How and why is Baltimore so troubled? Is there any solution or is it terminally doomed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone busting on gentrification, name one functional and successful American city where the majority of the population is poor and black. I expect crickets. . .

When I was growing up, DC. You wouldn’t walk the city at nigh. Cap Hill was the worst neighborhood, now people have million dollar homes (seriously). Logan Circle was where you bought fake IDs and weed. Now it’s lattes, yoga, and babies. I just can’t even with that.

I lived in Logan Circle and it was exactly as described. DC was improved from that by its thriving gay community. They paved the way. First Dupon/Adam's Morgan, then 14th st and Logan. Everywhere they go turns cute and trendy. They deserve a statue/mention. Maybe Baltimore needs more gay professionals?

[Anonymous]

Interesting post. In the 80's Baltimore was going under serious gentrification. The Inner Harbor was a date destination, leisurely walk over to Little Italy where the Nanas still sat on their front porches, the Aquarium had new exhibits (sea horses!) and there was a huge, live music venue in a power plant (name escapes me now, was it just the Power Plant?).

After the rioters destroyed the city (what was the point of that riot anyway?|, it's continued to go downhill.

Baltimore was wayyy ahead of DC in gentrification in the 80's. I worked in a DC office overlooking Franklin Park at 14 and K in the late 80's. The park was known as needle park and johns, pimps, and prostitutes mingled with the druggies 24/7. Wasn't safe to cut through the park in daylight, due to crime, needles, homeless camps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting post. In the 80's Baltimore was going under serious gentrification. The Inner Harbor was a date destination, leisurely walk over to Little Italy where the Nanas still sat on their front porches, the Aquarium had new exhibits (sea horses!) and there was a huge, live music venue in a power plant (name escapes me now, was it just the Power Plant?).

After the rioters destroyed the city (what was the point of that riot anyway?|, it's continued to go downhill.

Baltimore was wayyy ahead of DC in gentrification in the 80's. I worked in a DC office overlooking Franklin Park at 14 and K in the late 80's. The park was known as needle park and johns, pimps, and prostitutes mingled with the druggies 24/7. Wasn't safe to cut through the park in daylight, due to crime, needles, homeless camps.

Nah. There was some stuff in a few limited areas. Festival marketplaces are mostly for tourists, not actual residents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White flight killed Baltimore. I’ve been to a lot of mid Atlantic cities and it’s the most extraordinarily segregated. Whites took off to Baltimore and Howard Counties and let the city die.

(Whites leave) White flight! Racism! Bad!
(Whites stay) Gentrification! Racism! Bad!

Yes, it actually was. If you want to learn more, you can start by reading this book: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/8/

This innovative study of racial upheaval and urban transformation in Baltimore, Maryland investigates the impact of "blockbusting"—a practice in which real estate agents would sell a house on an all-white block to an African American family with the aim of igniting a panic among the other residents. These homeowners would often sell at a loss to move away, and the real estate agents would promote the properties at a drastic markup to African American buyers.

In this groundbreaking book, W. Edward Orser examines Edmondson Village, a west Baltimore rowhouse community where an especially acute instance of blockbusting triggered white flight and racial change on a dramatic scale. Between 1955 and 1965, nearly twenty thousand white residents, who saw their secure world changing drastically, were replaced by blacks in search of the American dream. By buying low and selling high, playing on the fears of whites and the needs of African Americans, blockbusters set off a series of events that Orser calls "a collective trauma whose significance for recent American social and cultural history is still insufficiently appreciated and understood." Blockbusting in Baltimore describes a widely experienced but little analyzed phenomenon of recent social history. Orser makes an important contribution to community and urban studies, race relations, and records of the African American experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White flight killed Baltimore. I’ve been to a lot of mid Atlantic cities and it’s the most extraordinarily segregated. Whites took off to Baltimore and Howard Counties and let the city die.

(Whites leave) White flight! Racism! Bad!
(Whites stay) Gentrification! Racism! Bad!

+1.

Dems have gone crazy, and AAs suffer because of it.

This. White Democrats are the most race obsessed loons out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Baltimore will come back in a big way. Will buy there in the next five years. It reminds me of DC when I was growing up there in the nineties. Everyone here loves it. This is the start of a major upswing.

I agree. I'm not sure that's a good answer for the poor people who live there now though as they will get pushed out.

No one on here cares about that though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Or encourage birth control!! It’s not fair for any child to have to grow up in squalor with a drug addicted mother.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Less than five percent of the people in this thread actually lives in Baltimore city right now, and most apparently have not stepped foot in the city ever. Baltimore city suffers from a loss of business community, a corrupt city hall, and a corrupt police force. Governor Hogan has ignored the city for the past five years., a huge mistake because when big companies leave Baltimore, the usually leave the state entirely. Having lived in both cities, DC was just a big a mess before the financial control board took over from Barry.

I suspect he ignores it because there’s no silver bullet and getting tangled up in SUCH a dysfunctional city like that just isn’t worth the risk to his career. Cost benefit analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White flight killed Baltimore. I’ve been to a lot of mid Atlantic cities and it’s the most extraordinarily segregated. Whites took off to Baltimore and Howard Counties and let the city die.

(Whites leave) White flight! Racism! Bad!
(Whites stay) Gentrification! Racism! Bad!

+1.

Dems have gone crazy, and AAs suffer because of it.

This. White Democrats are the most race obsessed loons out there.

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

It’s one of a few cities in this country where a visitor could legitimately wonder whether there is a functioning civil infrastructure and the like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:White flight killed Baltimore. I’ve been to a lot of mid Atlantic cities and it’s the most extraordinarily segregated. Whites took off to Baltimore and Howard Counties and let the city die.

I used to know all these numbers off the top of my head, but now you might want to fact check these.

Between 1945-1990, Baltimore lost 400,000 white people (some who had come to work in the war industries just went home, many left for the suburbs). Business also left, some natural contraction from the wartime economy, and additional businesses following growth in the suburbs and other regions of the country from small mom and pops to large companies leaving-big employers are now universities, hospitals, and the city, so think about what that does to the tax base. After the Depression and the war years, Baltimore infrastructure was already worn.

During the period when whites were fleeing 200,000 African Americans, many former rural agricultural workers who had little formal education moved into Baltimore. They were people with much less capital than the white people leaving (Black people in the US are a particularly capital-poor group overall). During white flight, white real estate brokers bought low from white families and sold high to black families-because black families often couldn't qualify for mortgages through regular bank loans (redlining and lack of capital), they often entered into particularly bad mortgage products/agreements. So you have families stretching to buy homes, very little financial cushion, and then a changing and worsening labor market and a city with less money for services and improvements.

These structural changes were seen in many cities, but as a small city with the massive upheaval of people and business Baltimore got hit particularly hard, and as a majority Black city with that lack of individual and community capital it's really hard to come back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Study the history. Racist housing policies created dead zones in the inner city. Invest in some stores and businesses and medical facilities and grocery stores in areas that have nothing but liquor stores. A resident can’t get a job if s/he can’t get to it.

Investment happens in whites areas, just perpetuating the same problems.

And stores can’t stay in business if the merchandise keeps disappearing, they are regularly robbed at gunpoint, and the local job pool is filled with people with poorly developed work habits.

That’s not true. It’s just your racist stereotypes. You aren’t looking for solutions.

Denying reality isn't the way to change anything, PP. Arguing that it's this or that and putting efforts and money in the wrong direction doesn't help. Nothing can happen while people are in denial.

People know the way to improve these communities. I think someone even alluded to it on this thread. You need to do targeted education/campaigns and really try to RAISE those kids from the ground up, assuming almost nothing. In my mind, this would actually involve a completely different school program with completely different subjects and emphasis and rules. You need to step into the life of a 5 year old, or a 15 year old, and basically teach them what decent parents should have taught them all along from birth. But such a thing is un-PC to suggest, and so these types of REAL SOLUTIONS go ignored and the cycles continue.

In Australia, there are issues with the native indigenous communities. Alcoholism mostly, and related crimes and domestic issues. The government had to STEP OUT of those communities altogether, absolutely forget about the idea of educating them according to national standards and just let them try to sort themselves out. Luckily they tend to have very strong tribal leadership and they improve a lot this way. Actually some of them end up with a zero tolerance attitude towards all crime and all alcohol - they become "dry communities". It would have been totally outrageous and very un-PC for the government to suggest that by themselves, but since it came from within, there was no national protest and actually things are way better now. Fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, was becoming an enormous problem and it has improved a lot for obvious reasons.

Sometimes you really do need to treat people differently in order to have the best outcomes for all. Fair isn't always equal.

Or encourage birth control!! It’s not fair for any child to have to grow up in squalor with a drug addicted mother.

I know. Why is is so hard to either take a pill?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone busting on gentrification, name one functional and successful American city where the majority of the population is poor and black. I expect crickets. . .

When I was growing up, DC. You wouldn’t walk the city at nigh. Cap Hill was the worst neighborhood, now people have million dollar homes (seriously). Logan Circle was where you bought fake IDs and weed. Now it’s lattes, yoga, and babies. I just can’t even with that.

I lived in Logan Circle and it was exactly as described. DC was improved from that by its thriving gay community. They paved the way. First Dupon/Adam's Morgan, then 14th st and Logan. Everywhere they go turns cute and trendy. They deserve a statue/mention. Maybe Baltimore needs more gay professionals?

Mt Vernon has been the gay neighborhood in the past, I guess some live in Hampden now? In DC the gays kept moving east as Dupont got expensive. Think about a DC in which Dupont stayed affordable to most young gay professionals - would they have gentrified Logan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting post. In the 80's Baltimore was going under serious gentrification. The Inner Harbor was a date destination, leisurely walk over to Little Italy where the Nanas still sat on their front porches, the Aquarium had new exhibits (sea horses!) and there was a huge, live music venue in a power plant (name escapes me now, was it just the Power Plant?).

After the rioters destroyed the city (what was the point of that riot anyway?|, it's continued to go downhill.

Baltimore was wayyy ahead of DC in gentrification in the 80's. I worked in a DC office overlooking Franklin Park at 14 and K in the late 80's. The park was known as needle park and johns, pimps, and prostitutes mingled with the druggies 24/7. Wasn't safe to cut through the park in daylight, due to crime, needles, homeless camps.

I lived in Baltimore in the 80s too. There are plenty of places that are now gentrified there, that were not then. Hampden was not artsy or hip at ALL in those days. Yuppiedom faded out around Cross Street Market, now it takes in almost all of South Baltimore and Locust Point. It was a thin strip of Canton, now its all the way to Brewers Hill.

Gentrification has certainly continued these last 30 years in Baltimore. Just its only been in formerly white working class areas. For the most part the areas that near AA nabes that had already transitioned have stayed transitioned, but little added transition in AA areas, for good and ill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think Baltimore will come back in a big way. Will buy there in the next five years. It reminds me of DC when I was growing up there in the nineties. Everyone here loves it. This is the start of a major upswing.

I agree. I'm not sure that's a good answer for the poor people who live there now though as they will get pushed out.

No one on here cares about that though.

There is definitely room in Baltimore for new residents to come with minimal displacement (though displacement might be greater in certain neighborhoods.