Baltimore’s Boom of Death & Displacement

All around the city we are witnessing a stunning boom of human death and housing displacement.

Homicides are over 300.
Drug/alcohol overdose deaths are over 600.
Tax lien foreclosures could equal 1,000.
Mortgage foreclosures could equal 4,000.
Rental evictions could equal 7,500.

The data in the chart below spell out how dire the situation is. Since 2011–2012, Baltimore has been in the throes of rising drug/alcohol overdose deaths (ODs) and a homicide spike. Meanwhile, the city has also seen a development boom along the waterfront and even in key places inland.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the development boom is taking place at the same time as the boom of death and displacement? At the same time that Baltimore’s elected officials are taking care of White L corporate developers and the vaunted Creative Class, the lower-income and more vulnerable in the Black Butterfly are dying at extraordinary rates.

What projects are a part of the city’s development boom? The development boom has included everything from hotels to apartments, from shopping districts to an “innovation village,” from a casino to a new “mini-city.”

City leaders are investing billions of infrastructure dollars — in TIFs, PILOTs, tax breaks, tax diversions — for the benefit of Sagamore and Harbor Point, for the benefit of Kevin Plank and Michael Beatty, while Baltimore led the nation in 2016 for rental evictions per capita and was 4th in the nation in 2015 for mortgage foreclosure filings. Additionally, Baltimore’s children are still being poisoned by lead — a form of slow violence — as the city has not done the one thing we must to protect our children — abolish lead poison completely from the city. Meanwhile trauma remains unresolved.

All of this discriminatory development takes place on top of Baltimore’s spatial geography of racial hypersegregation. Baltimore’s discriminatory White L development boom is feeding the boom of death and underdevelopment in the Black Butterfly. As the White L goes up, the Black Butterfly goes down. This reveals a vampire-esque relationship where greenlining the White L takes place at the expense and redlining of the Black Butterfly.

This racial segregation is not simply happening inside the city, but it is happening outside the city as well. Racial segregation is the foundation for discriminatory development and the ecosystem in which the boom of death and displacement takes place. Until Baltimore and its surrounding counties get serious about equitable desegregation, redlined Black communities will have great difficulty obtaining opportunity — ensuring Black lives won’t matter.