Will Ama Tubman Weep No More?
Keynote Address at Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute 2024 Social Determinants of Health Symposium
Originally my remarks to you all were going to be about my entrance into the health and housing space way back in two thousand and two when I purchased a home in Heritage Crossing which used to be a public housing project in West Baltimore called Murphy Homes. But last friday during what is so typically Happy Hour for people, I met with a client of the Stop Oppressive Seizures Fund, we will call her Ama Tubman. This meeting rocked me to the core.
The SOS Fund was formed in June 2020 during a door knocking campaign where myself and a couple of collaborators from Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service and Parity Homes were door knocking in Upton letting my neighbors know their homes were on the tax sale list. The fund works to prevent home and land seizures in the city through mutual aid, community education and political advocacy. It is because of that work that Ms.Tubman was referred to us.
Ms. Tubman invited myself and the SOS Fund Program Director into her dining room to sit and discuss her situation. She is facing eviction from her home because of a 4 thousand dollar unpaid tax bill from 2019. As the world began to deal with COVID-19 Ms Tubman was dealing with a different illness that kept her going back and forth to the doctors trying to get better. She received a diagnosis and began the road to recovery the next year. By that time COVID 19 had shut the world down.
So when she tried to get the Homeowner’s property tax credit she reached out to the local office of the State Department of Assessments and Taxation. They told her they would mail her an application which they never did. This credit would’ve reduced her bill to about one thousand dollars. Without the credit she pulled together money with the help of her now adult children to pay the bills as they were. She went down to the Abel Wolman building to make payments on the property taxes due.
When she went to pay the bill no one informed her in a clear or timely manner that some unpaid property taxes had been sold to a third party. She was unaware that the unpaid debt had been turned into a lien and listed for sale for collection by a 3rd party. Sounds confusing right? It is.
She was allowed to pay the most current property taxes over the next four years to the tune of nearly 20,000 dollars which was described by city staff as a gift to the 3rd party debt collector. Because if the 3rd party moves to take the deed to her home that money will not be returned to her. She should have been told to pay the tax lien held by the 3rd party first.
Tax sale is a complicated complex legal process that benefits the 3rd party debt collectors at every turn. They are allowed to charge up to 18% on the debt and if the debt goes unpaid they can foreclose on the home. Yes, the city gets a big check from the 3rd parties each year when the tax sale is held which is why they cling to this process for dear life. The city says they need the money to solve a cyclical cash flow problem. The resolution is temporary and its creates a much bigger expense in the long run. As it is a driver of vacancy. According to The Cost of Baltimore's Vacant report the city loses 100 million dollars a year in revenues alone as the result of vacancy.
I digress, back to Ms. Tubman. She thought she had handled all of the taxes until she was contacted by the 3rd party’s attorney who was filing a foreclosure action on her home. The foreclosure was granted by the court despite the irregularities in this case.
Even with all the stress she is experiencing, she invited us into her home to hear her story so we could strategize on a way to resolve the issue. She recounted to us what she has experienced over the last 4 years. And wept as she told us that she had done everything she could to make sure her property taxes were paid. This was the first time she had shared with anyone the full reality of what has been happening to her.
Watching a 70 year old Black woman cry in her dining room about the impending loss of her home while battling a serious illness stoked the seething rage in my spirit. All of this harm because the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland are determined to sacrifice a Black woman on the altar of revenue collections for revenue and profit. They must be stopped.
Ms. Tubman’s story is a common one, thousands of Baltimore homeowners mostly in Black neighborhoods face tax sale every year. This March more than 5000 homes had debts listed for tax sale. The Pro Bono Resource Center reports that clients of its 2023 tax sale clinics were 85% Black and Woman. And, according to the Baltimore Banner since 2016 “every one of the 1,763 homes across Baltimore '' that they were able to find with a foreclosure due to tax sale was located in a majority-Black neighborhood.
In order to pay the disproportionately high property taxes bills many people forgo buying food, filling prescriptions or making necessary home repairs which leaves them at risk for further adverse health outcomes. A home is more than where the heart is, it is where the health is. Housing sits firmly at the center of the Neighborhood and Built Environment determinant of health. It significantly impacts all the other determinants.
How can you build wealth if you have no or inadequate home to pass on to the next generation as a house is most American’s greatest material asset? You cant. How can you learn to your fullest scholarly potential if you have to walk past 29 vacant properties on the way to sit in a classroom with no heat? You won’t. How can you stay healthy when there are no nutrient dense culturally appropriate food stores within walking distance to your home? You don’t. How do you maintain bonds and relationships when your neighbors are pushed out of their homes by slum conditions, high rents, hyper policing and redevelopment? Exactly, the possibilities are shrinking daily as is the availability, accessibility and affordability of homes in Baltimore.
What is growing is blight - concentrations of vacant, abandoned, dilapidated, underutilized and misutilized properties. Today, Baltimore has about 15,000 vacant buildings and 21,000 vacant lots according to the Department of Housing and Community Development. There are many more properties in poor condition, not being fully used or being used in ways that are harmful. The vast majority of these properties are homes in Black neighborhoods.
How did we get to a place where Baltimore has so few houses that people can afford to live in and properties that support living? It’s quite simple - in fact, racist housing, community and economic development policy has resulted in a blighted Baltimore. Its bigger than Redlining which typically is named as the culprit. Its:
Enslavement which robbed Africans of their homes from the outset
Black codes - In 1867 the MD Occupational Acts prohibited Black people from owning carts or drays an early form of mobile housing and food distribution,
Public School development - Samuel Coleridge Taylor Elementary wasn't opened till 1926 so there was a failure to build a single public school for Black children for 59 years after the first municipal funding was allocated to do so
Property tax policy - The creation of tax sale by the state in the 1880’s. Many southern states passed tax sale laws after the end of Reconstruction. It is one of the main ways the 16 million acres of land in Black ownership at the dawn of the 20th century was reduced to less than 5 million acres by dusk of it.
Real estate laws - City Ordinance 610 passed in 1910 as the first housing segregation policy in the US and then the restrictive covenants that followed behind designed to keep Black people in poorly planned neighborhoods and poorly constructed housing
Highway construction - 1-83 which displaced Black families in Cross Keys, I-395 which displaced Black families in Sharp-Leadhall and I-170 the infamous Highway to Nowhere which displaced 900 families from Harlem Park and Poppleton.
Urban Renewal - The construction of One Charles Plaza, The Morris Mechanic Theater and Harborplace which diverted public dollars to built enterprise for private interests instead of investing in neighborhoods with Black populations
Non profit expansion- About 30% of Baltimore’s real estate is not taxable because it is owned by non profits, and that number is likely growing as institutions like JHH are displacing countless Black families. Its gobbling up properties to expand its footprint tax free all while using Black people and communities as labs
I could go on and on. But I think you can see how the development of racist policy in Baltimore over time causes blight. That leaves us to ask the two most important questions: what impact this is having on people today and what is being done about it?
The quest to answer those questions caused me to birth Fight Blight Bmore in 2016 - as a social, environmental and economic justice movement led by the village and informed by the data to address blight through community leadership, advocacy and ownership. The work centers resistance, repair and reclamation.
The harms of blight are many - it reduces educational access, employment and enterprise opportunity, home equity and tax revenues, etc…Most important are the health impacts. Blight can quite literally kill you.
On any given day in Baltimore there are thousands of people experiencing some form of housing insecurity. People who are housing insecure are 3 to 4 times more timely to die prematurely.
In 21223 vacant lots were shown to contribute to ER visits for Asthma at rate 3 times higher than the statewide average
In Madison/East End 7.5% of the children tested had elevated blood lead levels - the highest in the city while also being in the top ten neighborhoods with housing code violations at 7.3% in 2018
And, in 2022 we calculated that more than 50% of homicides happened with 100ft of a property that was vacant or tax delinquent
So there is no wonder why the life expectancy in Garwyn Oaks where Ms Tubman lives is 10 years less than in Cross Country which has the highest life expectancy in the city and some of the lowest blight right. The instability of housing and the condition of neighborhoods is harming people's health. (BNIA Vital Signs, 2018) And, as we heard this morning residents and leaders alike that respondents to the Community Health Needs Assessment lifted up housing as a clear need for improving human health.
We can see the impact clearly. The answer to the second question is that people are organizing to address blight. The community’s resistance, repair and reclamation effort includes:
Baltimore Renter’s United is a tenant-led movement to ensure people have safe, stable, affordable, and fair housing free from exploitation. They worked to shepard the Inclusionary Housing legislation through city council last year which is designed to increase the number of housing units available for people making at or below 80% of Area Median Income
Black Yield is creating a hyper local food production, preparation and distribution economy in Cherry Hill on vacant land to address food apartheid. In 2023 they distributed 10,282 pounds of food in Monte Claire and Cherry Hill
Parity Homes is developing homeownership cohorts in Harlem Park that turn dilapidated houses into affordable housing units both homeownership and rental - 20+ units to be completed by end of year, 40+ people completed cohort training and 600 people on the waiting list many of who are Baltimore born and raised.
And, CARE community association is executing a mutual aid program to pay 11,000 in property taxes to keep 10 of their neighbors out of tax sale, get estate plans in place and do home repairs to enable aging in place in the McElderry Park area. This is their 3rd year conducting a tax sale bailout.
Fight Blight Bmore and the SOS Fund collaborates with each of these organizations to share in the work of unblighting Baltimore. But even with all that work happening Ms. Tubman and many others are fighting against home loss and for their health. The end of the story is not yet written. Through these collaborations I channel my rage into acts of resistance against the loss of Ms. Tubman home but more importantly repair of her health and wellness.
Being here today with you all engaging in this critical dialogue about Neighborhood’s and the Build environment as a social determinant of health is great. Let’s take the next steps toward ending tax sale as a harm to housing and health together. We can
learn more about this predatory policy
donate to mutual aid efforts,
investigate how medicaid or medicare can be used to pay disabled and elderly homeowners property taxes
examine the data and produce analysis that doesn't pathologize the ways people survive and thrive in blighted places,
join the policy advocacy for property tax payment plans, tax credit expansion, heirs property support and home repair efforts
Work to stop speculation, flipping and all market based solutions for redevelopment. Instead supporting redevelopment that focus on the need of everyday people for housing and vibrant neighborhoods
Our actions in collaboration in the days and weeks to come will determine if Ms. Tubman weeps no more. Thank you.