said they would offer help with new business budgeting, advertising, guidance on securing licenses and certification, how to grow by hiring and managing employees, assistance with saving for/paying out/filing the first year's taxes...
Zip, zlich, zero... none of that happened. I ended up tapping The Women's Business Center at Canisius (I'm an alumni) for help with the areas WEDI promised support.
"All talk, no follow through" is the impression WEDI has left with many people in Buffalo who tried to work with the organization. That's not unique to WEDI, certainly, but it tends to underscore what the ex-tenants have described. If you'd like to share your story with me, on background (no names, no quotes) or on the record, I'd like to hear it. Please email me at andrew@fourbites.net to set a time that's convenient for you.
Absolutely the same experience I had as a former tenant. I've found other great resources from Canisius and also a major shoutout to The Exchange at Beverly Gray , who just helped me with an 8-week class for my MWBE certification.
Dear God man, have I stumbled into the New Yorker? Well written, well told and fair. I hate when self-righteous moral masturbators feign ignorance about their wrong-doing and lack of empathy. How is it possible to be so arrogant and tone deaf?
As with so much in Buffalo, it's hard to tell whether these abuses are the result of knowing graft or merely defensive incompetence on the part of the WEDI board and leadership -- but clearly it doesn't make much difference to these tenants.
I have investigated situations gone wrong in public facilities for 35 years. Some of the most yikes-on-bikes stories I've been able to help people tell were the result of layers of incompetence and neglect, not some malign plan. That said, if you're on the receiving end, it's no balm to learn your pain was caused by accident.
‘Poverty pimps’ is a new favorite phrase of mine, for sure. So glad I (my bookshop) left there - moving into our new space this weekend.
GREAT article! Thank you for doing all this research, so indepth! and heartfelt. Love you! Anyway we all can help, my heart just breaks for these people. My husband and I eat at Nine and Night after your review and invite our friends to meet us for dinner there. Please keep mentioning these restaurants so we can support them. And, the food is terrific!
We are in! We love it too.
I started The Rogue Cellar with a WEDI loan, roughly the same time Heinrich and his family did. Lots of promises, zero follow through.
They said they would offer help with new business budgeting, advertising, guidance on securing licenses and certification, how to grow by hiring and managing employees, assistance with saving for/paying out/filing the first year's taxes...
Zip, zlich, zero... none of that happened. I ended up tapping The Women's Business Center at Canisius (I'm an alumni) for help with the areas WEDI promised support.
"All talk, no follow through" is the impression WEDI has left with many people in Buffalo who tried to work with the organization. That's not unique to WEDI, certainly, but it tends to underscore what the ex-tenants have described. If you'd like to share your story with me, on background (no names, no quotes) or on the record, I'd like to hear it. Please email me at andrew@fourbites.net to set a time that's convenient for you.
Absolutely the same experience I had as a former tenant. I've found other great resources from Canisius and also a major shoutout to The Exchange at Beverly Gray , who just helped me with an 8-week class for my MWBE certification.
Dear God man, have I stumbled into the New Yorker? Well written, well told and fair. I hate when self-righteous moral masturbators feign ignorance about their wrong-doing and lack of empathy. How is it possible to be so arrogant and tone deaf?
As with so much in Buffalo, it's hard to tell whether these abuses are the result of knowing graft or merely defensive incompetence on the part of the WEDI board and leadership -- but clearly it doesn't make much difference to these tenants.
I have investigated situations gone wrong in public facilities for 35 years. Some of the most yikes-on-bikes stories I've been able to help people tell were the result of layers of incompetence and neglect, not some malign plan. That said, if you're on the receiving end, it's no balm to learn your pain was caused by accident.
This is way beyond incompetent neglect. Welch. Does. Not. Care.
She gets paid and nothing else matters.
I hope, Andrew, that this is a yikes-on-bikes story, I really do.
I'm not seeing it.
This whole thing is heartbreaking to read.
Yes, it is.