Community Wealth City: Baltimore, Maryland

In the 2000 census, Baltimore had a population of 651,154 residents, a decline of 11.5% from 10 years before. The city's racial composition is 64.3% African American, 31.6 % White, 1.7% Hispanic, and 1.5% Asian. Baltimore used to be an industrial town, with an economic base driven by steel processing, shipping, and manufacturing and the city's largest employer was Bethlehem Steel. Now the leading employer is Johns Hopkins, which operates the city's largest university and hospital. Indeed, according to the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, nonprofits and federal agencies constitute the Baltimore area's seven largest employers.

Community wealth building groups in Baltimore have played a large role in the city and have helped rebuild a number of neighborhoods. From 1991 to 2005, the national funders' collaborative Living Cities provided more than $13.1 million in loans and grants to Baltimore's CDCs through Enterprise, a leading community development intermediary. Baltimore was also designated an Empowerment Zone in 1994, gaining a $100-million federal grant and $250 million in federal tax incentives. These funds helped Baltimore CDCs to develop over 5,000 units of affordable housing. The building of a 30-block biotechnology center next to Johns Hopkins Hospital, combined with political pressure and the intervention of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has led to the development of a 10-year, $1 billion community improvement project, which is expected to add 6,000 jobs, 1,200 homes, and a mix of new schools, recreation facilities, and retail to the neighborhood.

While community development corporations are the most visible community wealth builders in Baltimore, the city also has a wide variety of foundations, community development banks, campus-community partnership centers, cooperatives, and employee-owned companies. An overview is below:

Community Development Corporations

Coppin Heights Community Development Corporation
www.coppin.edu/CHCDC
The Coppin Heights Community Development Corporation (CHCDC) is a not-for-profit organization established in 1995 by Coppin State University. The group supports basic community planning and improvement efforts (lead safety, managing vacant property) in the Greater Coppin Heights/Rosemont community, as well as supporting service-learning opportunities for Coppin State students in the community.

Druid Heights Community Development Corporation
www.druidheights.com
Founded in 1974, Druid Heights CDC works in the fields of housing development, project management, property management, housing construction, housing renovation, financial packaging, housing counseling, community organizing and human resource management. Before 1990, the organization primarily engaged in community organizing, housing counseling and facilitation of community input relative to City plans and services. Since 1992, DHCDC has engaged in the construction and/or renovation of affordable housing for low- and moderate- income buyers.

Patterson Park Community Development Corporation
www.ppcdc.org
Founded in 1996, the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation (PPCDC) has invested more than $60 million into the neighborhood through a variety of innovative urban renewal programs, including park restoration projects, community-building events, and hundreds of home rehabilitations. PPDC has also developed 170 units of affordable rental housing, providing decent housing for low-income residents, many of them refugees and immigrants.

Community Development Financial Institutions

Baltimore Community Lending
www.bclending.org
A nonprofit community loan fund, Baltimore Community Lending provides a variety of programs to support community revitalization efforts, including the Vacant House Loan Program, the Single Family Construction Loan Program, and the Baltimore Homeowner Emergency Loan Program (HELP). For buyers interested in purchasing a house to occupy as their primary residence in the city of Baltimore, the Vacant House Loan Program offers financing for the acquisition, rehabilitation and closing cost that is incorporated into one loan. Its Single Family Construction Loan Program offers existing Baltimore homeowners the opportunity to refinance and rehabilitate their houses. Its HELP Program helps households faced with foreclosure. Baltimore Community Lending also partners with a number of the city's CDCs.

Faith Fund
faithfund.mlkuenzel.com
Faith Fund is a community development financial institution (CDFI) providing loans and technical assistance to support the development of affordable housing, microenterprises and small businesses, and community facilities in the Baltimore region's underserved markets The Faith Fund received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2003 and raised the rest of its start-up money from religious groups, local foundations, and individuals. As of July 2005, it had lending capital of $3.5 million and had loaned approximately $3.1 million to not-for-profit organizations. Faith Fund loans have helped nonprofits rehabilitate homes for sale or rent at prices that working people can afford. Other Faith Fund loans have preserved transitional housing for immigrant families, stopped the foreclosure and conversion of 74 affordable rentals in west Baltimore, helped to build senior housing and arts and recreational centers, and financed job-training programs for disadvantaged youth.

Harbor Bank
www.theharborbank.com
Harbor Bank of Maryland opened in September of 1982 with $2.1 million in asset, and as of December 31, 2005, had increased its assets to $256.6 million. Harbor Bank has emerged as one of Maryland's premier community banks and conducts general banking business in six branch locations primarily serving the Baltimore metropolitan area. Harbor Bank's Mortgage Department was the first in the State of Maryland to receive Fannie Mae funding under the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Program.

Cooperatives

Red Emma's
www.redemmas.org
Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse is a worker-owned and collectively managed bookstore and coffeehouse located in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood. The coffeehouse serves organic coffee and espresso as well as a selection of vegan and vegetarian food. The bookstore stocks books and periodicals on a wide range of topics, with a focus on radical politics and culture. Red Emma's also offers free Internet access, both through their wireless network and their public terminals.

The Village
www.baltimorevillage.org
The Village is a natural food cooperative that provides locally produced and organic goods and provides education on cooperative principles, sustainable living, environmental conservation, personal health and consumer issues. In addition, it works to establish beneficial relationships within the local community and the global cooperative movement.

Employee Ownership

Clinical Trials and Surveys Corporation
www.c-tasc.com
Clinical Trials & Surveys Corporation (C-TASC) was founded in 1989 and has conducted the design and conduct of clinical trials, cohort studies, cross-sectional studies and case-control studies for over 15 years. C-TASC is 100% employee-owned; its staff includes MDs, PhD Biostatisticians, and MS Statisticians with experience in coordinating all types of studies.

Green Contracting Company
www.greencontracting.com
Green Contracting Company, Inc. was founded in 1959 as a general mechanical contractor specializing in Power Plant Construction. In its 47-year history, the Company has been reorganized twice with the last reorganization occurring in 1999. At that point, the Company became an ESOP owned 100% by the company's 90 employees.

Maryland Brush Company
www.marylandbrush.com
Maryland Brush Company was established in 1851 and is a leading manufacturer and supplier of industrial brushes to customers on every continent. A subsidiary of Pittsburgh Plate & Glass from 1901 to 1989, it was spun off and incorporated as ESOP in 1990. It is 100% owned by its 27 employees. Because of the involvement of the United Steel Workers union in the sale, the union and management each received three seats on the Board of Directors, with a seventh person selected by mutual agreement of the parties.

Foundations

Abell Foundation
www.abell.org
When the Abell Foundation was inaugurated half a century ago, the founding board members set an agenda that allocated grants for schools, hospitals, and human service organizations reaching out to the disadvantaged in the Baltimore community and the region. In the past two decades, the Foundation has sharpened its focus to address complex challenges to break through the cycles of urban poverty. The Foundation has seven broad program areas of interest: community development; workforce development; education; health and human services; conservation and environment; and arts and culture.

Annie E. Casey Foundation
www.aecf.org
The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Baltimore Direct Services Grants Program annually funds a wide range of not-for-profit community-based or community-serving organizations that work directly with disadvantaged children, youth, and families, primarily in Baltimore City. Since the program began in 1995, Casey has made between 20 to 30 new awards ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 each year. Grants may be used to start or enhance direct services or programs such as health care, education, job training, counseling, violence prevention, recreation, cultural arts, and child care.

Baltimore Community Foundation
www.bcf.org
The Baltimore Community Foundation is the fourth largest grant-maker among Maryland's charitable foundations. In 2006, BCF distributed $29 million to hundreds of nonprofit organizations in the Baltimore region and beyond. With assets of $176 million, BCF comprises more than 500 different charitable funds. Founded in 1972, BCF is governed by a 30-member board of trustees, made up of a cross section of Baltimore.

Baltimore Neighborhood Collaborative
www.bncbaltimore.org
Housed at the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, the Baltimore Neighborhood Collaborative (BNC) is a funders' collaborative that brings local and national funders, public sector agencies, business and civic organizations together to strategically invest in the community. Since 1996, BNC has raised $5.7 million to support revitalization activities in Baltimore. BNC's Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative focuses on the development of thriving mixed income neighborhoods by integrating homeowner investment, targeted housing development, and foreclosure prevention. BNC's Transit-Centered Community Development Initiative helps city neighborhoods benefit from regional housing and job opportunities. Innovative strategies are focused on revitalizing neighborhoods city transit hubs including the MARC station in West Baltimore and the area immediately adjoining Penn Station . BNC is also hosting a newly emerging Asset Building Initiative focused on helping individuals and families stabilize their finances and build for the future.

Goldseker Foundation
www.goldsekerfoundation.org
Created in 1975 the Goldseker Foundation supports nonprofit organizations helping communities and individuals in the Baltimore metropolitan area. During 2006, the Foundation authorized seventeen community development grants and program expenses totaling $1,270,000.

Healthy Neighborhoods
www.healthyneighborhoods.org
Healthy Neighborhoods has established a loan program to support the acquisition and/or rehabilitation of owner occupied homes on target blocks in the ten Healthy Neighborhoods program neighborhoods. The Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative is an effort of area foundations and the City of Baltimore to invest strategically in certain neighborhoods and target blocks within those neighborhoods. On target blocks, special purchase-rehab mortgages and home improvement loans are available. In addition, city employees are eligible for an extra $750 as part of the Baltimore City Employee Homeownership Program, bringing their total incentive from that program to $3,750.

Living Classrooms Foundation
www.livingclassrooms.org
Founded in Baltimore in 1985, the Living Classrooms Foundation (LCF) is a not-for-profit organization serves at-risk youth in Baltimore. LCF, which includes Living Classrooms and the National Historic Seaport of Baltimore, generates nearly $120 million in annual output in Maryland each year and supports over 1,820 full-time jobs. Of these totals, $104 million and 1,760 jobs are generated in the city of Baltimore, where the lion's share of Foundation services is provided. The Foundation also generates $43.2 million in personal income for City residents each year, enough to support 1,363 households earning Baltimore's median household income.

Open Society Institute-Baltimore
www.soros.org/initiatives/baltimore/about
OSI-Baltimore was launched as a five-year initiative, which has since been extended. From 1998 through 2005, the foundation directed over $50 million toward targeted grants and technical assistance to achieve lasting change in Baltimore's neighborhoods, schools, prisons, workplaces and government agencies. Its work has evolved so that it now focuses exclusively on four initiative areas including tackling drug addiction, helping youth succeed, reducing the social and economic costs of incarceration, and Baltimore Community Fellowships.

Social Enterprises

Women's Industrial Exchange
www.womansindustrialexchange.org
The Woman's Industrial Exchange began shortly after the Civil War in the home of Mrs. G. Harmon Brown of Baltimore, where women brought their handwork to be sold to local citizens and visitors. In 1882 the State Legislature incorporated the organization “for the purpose of endeavoring by sympathy and practical aid to encourage and help needy women to help themselves by procuring for them and establishing a sales room for the sale of Women's Work.” The Woman's Industrial Exchange continues to serve its non-profit mission as an outlet of hand crafted goods made by needy women and men intent on supporting themselves with dignity. Its 150-plus consignors receive 65% of the sale price of the items sold by the Exchange.

University-Community Partnerships

Johns Hopkins, Urban Health Institute
www.jhsph.edu/urbanhealth
A center affiliated with the John Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health, the mission of UHI is to marshal the resources of the Johns Hopkins Institutions as well as other external resources, to improve the health and well-being of the residents of East Baltimore and the rest of the city of Baltimore. The Institute also promotes solutions to urban health problems nationwide. Established in 1999 to serve as an interface between Johns Hopkins University and the Baltimore community in which it resides, UHI has focused its efforts to date on three major programs: the Caroline Street Clinic for the Uninsured; the Historic East Baltimore Community Coalition—East Baltimore Technology Resource Center; and a Community Health Worker program.

University of Baltimore, Community Development Clinic
http://law.ubalt.edu/template.cfm?page=413
The Community Development Clinic of the University of Baltimore provides a wide variety of legal services to and advocacy for historically under-served communities in Baltimore. Students assist community associations, non-profit organizations, and small business owners with the legal aspects of formation, operations and financing, land use, real estate acquisition and other matters. Projects include representing community associations in negotiations for a community development plan, drafting and advocating state legislation to remove a legal impediment to the development of permanently affordable homeownership opportunities in Maryland, and helping a nonprofit organization acquire vacant land from the City.

University of Maryland, Baltimore Community Outreach
Partnership Center
http://newdirections.umaryland.edu/index.html
New Directions Community-University Partnership (NDCP) is a collaborative effort between the University of Maryland School of Social Work and local community organizations in the East Baltimore area. Its overall goal is to assist East Baltimore community groups to gain the necessary skills to build greater overall community wealth-building capacity.