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

[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.

Eh. Most of the poor urban Baltimore neighorhoods used to be solid white neighborhoods and even not that long ago. 1950 Baltimore was 80% white. I find all this blame on redlining and other racist real estate policies of the 1920s-1950s just an excuse for what the real problem is: a dysfunctional urban poor population that has no motivation or desire to change their lot. All the ones who could get out left a long time ago. But no one wants to face the simple truth: poor Baltimore is responsible for 99% of their own problems. They'd rather blame everything and everyone else.

I understand where your sentiment is coming from, but please read the PP's long post about trauma informed care. Once you begin to understand why there appears to be no motivation for change, you can start to become a part of the change. A traumatized person is frozen. A repeatedly traumatized person is shut down. The people who succeed without intervention are those who are wired to process and literally shake off the trauma. Most people cannot do that without intervention.

Trauma truly is the root of most of our social problems. We need to focus both on stopping the sources of trauma (poverty, hunger, drugs, guns, violent crime, abuse) and healing the trauma in individuals we can reach, which includes those in schools, health care facilities, prisons, the military, and even in the workforce. Truama of any kind does change the brain, but it can be healed.

Whenever I hear people try to argue this, I immediately think of all the people who grew up poor and who did leave. They got out. In Baltimore, when people blame institutionalized racism, they also seem to forget that the majority of African Americans in the Baltimore region are not poor. They're middle class living in the suburbs or the middle class part of the city. So the argument doesn't work for me. I also think of all the white people who left dying mill towns while others stayed behind and didn't change their lives and slid into opoids and petty crime. As far as I can tell, it's more excuses piling on top of more excuses.

It's not as if the poor in Baltimore (mostly black but some whites too) aren't exposed to the possibilities of life and the what ifs. It's right there, in front of them. They just chose not to take the steps to improve their lives. And it's not that difficult either. Finish school, don't get pregnant, you're halfway there already. But you'd rather blame "trauma" than personal self-destructive habits and decisions. It's more and more excuses.

I don't think you even read what I wrote. I'm the PP, and I said not one word about racism. Also, you will note that I indicated some people are able to respond to trauma without help and "get out," but that they are the exception, not the rule.

[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.

Eh. Most of the poor urban Baltimore neighorhoods used to be solid white neighborhoods and even not that long ago. 1950 Baltimore was 80% white. I find all this blame on redlining and other racist real estate policies of the 1920s-1950s just an excuse for what the real problem is: a dysfunctional urban poor population that has no motivation or desire to change their lot. All the ones who could get out left a long time ago. But no one wants to face the simple truth: poor Baltimore is responsible for 99% of their own problems. They'd rather blame everything and everyone else.

I understand where your sentiment is coming from, but please read the PP's long post about trauma informed care. Once you begin to understand why there appears to be no motivation for change, you can start to become a part of the change. A traumatized person is frozen. A repeatedly traumatized person is shut down. The people who succeed without intervention are those who are wired to process and literally shake off the trauma. Most people cannot do that without intervention.

Trauma truly is the root of most of our social problems. We need to focus both on stopping the sources of trauma (poverty, hunger, drugs, guns, violent crime, abuse) and healing the trauma in individuals we can reach, which includes those in schools, health care facilities, prisons, the military, and even in the workforce. Truama of any kind does change the brain, but it can be healed.

Whenever I hear people try to argue this, I immediately think of all the people who grew up poor and who did leave. They got out. In Baltimore, when people blame institutionalized racism, they also seem to forget that the majority of African Americans in the Baltimore region are not poor. They're middle class living in the suburbs or the middle class part of the city. So the argument doesn't work for me. I also think of all the white people who left dying mill towns while others stayed behind and didn't change their lives and slid into opoids and petty crime. As far as I can tell, it's more excuses piling on top of more excuses.

It's not as if the poor in Baltimore (mostly black but some whites too) aren't exposed to the possibilities of life and the what ifs. It's right there, in front of them. They just chose not to take the steps to improve their lives. And it's not that difficult either. Finish school, don't get pregnant, you're halfway there already. But you'd rather blame "trauma" than personal self-destructive habits and decisions. It's more and more excuses.

I don't think you even read what I wrote. I'm the PP, and I said not one word about racism. Also, you will note that I indicated some people are able to respond to trauma without help and "get out," but that they are the exception, not the rule.

Let me repeat what I earlier said:

And what's your solution?

We've poured billions and billions and untold billions over the decades into poverty programs.

At this point in time there's really not much else we can do beyond curbing civil liberties. Crime in Baltimore would easily disappear, to everyone's benefit, if we turned it into a de facto military state with army garrisons and checkpoints everywhere and armed patrols. But that ain't happening, ain't it?

I'm not convinced there's much one can do. So many of the entrenched poor refuse the help that is on hand. They refuse to leave their neighborhoods or towns or cities for opportunities elsewhere. Even Section 8 won't help them. They have access to free education but crap all over it. They won't change their behavior and mannerism, because we as a society no longer tell them to in fear of being branded racist or whatever.

In short, there's no real meaningful change for the entrenched poor until the liberal do-gooders look squarely at themselves first.

End of the day, the poor are poor for a reason. And there's only so much one can help.

[Anonymous]

Baltimore has a lot of problems before but its current decline is directly connected to the police deciding to stop policing because they were mad about the response to Freddie Gray's death, and corrupt top officials throughout the government totally unequipped to deal with it.

Things will get better but not fast.

[Anonymous]

I also think cities in general benefited from big parts of the sex work industry moving online and now because it's back on the streets there's some additional risk to sex workers (like there wasn't enough before), more pimps, more problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Baltimore is being run like a Third World city, with crime and kleptocracy run amok. Gov. Hogan should dissolve the local Baltimore government and appoint a special master to run the city.

This. A state special master or powerful control board is what Baltimore needs for a few year to bring more effective law and order, improvement in city services and fiscal discipline.

[Anonymous]

Baltimore is what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum......utter disaster.

[Anonymous]

Baltimore is a dump. Was a dump. Will always be dump. There is no time and place in the Infinite universes of space and time where Baltimore is not a dump. There is nothing that can be done. I’ve tried. Gave up, moved to DC sons ago (80s) and saw the economic boom here.

That will never happen in Baltimore. Baltimore wants to be a dump. Let it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Baltimore is what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum......utter disaster.

Literally the inmates , or at least the ex-inmates, seem to be in charge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Baltimore is being run like a Third World city, with crime and kleptocracy run amok. Gov. Hogan should dissolve the local Baltimore government and appoint a special master to run the city.

This. A state special master or powerful control board is what Baltimore needs for a few year to bring more effective law and order, improvement in city services and fiscal discipline.

+1. Let Larry take charge, take names and kick ass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Baltimore is a dump. Was a dump. Will always be dump. There is no time and place in the Infinite universes of space and time where Baltimore is not a dump. There is nothing that can be done. I’ve tried. Gave up, moved to DC sons ago (80s) and saw the economic boom here.

That will never happen in Baltimore. Baltimore wants to be a dump. Let it.

I was with you until you mentioned DC. It's a dump too. Crime is still a huge issue there and gentrification is not fixing it

[Anonymous]

Baltimore has become like a failed Third World government. It's hard to recover from that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Baltimore is being run like a Third World city, with crime and kleptocracy run amok. Gov. Hogan should dissolve the local Baltimore government and appoint a special master to run the city.

This. A state special master or powerful control board is what Baltimore needs for a few year to bring more effective law and order, improvement in city services and fiscal discipline.

This. It's why I will never vote for another politician from Baltimore to be in charge of anything else in Maryland, no matter what party. Baltimore needs state oversight to get anything done, not the local corrupt polticians.

[Anonymous]

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'm from Baltimore. Redlining and housing discrimination shot Baltimore with a shotgun. Holding on to segregationist policies long after integration stabbed it. White flight AND middle class black fight pulled its heart out. The loss of Black and Decker and Bethlehem Steel cut it off at the knees. Its terrible relationship to the small business community and poor administrative management made it deathly ill. Add to that the huge loss of male role models to the Vietnam War, and the fact that it is still the top cutting and mixing spots for drugs coming up the I-95 corridor to NY, and now they have to recover from all that. Wonderfully quirky, soulful, beautifully ethnic, artsy -- some good things there. But all those gorgeous houses are full of lead, as are the people who used to live in them, and if you renovate one house, you have to renovate the whole neighborhood too or you lose all your dough. Tons of DC investors found that out the hard way.

I love my hometown and I hate it so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: They refuse to leave their neighborhoods or towns or cities for opportunities elsewhere.

People refuse to leave because they have a network of friends and relatives who are a more reliable safety net than anything provided by the state. People to leave a child with, people to crash with if they are evicted, etc. Compared to moving for a job that might not last. People who stay are not necessarily irrational.

They could learn a thing or two from immigrants.

Pretty much. And you have to take similar risks of crashing and burning or losing your job with no money. I did it, but you have to be willing to be lonely and not have any backup for emergencies. It worked out for me, but most people won't take the jump without a safety net.

[Anonymous]

Start with the basic things that a functional city govt should be expected to deliver.