Focus on Area Alums: Matt Chavez, ’08

Matt Chavez, '08, is the land bank project manager for the Niagara Orleans Regional Land Improvement Corporation, a nonprofit organization formed by an intermunicipal agreement between five foreclosing governmental units (the cities of Niagara Falls, North Tonawanda, and Lockport; Niagara County; and Orleans County).The Amherst, N.Y., native, who majored in theatre performance with minors in business and social science, joined NORLIC in 2022. In his current role, heworks with the leadership of NORLIC's FGU municipal partners to identify and address vacant, abandoned, and distressed properties in its service area and to ensure that NORLIC's interventions, which include acquiring, stabilizing, demolishing, and/or holding property tax-exempt for future development, are in keeping with the goals of their municipalities.

How did your Niagara education prepare you for your current job?
Handling VAD properties exposes the poverty and inequality in our communities. Every distressed or vacant property represents somebody's negligence, and/or misconduct, and is functionally a missed chance at a home for folks who are housing insecure. Niagara University and the Vincentian community provided me with a thorough educational understanding of the economic system we live in, our societal make-up, and the moral imperative each of us faces to either capitulate to the unfairness in the system, or else use that system to further human, loving aims.

What do you enjoy most about your work and why?
I get to go to work every day and try to directly make a difference in the community I live in. I am an urban planner who is focused on a specific issue, in a targeted geography, which allows me to specialize and develop expertise. I am dedicated to the mission of my organization and truly believe in the power of consensus-building and understanding to transform communities and improve neighborhoods.

What connections did you make while a student at Niagara that helped you obtain this job?
I had a bit of a unique experience as a student in that I was close with Father Joseph Levesque, who was president of the university during my time. After meeting him my freshman year at a dinner, we frequently would talk about my progress in school and about the future. Fr. Levesque shared with me his desire to change Niagara Falls, for the university to be a "good neighbor," and to make an impact on the lives of the people who live in poverty, like St. Vincent de Paul was committed to doing. Years after graduating, in 2012, I visited him in his office on the occasion of his retirement and spoke with him as we had so many times. I thanked him for helping so many of us-his students, faculty, employees-and I ended my rant with "you've done so much for so many people." He just looked at me, and in his way, smiled and said, "Matthew, can one ever really do enough?" That has always stuck with me and motivated me. Being in the nonprofit world often means we can never achieve all of our goals, but we never stop trying, we can never do enough, but, as was the case with Fr. Levesque, that will not stop us from trying. It's this tenacity and perseverance, I think, that got me to where I am doing the work of restoring communities.

Why did you decide to work in the Niagara area?
This area is, first and foremost, where I want to build my home and family, and my love for the Niagara region was also fostered during my time on Monteagle Ridge. I have lived and worked in other places, including Philadelphia, Del Ray Beach, Fla., and Portland, Maine, and I have always wanted to be in Western New York to build a life here. Nothing compares to this region in terms of neighborliness, and our collective regional sense of identity is (for better, or worse) very strong.

How does your work help in the revitalization of the City of Niagara Falls/the Niagara region?
My work centers around addressing both the root causes of distress in the city of Niagara Falls and Niagara County, as well as treating the symptoms of that distress.

A favorite NU professor, Dr. John Stranges, wrote an amazing book about Niagara University called "The Rainbow Never Fades," and I often think of that when I think of Niagara Falls in context. The work of revitalization, and improving our community may never end, but it is my fervent belief that as long as there is water flowing over it, there is hope for the City of Niagara Falls. The rainbow will never fade.