I wrote about Baltimore’s Vacants to Value program in the past. It is part of a landscape of Baltimore’s community development programs that assures speculative and predatory investors acquire land from the city-with the least hassles. Per the then housing commissioner from that writing in 2017 ‘‘… We are working hand in hand with the developers and mitigating the risk that they would otherwise face.’ This program of Baltimore city’s Housing Department is a cog in the wheel of assuring uneven development continues in our city. There has been multiple complaints from multiple sectors, saying the same thing: the Vacants to Value program caters to big developers and not individual or small community developers. Baltimore’s government-owned vacant property is not available for community control: by all means necessary.

In the backdrop of a city, and state (Maryland), which keeps touting that it has awakened to the history of uneven development enforced by US policies and laws, these deceiving programs like Vacants to Value, continue to assure uneven development.

Village of Love and Resistance (VOLAR) is a Black and Brown-led community development organization in East Baltimore rebuilding toward equity and healing. VOLAR is currently experiencing its own biased treatment as they attempt to acquire a small strip of land – 601 Ensor street– from the city, through the Vacants to Value program. VOLAR has spent the last year in the unfair bureaucracy of the Vacants to Value program, with long wait periods and no answers to acquire this land to renovate into a community park. After 8-9 months, they told VOLAR they could not purchase the property. After pushback, they offered one option to VOLAR: an Exclusive Negotiation Period of 6 months that assured VOLAR continued to be in negotiation for the land. During this time, VOLAR would have to come up with the near $4.5 million dollars to renovate their existing property, adjacent to the strip of land on Ensor street. Note that this was not money for the renovation of the small strip of land on Ensor! This was a requirement by the Vacants to Value program to show redevelopment money for property owned already by VOLAR.

BIAS ALERT: Does the Vacants to Value program require this type of paternalistic scrutiny to all the big developers that acquire land through their program? How is this type of behavior congruent with: ‘We are working hand in hand with the developers and mitigating the risk that they would otherwise face.’

Tired of waiting for fair treatment and not receiving a response to the head of the program, Tony Bedon, VOLAR and allies marched to the Baltimore City Housing office where the program is located at 417 E. Fayette street on September 30 2022. Two days before the protest march, VOLAR called and left a message on Bedon’s voicemail asking for someone to come downstairs once VOLAR and allies arrived at the building, to deliver in person: our letter of request, 459 signatures on petitions from local neighbors in regard VOLAR acquiring the property, and individual letters from marchers with same request. Three of VOLAR’s members attempted to enter the building and were stormed by five security guards competing to deliver the message: you cannot come in this building, the building is closed. Right! This was 330pm est on Friday. Baltimore city government offices close at 430pm est. The guards then forced the door close, locked the doors, and would only speak to the three people through the crack between the doors. VOLAR asked that one of the guards call upstairs to Bedon’s office to send someone to engage with the citizens of Baltimore. One of the guards, said she would. After waiting 15 minutes and knocking at the door, VOLAR was told, through the crack between the two doors, that no one was in the office, it was closed. Meanwhile, people were entering and leaving through the door on the otherside of the building on Baltimore street. VOLAR and allies were not deterred. Folks rallied outside, sang and danced, shared food. At 430pm, employees started streaming out of the door. I guess they forgot to let them out at 330pm when they closed the building?

The cowardly behavior of Baltimore city representatives in our housing office is difficult to swallow. Outright ignoring, disrespecting, and lying to citizens who they are being paid to serve is unacceptable.

VOLAR is left wondering, why does the program persist in ignoring citizens in low income Black communities when they are ready to reclaim land and steward the land? Are city representatives so afraid of Black people power?

VOLAR exists to right the wrongs of a history and legacy of uneven development-in line with Jim Crow, redlining, urban renewal, gentrification, mass incarceration and police brutality. All these policies and actions have been allowed to run amok in our city, leveraged by the wealth of the elite developers like Johns Hopkins University and Medical Campus, Under Armour/Kevin Plank, Michael Beatty and others.

The corruption and racial and class pandering to white and wealthy developers must stop, if we will ever change our city to one that is more equitable. With all the double talk about racial equity, VOLAR’s experience is evidence that the city of Baltimore continues the settler colonizer tactics to assure white supremacy and its legacy of segregation and inequity continues.

It is time to change those in power. You are invited to vote with your feet and beak people. Line up!