State sets vaccine high-mark
Maryland marked a new milestone in its COVID19 vaccination campaign Saturday, as health officials reported 43,371 immunizations over the past 24 hours, the most doses administered in a day to date.
About 820,000 people have received their preliminary vaccination in Maryland, while about 449,000 have gotten both of the two doses required to prevent against severe illness, according to state health department data. That means approximately 13.6% of residents have gotten their first shots, while about 7.4% have been fully vaccinated.
Vaccinators in the state have shot immunizations into the arms of 32,175 people every day over the last week, on average — the highest rate of daily vaccinations recorded from the time the first doses of the vaccine arrived in Maryland in mid-December.
While the state continued to expedite its vaccination campaign, officials reported 836 new cases of the coronavirus, as well as 18 associated fatalities.
The latest additions bring the state’s case and casualty counts to 381,272 and 7,674, almost a year after the health department confirmed the first COVID-19 infections March 5, 2020.
About 892 people remained in hospitals across Maryland with the virus Saturday, 51 fewer than the day before, the fewest current hospitalizations since Nov. 12. Of those hospitalized, 245 required intensive care, the same number as the day before.
Since March, almost 35,000 people have been hospitalized because of the disease’s effects.
Over the last 24 hours, health officials reported 44,152 COVID-19 tests were completed throughout Maryland, about 4,000 fewer than the day before.
The percentage of tests that returned positive over the last week declined to 3.43% Friday, down 0.24 percentage points from the day before. The rate has declined for a week straight and is down from almost 9.5% testing positivity at the beginning of January.
Virus variants first detected in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil — all of which are more transmissible than the original virus that causes COVID-19 — have spread in Maryland, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
As of Thursday, Maryland laboratories had identified 68 cases of the strain first detected in the U.K., nine cases of the variant first found in South Africa and one case of the mutation prevalent in Brazil.
So far, the vaccination effort has failed to effectively reach minorities, who experienced most severely the viruses’ effects, compared with white residents, according to an analysis of health department data.
As of Saturday, white people have received 791,000 immunizations, approximately 66% of all doses administered in Maryland for which race data was available. White residents make up about 59% of the population and have accounted for about 40% of cases and 52% of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Maryland.
Black residents have received 194,297 immunizations, roughly 16% of the vaccines administered in the state for which there was demographic data. African Americans represent about of 31% of Maryland’s population but have accounted for about a third of the infections and 35% of fatalities recorded in the state.
About 11% of Maryland’s residents are Latino, and they’ve accounted for about 19% of cases and 9% of deaths. Yet Hispanic people have gotten only about 4% of the vaccines administered for which there was data about the recipient’s ethnicity.
Lyneir Richardson, a Chicago real estate investor, has a contract to buy the Walbrook Junction Shopping Center in West Baltimore for $6.2 million. He looked at 10 shopping centers before making an offer on Walbrook, lined up capital and arranged financing. The deal is scheduled to close at the end of March. Usually there would be nothing much to see here, folks, just another commercial real estate transaction in the city of Baltimore.
But Richardson wasn’t satisfied with that. As he put it the other night in a phone call, he could just write a check and the deal would be done. Merely acquiring property is not his goal.
His passion, he says, comes from “inclusive ownership,” getting more people — and other Black people, specifically — to have a stake in the real estate in their neighborhoods, and particularly in their shopping centers.
He’s on a mission to counter the disinvestment that has taken place in cities like his own and Baltimore.
So, last month, Richardson made an unusual pitch: For as little as $1,000, anyone over the age of 18 — hopefully residents of Walbrook Junction and nearby neighborhoods — could become part owners of the shopping center with him and his social enterprise, Chicago TREND. Richardson launched a crowdfunding page and hoped to raise maybe $35,000 as a first step.
As of Friday, TREND had raised $239,500 from 101 local investors, for an average investment of $2,371.
“I am not surprised,” Richardson says about the sum. “I am elated.”
If you’ve never heard of such a thing, join the club. Even for Richardson, whose enterprise was founded with grants from foundations and banks for the purpose of social impact in Black neighborhoods, this was a first.
TREND had purchased two other shopping centers in the Chicago area, both in neighborhoods where at least half of the residents were Black. But it was the Walbrook Junction property — and events of the past year — that got Richardson thinking about bringing on investors at the micro level.
He calls 2020 “a year of pandemic, protest and political pandemonium.”
The civil unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, along with the destruction of retail businesses in some cities, got Richardson to step up TREND’s targeted efforts at economic empowerment among people of color.
“The property damage and looting of stores made it palpable to TREND that Black residents do not own commercial property in their neighborhoods,” the narrative on the Walbrook crowdfunding page says. “Consequently, Black communities receive no financial benefit from the profitability and appreciation of shopping centers that they frequent as customers. Moreover, Black residents have few connections to visible and accessible Black shopping center owners.” Richardson wanted to change that. “When was the last time — think about it — that lower and middle income Baltimore residents, intentionally Black residents, were given an opportunity to own a shopping center?” he asks. “What if [neighbors] owned it and made the shopping center better over time? They will take pride in it, protect it and patronize the shopping center in a way maybe they wouldn’t if they didn’t have an ownership in it.”
Richardson says it was Paul Brophy, a veteran urban planner and former president of the Enterprise Foundation, who got him thinking about investing in Baltimore. Walbrook Junction, a few blocks west of Coppin State University, has been getting some redevelopment love in recent years. The shopping center, says Richardson, is stable and in good shape, with two anchor tenants, a supermarket and pharmacy, and other retail tenants who tend to renew their leases. The property produces steady revenue for its owner so, Richardson argues, the risk to investors is low.
“It’s not like you’re not going to make money,” he says. “This is not a donation. This is something we hope will be financially rewarding for people. [TREND] is not buying something we have to fix.
This is buying something we don’t want to mess up, something we want to make better.”
Brophy has been watching as Richardson’s project unfolded over the last six weeks. He calls the crowdfunding by local investors a “breakthrough approach to transforming communities and building Black wealth.”
Richardson’s crowdfunding page went live on Jan. 12. He pitched it on social media and in a video. He conducted online chats with parents of children who attend a local charter school and a group of Black men interested in investments.
Richardson set the maximum crowdfunding goal at $335,000, and it looks like he could reach it. “If we don’t raise it all,” he says, “[TREND] will put the rest of the money in. It wasn’t like we had to have the money from local investors to make the deal happen. It was really about giving them the opportunity.”
He does not know yet how many of the 101 investors are from Walbrook Junction, but believes many are from Baltimore and all from Maryland.
“This is a theory,” he says, “that, if we create opportunity for local individuals to have an ownership stake, our communities will get stronger. That’s it. …
“We hope to find two or three other shopping centers in Baltimore that people can take pride in and, over time, by owning and by getting financial rewards, the community’s going to get stronger. Baltimore will be a national model of what inclusive ownership of a shopping center can be.”