By Jaisal Noor for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Brett Peveto for Maryland News Connection reporting for the Yes! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

Sonia Eaddy never lost faith that she would be able to save her home at 319 North Carrollton Ave. in the Poppleton neighborhood of West Baltimore.

Like they have done to many predominantly-Black neighborhoods, developers have targeted Poppleton for years. Over the past decade, the city used eminent domain to evict residents and raze their houses, resulting in the displacement of longtime residents.

But last year, Eaddy, who is a third-generation resident of Poppleton, was able to mobilize a citywide coalition that staged rallies, packed public hearings, and collected over 5,000 signatures to save homes like hers from destruction. Even after most of Eaddy's neighbors were forced out of their homes, after surrounding blocks were demolished, and after she exhausted legal appeals, she never stopped fighting.

In July 2022, her activism paid off when the city agreed to allow Eaddy to stay in her home. But she says it's hard to call that a victory until her neighbors who were displaced have an opportunity to return. "We are continually working to help bring back those who were displaced," she says.

As part of the deal the city reached with stakeholders, some residents may have the opportunity to return to their homes. Eleven historic alley houses-which are small homes typically occupied by African Americans or immigrant laborers-on the 1100 block of Sarah Ann Street, located next to Eaddy's, will be renovated for homeownership in preparation for displaced former residents.

The group tasked with the renovation project is Black Women Build, a homeownership and wealth-building initiative that trains Black women in carpentry home restoration by rehabbing some of the 15,000 vacant and deteriorated houses in the city.

Black Women Build is one part of a larger ecosystem of grassroots groups addressing the racial and economic disparities created and perpetuated by unjust housing policy in Baltimore. Other efforts, working in tandem to strive for justice in housing, include housing associations, the city's affordable housing trust fund, a blight-fighting social justice group, and an equitable development company that restores abandoned homes to increase affordable housing stock.

On a rainy mid-October afternoon in Baltimore, Maryland, four dozen residents, housing advocates, and lawmakers rallied in the heart of the city's business district. Their demand to officials was to stop subsidizing wealthy developers at the expense of the city's long-neglected Black, working-class communities.

Towering high-rise office buildings, swanky hotels, high-priced condos, and the Inner Harbor, a major tourist attraction, served as a backdrop for the press conference that laid bare the city's economic and racial disparities.

"The city is becoming unaffordable and unattainable to low- and moderate-income families," said Char McCready at the rally. McCready is executive director of Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA), which trains tenant organizers to advocate for progressive housing policies. Like Black Women Build, CPHA forms a critical part of the housing justice ecosystem.

Officials have long sought to incentivize the creation of affordable housing by offering tax breaks to the real estate sector. But developers are raking in millions of dollars in credits and subsidies, while loopholes allow them to largely avoid building housing that is affordable for the city's majority-Black working people.

"We feel these tax credits may be used to support segregation and encourage gentrification and displacement of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, people of color] communities," said McCready.

Developers in wealthy areas have received a disproportionate number of tax breaks compared with low-income ones, building 6,600 luxury apartments over the past 15 years, only 37 of which were affordably priced.

At the rally in Baltimore, McCready stood in front of 414 Light Street, a 44-story high-rise luxury apartment building dubbed the tallest residential building in the state. She called it "an example of one of the luxury apartment buildings we speak of," explaining it was "why we chose this location."

Questar, the company that developed 414 Light Street, received a $3 million tax credit from the city to build affordable housing, but officials say the company has yet to market a single unit of housing at an affordable price.

Speakers at the rally argued that if the city can provide subsidies to the wealthy, it can do more to empower communities struggling to overcome poverty amid rising rents for substandard housing, which remains in short supply. A 2016 report found that "more than half of Baltimore renters live in housing they cannot afford." City rents have increased 19% since the start of the pandemic.

At the time this article was written, apartments at 414 Light Street were priced starting at $2,100 for a one-bedroom-a price Baltimore City resident and housing activist Tisha Guthrie says is unaffordable for her neighbors, and she surmised the company's employees would also not be able to afford living there.

Guthrie also says that less than a mile away, in her neighborhood of Poppleton, the community faces crumbling infrastructure, a lack of basic services, and deep poverty. She's been a longtime supporter of residents like Eaddy's fight to save their homes from demolition. And she's advocated for the city to undertake community-guided investment in those communities instead.

As a commissioner of Baltimore's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Guthrie helps oversee an annual city fund of $20 million to promote affordable housing through such projects as community land trusts. As YES! previously reported, the commission was created and funded as a result of a decade of sustained activism and grassroots pressure.

Guthrie has also been working to support her neighbors in Poppleton-like Eaddy-in their long-standing fight against displacement.

Poppleton is situated between downtown Baltimore and the infamous "Highway to Nowhere," an urban renewal program that tore a wide swath through the area and displaced 1,500 predominantly Black residents, before being abandoned in the 1970s.

The city has a long history of implementing such policies. In 1910, Baltimore mandated racial segregation. Over the following decades, officials supported "urban renewal" and exploitative housing practices that destabilized neighborhoods, decreased Black homeownership rates, fueled a massive racial wealth gap, and concentrated working-class Black communities in slum-like housing.

The harm caused by such policies is incalculable, says Guthrie. "It's not gentrification, it's just a complete dismantling."

Last year, activists painted a mural viewable from the Highway to Nowhere that quotes Sonia Eaddy. "Losing my home is like death to me," it reads. "Eminent Domain law is violent."

As part of her longtime opposition to the development project, Eaddy helped create The Poppleton Plan, an alternative vision for her neighborhood developed in collaboration with other longtime community members and a city planner. It aimed to preserve the character of the neighborhood and prioritize the needs of the community, but policymakers ignored it.

Instead, the city used eminent domain to relocate longtime residents and bulldoze several city blocks. Today, the project remains unfinished, and the neighborhood is littered with the remnants of the demolished buildings.

The Federal Reserve estimates close to 4 in 10 Baltimore residents are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. This is taken as an indicator that they may have trouble affording food, clothing, transportation, and medical care. A 2021 study found the median net worth for Black households in Baltimore was $0, compared with $59,430 for whites.

Studies show the housing crisis across the U.S. has destabilized communities and furthered cycles of violence. "We found that at least 50% of the homicides that have occurred up until August occurred within 100 feet of a property with a vacant building notice," says Nneka N'namdi of Fight Blight Bmore. Yet the city's spending on its police department far outstrips its spending on housing and other social services.

Just across the Highway to Nowhere, Parity Homes, an equitable development company, is rehabbing three properties that will be available to purchase or rent for legacy residents at an affordable price in spring 2023.

The organization works to address the concerns of the community by listening to their needs. "We really just try to think about all the ways in which people could inadvertently be pushed out of the neighborhood as it gets revitalized, and we try to mitigate that as much as possible," says Parity Homes founder Bree Jones. Jones has been a vocal supporter of Poppleton's residents.

One key part of its work is supporting wealth creation through homeownership. "We integrate wealth through homeownership for Black folks in particular, who have been excluded from that for decades," Jones says.

Jones and N'namdi are part of a coalition working to end the practice of tax sales. If property owners fall behind on their taxes, the city auctions off the right to collect that debt for pennies on the dollar to debt collectors. In 2020, over 1,000 residents lost their homes for what can amount to a few hundred dollars in unpaid property taxes.

The group raised money to purchase the debt of some of the homeowners. Jones explains, "We've paid off the debts of close to 100 homeowners across the city who are at risk of losing their homes."

In the absence of a response from authorities on a scale that will address the problem, Jones remains optimistic that it will be possible, with time, to create and develop an adequate supply of housing that does not cause displacement.

"We think that you can both revitalize the neighborhood and keep legacy residents in that neighborhood."

A coalition of advocates is using a novel approach to address the housing shortage in Missoula, helping renters become owners.

Prices and availability continue to be a problem in Montana.

Neighborworks Montana and the North Missoula Community Development Corporation are expanding the co-op concept in Missoula, notorious for its housing shortage.

Neigborworks Montana Executive Director Kaia Peterson said co-ops are successful because they hire the property management company that works for them.

"So, these are existing apartment buildings, and what we're doing is instead of an individual investor owning that building, we're helping the residents form a cooperative," said Peterson. "So, the residents are creating a business together - in the business form of a cooperative - and that cooperative buys and owns and operates the building."

Co-op ownership eliminates the possibility of an investor buying the building and increasing rent if the property value increases. The group hopes to replicate the model across Montana.

North Missoula Community Development Corporation's Executive Director Brittany Palmer said the co-op model also keeps the property in local hands and allows residents to decide, collectively, how to best use the money people are paying to live there.

"Them hiring the property management company that works for them, rather than for a landlord," said Palmer. "It goes towards also things like maintenance which they get to decide when and what maintenance and repairs are made."

The corporation owns the land underneath the buildings, so even if the co-op dissolves in the future, the corporation still decides what happens with the property. They've produced a documentary about Missoula's first co-op called Wolf Avenue Collective.

The Utah Foundation polled municipal officials across the state to gain their insights into affordable housing. The report found many officials feel they face barriers when attempting to introduce more affordable housing into their communities - and they say those barriers often come from residents.

Shawn Teigen, president of the Utah Foundation, said anxieties people may have around affordable housing may not be accurate.

"When we think about affordable housing, we think about more density. And that comes along with perhaps more traffic. And that may not be reality, but that's what a lot of people are thinking about," Teigen said.

However, those anxieties can create restrictions for those who advocate for more diverse housing options. In the survey, 79% of respondents said municipal officials pursuing affordable housing over residents' concerns face political consequences. Teigen added some officials must choose between fighting for their beliefs in the need to make housing more affordable - and remaining in office to help their constituents with other matters.

The Foundation says its report was not designed to offer specific solutions, but to illuminate the issues Utah residents face today.

Drew Maggelet, director of housing for the Call to Action Foundation, one of the report's sponsors, said affordable housing is something everyone believes in. It's the placement, standards and implementation they may disagree on.

"There is not really a coherent or clear path forward as it concerns the best way to do this. There's a very large discrepancy between what people consider 'affordable.' There is a very large discrepancy about how to fix it," he explained.

The report polled officials in communities of at least 5,000 residents and examined populations across the state. One option being discussed is making changes to zoning policies for so-called "middle housing" - a strategy that includes allowing multifamily housing in established single-family neighborhoods.

A new design competition is looking to find better housing for Fargo's aging population.

Like many other states, North Dakota has a growing number of people increasingly burdened by their own homes. Oftentimes, they want to stay in their communities but their properties might be too large, too expensive to maintain or too unsafe to occupy.

Janelle Moos, associate state director of advocacy for AARP North Dakota, said there are not enough options for people looking to downsize.

"A lot of housing and zoning has really promoted single family homes or very large scale apartments," Moos explained. "We've kind of lost that middle ground to say, 'There are other types of housing that exist and can coexist and what people want, right?'"

AARP is asking interested architects, designers, builders and students to submit designs for those midlevel units, including a duplex, triplex or cluster subdivision. Moos pointed out the goal is to show off the viability of age-friendly homes and hopefully come away with some plans for future development.

More than 65% of North Dakota residents named housing as the state's biggest overall need in a survey last year.

The competition closes in early October and the winner is eligible for a cash prize. Moos noted people can then hire the designer, obtain a building permit and begin construction.

"The hope is that it's not just a conversation and it's not just a hypothetical," Moos emphasized. "We want to come away with several really viable, buildable, missing middle housing plans with universal divine design elements. So, by that I mean truly age-friendly."

Judges and advisers include government officials, design experts and architects from across the state. Nationwide, one group estimates a need for more than 800,000 senior housing units by 2030.