Lake effect snow machine churning, re-opening the federal government, 50-year mortgage rates and more

Hey there, I'm Kendra Adachi and my show The Lazy Genius Podcast helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't and you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see. Episodes of the Lazy Genius podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The WBEN All Local. A daily look at what's happening in Buffalo, Western New York, and the world. I'm Brian Maserowski. Susan is off this morning. Here the stories we're following for Tuesday, November 11th. Veterans Day. Will there ever be a new VA hospital in Buffalo? That's a big question mark. I'm Jim Fink and I'll explain. The latest on the government shutdown. And more on the idea of a 50-year mortgage. Turkeys, you donate for Sabres tickets will go to a good cause. I'm Tom Puckett. I'll talk with one of the organizations benefiting. coming up. And Amherst paving the way for Boulevard Mall demolition, how to monitor and best prevent potential blood clots. Remain active, remain healthy, and if there's any question, please don't hesitate to reach out your health care provider. This is Brayton Wilson with more after this. Your exclusive WBEN 7 weather forecast. Snow to start today. We'll see these snow showers taper off a bit this afternoon with highs in the mid-30s. It will be breezy and chilly for today. Tonight, that lake band will re-energize and head toward the metro area with overnight lows near 30. On Wednesday, we'll start with snow and with some rain with highs near 40. With your exclusive WBEN 7 weather forecast, I'm Chief Meteorologist Erman Kowski. Snow this morning. How long will it last? Now, the snow's going to be sticking around for the most part through the morning. It'll be gradually diminishing as we get late morning and especially into this afternoon. Thankfully, we'll be getting above the freezing mark today into the upper 30s. So that should help mitigate any much of the snow-covered roads through the day today, especially as that snow tapers off. Though it'll be an interesting story as we go later into this evening and into tonight. We're going to see the winds come around to the southwest. And the Lake effect band is going to redevelop and... quickly swing northward through the city and up into Niagara County, where it's going to hang across the frontier into tomorrow morning. It's meteorologist Philip Pandalfo with the National Weather Service with a little bit more on tomorrow morning. What to expect? So we're expecting it to be cold enough for snow at least through tonight. It starts to get tricky as we go through the morning hours tomorrow. We're going to continue to warm up such that we are expecting a changeover to rain. It will for sure change over by mid to late morning, though it could change over.

a little bit faster than that as well. Not expecting too much in terms of overly impactful accumulations, though it will be right around the morning commute time. All right, Philip Andolfo, again, they're talking about what to expect, not just throughout the day, but tomorrow morning could be a messy morning commute out there for a lot of people's return to work. Well, on Veterans Day, WBEN is looking at if attention will return to the idea of upgrading Buffalo's VA hospital. Here's WBEN's Jim Fink. Tim Robert F. Kennedy Jr. puts it rather succinctly when it comes to replacing the aging and obsolete VA hospital with a new facility. In 2025, it's a much different place today than it was in 1945 or 1950 when that Veterans Hospital opened. Time for a new VA hospital, while the infrastructure of that hospital crumbles and needs... desperate investment. Just three years ago, Buffalo was ever so close to having a 76-year-old, 154-bed VA hospital replaced with a new complex. But federal funding, some $1 billion in total, was withdrawn in February 2024, and the project has now slipped into development oblivion. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the decision was wrong and unfair to area veterans. The facade is crumbling where they don't have an HVAC system, where there's still carpet that's been laid decades ago and in need of desperate repair. That's no way to provide for our veterans. For now, it is just a waiting game. This is Jim Fink for WBEN.com News. Jim, thank you. Yesterday, I asked VA Secretary Doug Susan Collins. about their ability to upgrade facilities like Buffalo. Well, I think right now our capacity is continuing to grow with our community care emphasis as well, which is working with our community doctors and community hospitals, is we have to, because we have over 9 million enrolled in our VHA health care site. But the other part of your question is, yes, my average age of hospitals is over 60 years. And the problem is, is how do we reveal that? I can't go out into the community for the most part for funds. It's got to come from Congress. Well, Congress has had a hard enough time just funding the government in the last little bit. So we're working, though, making improvements to our construction programs, making sure that we're focusing our construction dollars to get new places built to do major overhauls in some of our hospitals that need to happen. and trying to get those as quickly as possible. But it's a focus issue that I'm going to continue to work with Congress on to make sure funds are appropriated. All right. That's the VA secretary speaking with us from yesterday. Eight Senate Democrats breaking with the rest of the party to help pass a bill that would end the government shutdown. Madeline Riviera reporting from Washington. The Senate voting 60 to 40 to pass a bill that will fund the government through January 30th. It also includes year-long funding bills for Congress, the Agriculture Department, and the military.

upcoming Sabres home game, and Feedmore, Western New York is one of the beneficiaries. Frozen turkeys are a hard item to come by, and it is something that is in very high demand by so many of our community members who are looking to have holiday gatherings. So this is a really great way to support the community, not just during Thanksgiving, but all holidays, all holiday season long. Catherine Schick says the need is rising. The holiday season is a time of increased need here in Western New York. And we work hard to make sure that all of the families in our community who are in need of food assistance are able to have nice holiday meals, but it does take support from the community. And efforts like turkeys for tickets really makes it possible to get those donations of frozen turkeys into the hands and homes of our families in need. If you need help from Feed More. Here from Schick online, Tom Puckett, WBEN.com News. All right, Tom, thank you. Well, the Turkeys for Tickets Drive goes tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. at three locations. We'll be out at the tops on Young Street in Tonawanda, the tops on Orchard Park Road in West Seneca, and, of course, the Key Bank Center surface lot on Perry and Baltimore downtown. For every frozen 20-pound turkey dropped off. The Sabres will provide a voucher good for two tickets to an upcoming Sabres game. Always a great event. Always a huge turnout. Get your turkeys now so you're ready for tomorrow morning. Hopefully for everybody out there, it won't be too messy. In Amherst last night, the town board officially recognizing Benderson development as developer of the Boulevard Mall. Benderson purchasing the mall from developer Douglas Jamal. Once that sale is finalized, eminent domain proceedings will take place over the course of the next few months. The property will then be transferred to Benderson, who will start demolition sometime in the spring. More rough news for the Sabres, forward Yuri Kulik, will miss significant time because of a blood clot. WBEN's Brayton Wilson is taking a look at blood clot care and prevention. While some blood clots in the body sound more concerning than others, Dr. James Herrith, critical care physician at Kalida Health, says a blood clot almost anywhere is a great concern because of where it may go afterwards. If there's a blood clot in our arm or leg, for us that have normal anatomy, that blood clot, if it gets dislodged, can go to the lung. We call that a pulmonary embolism, and that can cause real trouble for the individual, possibly even death. Now, if the anatomy in the heart is not normal, we still have infant anatomy that doesn't change a special hole in our heart that closes off, a frame in ovalee. If that is open, that could be a straight shot from the arms and legs through the heart, bypassing the lungs and going to the brain. And then that would be a stroke. And that would be a major concern as well. While blood clots and athletes like Sabres forward Yuri Kulik may be more rare, Dr. Harith says they can happen to anyone at any time. He says there are a number of ways Western New Yorkers can adequately monitor the themselves or recognize if they may be experiencing a blood clot. Number one, if there's a family history, then you want to talk to your primary care physician and ask if you may need to be screened. Two, if you know that there's swelling in one leg versus the other or one arm versus the other, then also you may need to reach out to your primary care physician. You may require an ultrasound at that point to see whether you have a clot or not. And if so, we're going to have to find out why that occurred and then be able to get treatment. And then let's say if somebody's having.

progressive shortens the breath and they're not noticing any swelling in their arms or legs that may also be symptoms for pulmonary embolism hear more from dr harrith online brayton wilson wb en dot com news philip pandelpho meteorologist joining us live now with uh look hurrahit philip the snow is with us right now how long does it last today Hi, good morning, Brian. Yes, out the window. Snow continues across much of western New York this morning. We're seeing lots of reduced visibilities and some slick roads out there, especially the secondary roads and the bridges and overpasses. Now, the snow's going to be sticking around for the most part through the morning. It'll be gradually diminishing as we get late morning and especially into this afternoon. uh... thankfully today will be quite as cold as it was yesterday we actually saw record cold high temperatures across much of the region uh... thankfully we'll be getting above the freezing mark today uh... into the upper thirties onto near forty even uh... in the city uh... so that should help mitigate uh... any much of the snow covered roads uh... through the day today especially as that snow tapers off though uh... it'll be an interesting story as we go later into this evening and into tonight We're going to see the winds come around to the southwest. The lake effect band is going to redevelop and quickly swing northward through the city and up into Niagara County, where it's going to hang across the frontier into tomorrow morning. So that lake effect band starts later on tonight. We'll be talking about it through tomorrow morning, and by then it'll be cold enough for snow. So we're expecting it to be cold enough for snow at least through tonight. It starts to get tricky as we go through the morning hours tomorrow. We're going to continue to warm up such that we are expecting a changeover to rain. It will for sure change over by mid to late morning, though it could change over a little bit faster than that as well. Not expecting too much in terms of overly impactful accumulations, though. It will be right around the morning commute time. Winter Weather Advisory has been issued for Northern Erie County and extended for Niagara and Orleans County to cover that potential for a few slushy inches there in the morning. Where did we see the most snow so far? So far, the reports have been pretty sparse, although we did receive one report, the highest one, was actually in Niagara County, you received a report of four and a half inches. That was as of yesterday morning, though. Many of our spotters are currently still waking up and going to be sending in their daily measurements. Generally between 6 and 8 in the morning is when we get the bulk of our reports. So keep an eye out for that when we send out our public information statements with more snowfall reports. All right. So we'll be watching for that. Hey, Philip, thank you so much. Philip Pandalfo, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, joining us live as we take a look at the forecast for the upcoming day. Again, we're talking about snow throughout western New York, sticking around through the morning.

Upper 30s later on today, but that Lake Effect Band this evening, watch out. It'll impact even up in Niagara County and changeover to rain by early tomorrow morning. Joining me live now, Washington insider Dave Leventhal, as Dave, we approach an end to the government shutdown, or so it seems, what still needs to happen here? We approach it, but we are not there yet. And here's kind of the things to keep an eye on for the next several days. In the past hours, the Senate has officially approved its version of this shutdown ending bill, and it's going to send it to the U.S. House. But remember, the U.S. House has basically been MIA for the past several months, only having just a limited number of session days. Everyone has to physically get back. Air traffic control, remember that? Well, you know, you've got airports there cutting flights and members of the House are going to have to fly back to Washington, D.C. They're hoping to all be back in session, not today, but tomorrow and have a vote then. But, Brian, it's not a guarantee that the House is going to pass it. Even though Republicans have the majority there, it is a slim majority. There could be some Republican defections. That is a possibility. We even saw that in the Senate with Rand Paul Republican being one Republican who did vote with. the majority of Democrats to vote against the bill ending the shutdown. So sorry to go through all the logistics and particulars here, but that's really what we're facing. And that's why it still may be a couple of days at the minimum before we reach a deal here. And you have these Democratic senators who voted for ending the shutdown, voted with Republicans on this bill. But there's a lot of pushback on them and on the idea that the shutdown should end within the Democratic Party. Massive. Democrats are flipping out right now at the senators who did basically go off on their own and decide to try to. pushed through an end to this shutdown, the Democrats who did go forward and vote with Republicans for the bill that is pushing the shutdown and forward, they were basically arguing that Republicans were never going to relent, and that Republicans were never going to agree to the core, core principle that Democrats were upset about, which led to the shutdown in the first place, which was Affordable Care Act subsidies, Obamacare subsidies. So they said, look, we absolutely have to end this because so many people are hurting, whether it is the air traffic control system, the food benefits that millions and millions of people would lose and are losing right now. The pain was just getting too great for them and they needed, in their opinion, to reach some sort of conclusion, some sort of compromise to end the shutdown, even if they didn't get a full on promise from both the House and the Senate Republicans to have a vote on those Affordable Care Act subsidies. Bottom line for people who are on the Affordable Care Act who use the exchanges and rely on those benefits, well, your health insurance may be going way, way up for an extended period of time. But again, this is all contingent on this bill still going forward and passing.

President Donald Trump has indicated that he would sign the bill as it exists today. So there is that in the mix as well. I think that might be true of everybody's health insurance. That might be a different topic for a different day, though, Dave. When you look at what has happened, the impact of the shutdown and how it's really taken a hold on air traffic. Has that been a key thing? Because this happens, this deal comes together on the same day that, you know, you have basically the worst air traffic nightmare problems from the shutdown in a while on Sunday. How much did that play a factor, this idea that people aren't confidently being able to book flights in ending this thing or at least starting to? It's a major factor, Brian. And then when you have thousands of flights being canceled over the past couple of days and delays that are just spreading all across the country like wildfire, that affects everyone who travels, period. So, you know, very few people, if they travel regularly by air, would be spared from this. So that was a situation that clearly was not sustainable. You had more and more air traffic workers who were basically calling in. They were not getting paid. They're taking other jobs. They're driving door dash. They're driving Ubers and lifts. I mean, is this a good situation? Do you want the people who are bringing your plane in on the runway, having been up all night, working a second job because they just need to make ends meet? Of course not. So this was pretty bad. But there's another factor in all of this, too, that helped the shutdown bill get to the point where it is right now, which is the filibuster, because Republicans were indicating that in order to break the shutdown, in order to end the shutdown, that there was a willingness on the part of a number of Republicans, including Donald Trump, who was advocating for it, to kill the filibuster, which again requires a 60-vote majority for legislation of most any sort to advance in the Senate. That would have been a catastrophic thing for Democrats, at least in the moment, although it could come bite Republicans back. A couple years from now, if Democrats were in power, and that would have been a massive change in the Senate and something that Democrats were not thrilled about, at least the ones who voted for this shutdown bill. So that's another bit of intrigue. Absolutely, that factored into this. You know, some Democrats put in the heat on Chuck Schumer. Where do you see that going? Yeah, well, you expect the calls to be loud and continued. They basically see this as an acquiescence to Republicans, many Democrats. They feel that Chuck Schumer was unable to keep this coalition that had been together for 40 odd days here together. And that is something that is really just creating, I wouldn't call it a civil war yet within the Democratic Party, but the implications are real and they are pretty obvious. I think what you can expect going forward, whether it's Chuck Schumer and calls for him. him to step down as the leader in the U.S. Senate, that there are going to be some primaries that sitting Democrats of any sort are going to have from folks who are on the left and that the Zohran Mamdani situation in New York City may be replicated in congressional races and other types of races all across the country because Democrats on the left are just simply apoplectic about what has happened here. And they're not the only ones, too. A lot of mainstream Democrats feel that this has been a betrayal of those.

eight senators to the Democratic Party and to America in general. Joining us live this morning, Michael Angelucci, level financial advisors. We're talking about a couple of different things, most importantly, this idea of a 50-year mortgage. It's what we heard over the weekend, the Trump administration, throwing around the idea that it's something that could be offered to prospective home buyers, the idea being. that it would make home buying more affordable. Michael, thanks for being with us this morning. I don't know. And I hear of a 50-year mortgage. I hear of something that I don't know if I'm going to see the end of. Right, exactly. I think this is an effort to try to make homeownership more affordable for people. As we know, home prices have been up a lot and staying up, and it's becoming more and more difficult for people to get into a home. I read that the average homeowner now is, first-time homeowner is 40 years old versus 28 years old in 1990. It's becoming more costly. People are holding off because it's got to save more. But this idea of the 50-year mortgage, you know, from a financial perspective, it's going to be, if you hold it for 50 years to your point, like we'll even live that long after you buy a house at age 40 and pay it off after 50 years is going to be potentially three times as much interest if you do pay it according to the, you know, principal and interest and pay it over 40 years. So it would be a huge financial grain or inefficient financial use of your money. But some people say if it's the only way you can get into a house, they've got to do this now. And I think that's where some of this comes in is, okay, people will say, I need to just get in the house now. Now, the other problem with this is that if it makes housing more affordable, it could continue to drive prices of housing up or keep them. High. So it may ultimately, you know, counter the benefit it's tried to create. Yeah, when they say it's a way to make it more affordable, I mean, all I can think of is how much more you'd be paying with the extra 20 years of interest payments or, you know, however that's thrown around on a 50-year mortgage. Where would it be more affordable and where are you spending more money? Well, if people want to play around with it, I go to this site called Calculator.net, and you can look at mortgages and play around with different numbers. To your point, if interest rates, right now a 30-year interest rate is 6 and a quarter, if you ran a $300,000 mortgage, you might pay $1,847 in principle and interest. If you put in 50 years and kept the interest rate the same, you'll be down to $1,634. The question's going to become is...

Will that 50-year rate be the same as a 30-year rate? Generally, the longer term of a loan, you're going to pay a higher interest. So even if that interest rate is up another half a percent, you're going to be paying, you won't really be saving that much because I calculate that to be $1,748 versus $1,847 for, you know, a 30-year mortgage. It's going to depend on what the market does if they even come out with these things, if the numbers make sense. But over time, the longer you go in the term of your loan, you're going to pay a lot more interest. I mean, the total interest paid on a 50-year mortgage with a slightly higher interest rate is an extra $748,000 in interest. The total payments are over a million dollars. You'd be paying three times the value of your house over 50 years or the value of the original mortgage, I should say, on the 300,000. Joining us live this morning, Peter Hunt, CEO of Hunt Real Estate. We're talking about that idea of a 50-year mortgage. The president tweeting this over the weekend and since confirmed by the administration that it's something they're looking into. All right, Peter, 50-year mortgage. I mean, I look at my 30-year mortgage and think, man, this is just way too long of a time to be making these payments to the bank. 50, I can't even imagine. I couldn't agree more, Brian. You know, this is an idea that's nothing, it's really nothing new. If you look at the nation of Japan, for example, they've had 50-year mortgages for a while, look how well they've done. They've had 30 years. I guess they're coming around a little bit now, but they've had 30 years of a stagnant economy. And part of the problem, I think a little bit of problem anyway, I can't blame it all. And this was the fact that going way back 30 years ago, they had such inflation of real estate. that they had to look at new vehicles so people could afford a home, and that's essentially what's happening right now. I don't think it's a good answer to affordability, although we had a discussion among some of our people yesterday, and the question of what I was asked, what else would you do? Well, I'm not exactly sure, but a 50-year mortgage is not a good idea, particularly considering the fact that the first-time homebuyer, the average age of the first-time homebuyer is now at a record high of 40 years old, and it used to be 26. So now people are waiting longer to buy a home. And if you buy a home at age 40, your first home and you've got a 50-year mortgage. I don't think a lot of people are going to be in that home when they're 90 years old. In the meantime, they've really created very little equity because you take a 50-year mortgage. First of all, it's going to have to be at a higher interest rate because investors won't buy those loans if they're at a low interest rate. So you're going to pay a higher interest rate, so you're going to pay virtually no principal for a long period of time. And so you decide to sell a house in 10 years. You've built no equity almost at all.

Period. And I just can't see that as a good idea. How does this impact somebody? And you mentioned the average age has increased significantly. I'll get maybe more into that in just a minute. But how would this impact somebody, say you buy that first home? You're on a 50-year mortgage. And now you're looking to move maybe into something bigger, maybe into something smaller, whatever the case may be. You're looking to move. How does that impact your ability to reenter the housing market someday? Well, first of all, you've got less equity. One of the things that we promote is to pay off mortgage, just pay them down sooner so that you're building equity so that seven, ten years down the road when you want to buy another house, you've got something to work with. We look at this kind of in a traditional fashion. Not only do you need a down payment, but you need some reserve because most of the homes that we sell are not brand new. And so because they're not brand new, things break. They fall apart. They need to be replaced, furnaces, roof. appliances, everything, carpeting, paint. And if you don't have any capital, how are you going to really improve that home such that not only are you hopefully paying off a mortgage, but you're also building equity and the home will appreciate because it's in better condition? I just can't see how you're going to be better off 10 years down the road. building no equity. And the assumption here, Brian, is that properties will continue to appreciate and value indefinitely. And we've got a good track record of that, but we also have some periods of time when that didn't happen. For example, the Great Recession, there are parts of this country where real estate values, residential real estate values were cut in half. 50% decline. What happened to those markets? It created chaos in the financial markets. Mortgage back securities became... Toxic, and as a result, companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch even, went down. And this, we can't, hopefully we'll never see that again. And I can't see how a 50-year mortgage would do anything but contribute to that. That's the WBEN, all local. All new episodes are made available each weekday morning, produced by the award-winning WBEN Newsroom. Understanding power requires more than headlines. I'm Peter Hamby, host of the Powers That Be, a podcast from POC examining politics, economics, and media to provide context, analysis, and clarity without sensationalism. We ask how power operates, who benefits, and what's at stake. If you want to move beyond breaking news to deeper understanding, join us on the Powers That Be. New episodes every weekday, follow the Powers That Be wherever you get your podcasts.