In July 2004, PRRAC helped to bring together national experts on housing and civil rights policy to help envision a comprehensive set of housing and development policies for Baltimore designed to promote housing opportunity, desegregation and equitable metropolitan growth. Baltimore presents a unique opportunity for this type of analysis, because of the recent housing desegregation decision in Thompson v. HUD. The opportunity to focus new thinking on housing remedies in the context of a particular city and region will also be helpful in an emerging national policy dialogue underway among leading civil rights and housing policy organizations.
Our work is now part of the Baltimore Regional Housing Campaign, a unique coalition that includes the Citizens’ Housing & Planning Association; BRIDGE, Inc., the Greater Baltimore Urban League, Innovative Housing Initiative, the Maryland ACLU, PRRAC, and the Faith Fund.
Materials from the Campaign
- The Baltimore Regional Housing Campaign’s 2011 HUD complaint against the State of Maryland challenged the restrictive threshold requirement that developers must show both local support and contribution to an affordable LIHTC development before it will be approved by the state. The fair housing complaint claims that this rule limits the development of family LIHTC development in predominantly white, higher opportunity communities, which discriminates against low-income families of color and perpetuates segregation. In 2014, Maryland finally eliminated its restrictive “contribution and approval” provision, but more work needs to be done to conform to the state’s plan to fair housing requirements.
- Participating members of the BRHC
- New Homes, New Neighborhoods, New Schools: A Progress Report on the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program by Lora Engdahl (PRRAC and the Baltimore Regional Housing Campaign, October 2009)
- Barbara Samuels’ presentation on the history of public housing segregation in Baltimore, the University of Baltimore’s April 2008 symposium “Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth.”
- BRHC Vision Statement
- March 2007 Update On The Campaign
- Article by Michael Sarbanes and Philip Tegeler in The Next American City
- Connecting Families to Opportunity: a series of research forums.
