Johnston Square Being Redeveloped Without Displacement

 

In 2013, Regina Hammond has been leader in community development in Johnston Square, a neighborhood historically plagued by racist lending practices and disinvestment for generations. She established the Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization (RJSNO) and started listening to the needs of her neighbors. Conducting a survey, RJSNO made plans that would eventually become part of the Johnston Square 2020 Vision Plan. The plans were made alongside nonprofit ReBUILD Metro and Baltimore’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

Hammond and RJSNO’s plans for Johnston Square involve both refurbishing homes and creating a holistic and health environment that benefits the community. RJSNO has planted gardens and trees in Johnston Square, and their collaborators at ReBUILD Metro are currently spearheading the construction of Greenmount Park for the local schools, Saint Frances Academy and Johnston Square Elementary. RJSNO's bee symbol, started with a mural on the corner of Wilcox and Biddle streets, represents the organization’s grit and stands as a unifying sign for the neighborhood’s identity.

The city agency gains ownership of vacant houses to be refurbished and approves their community projects. Aside from Greenmount Park, ReBUILD Metro and RJSNO have also begun building a new Enoch Pratt Free Library branch. The library will provide a productive  space for learning and socializing. They are both scheduled to open in August 2025

Preventing displacement of current residents is a top concern for RJSNO and ReBUILD Metro as revitalization proceeds. A 2019 study conducted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) found that Baltimore had the fifth-highest rate of gentrification from 2000 to 2013, with five neighborhoods displacing an average of 673 Black residents.

“The biggest way in which [displacement] happens is largely through property taxes,” said Andrew Samuel, an economics professor at Loyola University Maryland “And when the properties get reappraised at a higher value, even if the property tax rate doesn’t change, the liability that people are expected to bear now goes up. And that’s usually the most frequent way in which people find that they are unable to continue to afford to live in the neighborhood.”

Hammond and Closkey believe the path to revitalization without gentrification starts with community involvement. Lowering Johnston Square’s vacancy rates requires more than home repair. Examining how houses end up vacant and preventing future vacancies is just as important. For example, the city housing department collaborates with companies like LifeBridge Health and Meals on Wheels to help with the health of underserved senior citizens. “All of those components and helping our older adults age in place actually are preventing vacant properties,” said Alice Kennedy, commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development “We can’t demolish our way out of this, and we also have a focus on preventing the vacants as well.”

Rising from decades of disinvestment also must include building generational wealth through homeownership. ReBUILD Metro established a free program called Path to Own to help renters in Johnston Square take the necessary steps to buy a home, so residents can benefit from predictable mortgage payments and rising equity. Residents are urged to apply for the Maryland Homestead Tax Credit, a program designed to limit tax increases and assist homeowners experiencing large jumps in property tax that are often plague developing neighborhoods. 

ReBUILD Metro - whose programs serve to cure the root cause of vacant housing, rather than simply eliminate the symptoms - also refurbishes Johnston Square residents’ homes under their Legacy Homeowner Repair program. These renovations serve to improve the living conditions of the residents and assist in building equity in their homes, which keeps the houses occupied and the families content. 

RJSNO’s Johnston Square 2020 Vision Plan details their goals to maintain mixed-income housing within the neighborhood to help prevent displacement.

Read the February 19, 2025 Baltimore Fishbowl article.

Baltimore's nonprofit Parity Cited as an Example of a Fruitful Approach to Reducing Vacancies

The study, A different approach to boarded-up houses and devalued homes: Catalysts for community-led renewal in Black neighborhoods by Andre M. Perry and Manann Donoghoe, is featured in the latest edition of the Brookings Institution's website research section.

The term "hyper-vacancy" refers to a neighborhood with an excessively high rate of unoccupied homes. The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance's "The Costs of Baltimore’s Vacant Housing" study found that in Baltimore about 15,000 residential properties in the city were unoccupied in 2022, and had been 7-8% of the housing stock for more than ten years. In 2010, older cities - e.g., Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland -  have had large population declines due to the loss of industrial jobs and high rates of hyper-vacancy. In Baltimore, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that 29.5% of all census tracts were hyper-vacant in 2010 compared to 7.5% in 1990.

Many vacancies in a neighborhood can lead to devaluation (when a property’s value is lower than its worth) and displacement, producing cycles of disinvestment. In a 2018 study, Brookings found that homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the US are valued 21% to 23% lower, on average, than similar homes in white neighborhoods with the same socioeconomic demographics.

When devaluation is coupled with hyper-vacancy, the damage to neighborhoods increases. A reduction in the quality of neighborhood amenities, flight, social decline, and less investment lower property prices, attracting investors, and paving the way for gentrification that displaces low-income residents. This was the case, for example, in the Middle East neighborhood of Baltimore, where legacy residents moved out when more affluent residents moved in. What could otherwise have been a beneficial process of renewal instead excluded the original residents from affordable housing in what had been their own neighborhood.

Revitalization is more difficult in these neighborhoods as investors find it harder to get proper financing. The assets of low-income and older residents who remain as their neighborhood continues to decline lose value. They are stranded in a blighted area.

The Brookings study cites a few nonprofit efforts across the US as examples of positive approaches to solving these problems:

(1) Parity, founded by former financial analyst Bree Jones and headquartered in West Baltimore, acquires and rehabilitates abandoned properties by the block. The process fundamentally upends the traditional approach to home purchasing. The organization, run and operated by Baltimore residents, is a direct response to the city’s high rates of gentrification.

(2) The Fitzgerald Revitalization Project, is another example. Operated by the City of Detroit, the project is transforming 400 publicly owned vacant land and buildings into community assets, including park lands and recreation areas. The core concept of the project is to work in partnership with residents and local stakeholders to guide redevelopment efforts. Importantly, the project emphasizes civic assets, like parks, neighborhood centers, and locally owned businesses. Members of the local community have an active role in choosing how to revitalize these neighborhoods by helping to decide where and what types of infrastructure and businesses to invest in.

(3) Other nonprofits, like The Works in Memphis, are pursuing a slightly different strategy to combat gentrification: leveraging existing community assets to create a more economically diverse and prosperous neighborhood. It uses a mix of tools (e.g., shared-equity) to subsidize the cost of home ownership in Klondike, a historic Black-majority neighborhood, to keep the neighborhood affordable.

Read the July 8, 2024 Brookings study.