Kamenetz’s opportunity
Our view: A new report stresses regional approaches to Baltimore’s problems; the effort needs to start with the city’s closest suburban neighbor
The new report this week from the regional Opportunity Collaborative didn’t unearth much that anyone who has lived in Baltimore for long didn’t already know. The area has tremendous resources in higher education, health care and high-tech industries but also deeply concentrated poverty. The opportunities to live a fulfilling, healthy, safe and economically secure life are great in places like Howard County and north-central Baltimore County and terrible in places like East and West Baltimore. Even the idea that the suburbs can’t ultimately prosper without a strong central city is, by this point, old hat.
What the report may lack in originality, though, it makes up for in clarity and timing. It happened to be released just weeks after the death of Freddie Gray and the subsequent protests and riots forced people across the region — even across the globe — to confront Baltimore’s stark social and economic divide. And the report didn’t mince words about the root causes of that divide: a legacy of racial exclusion that allowed one segment of the population to adapt to a changing economy and left another trapped in concentrated areas of poverty. If ever there was a moment when the area’s leaders would be inclined to actually do something about that, you’d think this would be it.
But what we’re getting instead is a lot of silence. Elected leaders from Carroll and Anne Arundel counties declined to comment, as did Gov. Larry Hogan’s office. Harford County Executive Barry Glassman’s spokeswoman said he appreciates the effort but is focused on local issues rather than regional ones. This report is no surprise; it’s been in the works for years and has involved the collaboration of a wide variety of state and local agencies, nonprofits, higher education groups, advocates and others. For it to produce no reaction whatsoever from so many key leaders is stunning. Fortunately, though, the one exception to the rule may be the most important one: Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has enacted a number of key policies during the last few years to help the city’s cause, but she can’t do it all on her own. Mr. Kamenetz, who is chairman of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, the organization that led the development of the report, is uniquely positioned to help. “We need every jurisdiction in the region to participate in facilitating solutions,” he said. We’d urge him to lead by example.
The report indicated that the Baltimore region is short by 70,000 affordable housing units, and in particular, that those homes should not fall predominantly in low-income, low-opportunity neighborhoods but should be connected with jobs and transit. Last year, Mr. Kamenetz established a fund to provide incentives for developers to include affordable units in their projects. It stands at $9 million, with a commitment to provide a total of $30 million over a decade. But the county can and must do more.
Perhaps the most significant step Mr. Kamenetz could take would be to enact an inclusionary housing ordinance to mandate that new development include a component of workforce housing. Asimilar law has been in effect in Baltimore since 2010, with little to show for it, but Montgomery County’s much older inclusionary housing ordinance has been successful. The county could also pursue policies that make housing vouchers easier to use, for example by lobbying for a state law banning housing discrimination based on the source of a prospective renter’s income. It could also seek to partner with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development on a policy that would allow housing voucher recipients to receive more support for renting homes in higher-cost areas, an approach that has worked elsewhere.
The county could also work to solve what the report’s authors termed the “last mile” problem, which refers to the difficulty low-income workers face in getting from transit hubs to jobs. With grant support from the Opportunity Collaborative, the BWI Business Partnership has established well-used shuttle services to get workers from Baltimore City to the airport hotel district. Baltimore County could seek to partner with its major employers to do something similar, perhaps in conjunction with the redevelopment of Sparrows Point.
Policies to help poor people find opportunities for housing and jobs in Baltimore County have a fraught political history, to be sure, but the reality is that there is no magic force field separating the county from the city. Baltimore’s problems have been spilling across the border for decades now, and addressing issues of concentrated poverty is no longer an act of charity but one of necessity. Mr. Kamenetz knows that — he has long talked about the stresses on the county’s inside-the-beltway communities — and nowis his opportunity to showsomereal vision and leadership ona regional scale.