Refitting Lowell’s industrial past for a sustainable future – The City of Lowell has encouraged the reuse of its historic buildings by retrofitting mothballed factories and textile mills into production and shared use spaces. This place-based approach to economic development has produced flexible spaces that accommodate growing businesses..
Backed by a National Science Foundation grant, a group of university researchers led by the University of Maryland is working with city leaders, neighborhood groups and other stakeholders to devise a plan for how to turn Baltimore into a “smart city.” The $100,000 federal grant will fund a year-long research project focused on developing a strategy for how Baltimore could get smart..
On September 22, 2017, the Department executed the Settlement with BRHC and HUD. The BRHC was a coalition of organizations to include IHI, ACLU, PRRAC and CPHA. The terms of the Settlement include, most notably, that the Department finance with Low Income Housing Tax Credits at least 1,500 units of rental housing for families in Communities of Opportunity within the Baltimore Region. Of the 1,500 units, at least 1,050 must be newly constructed, and up to 450 units may be the acquisition and rehabilitation of existing rental housing…
The State of Maryland announced in October it would provide 1,500 new affordable housing opportunities in high-opportunity parts of the Baltimore region, a victory for fair housing advocates who filed a federal complaint with HUD in 2011..
The agreement builds on changes the state had begun making to its system for distributing low-income housing tax credits, the government’s primary tool for encouraging private developers to build affordable housing developments. Developers sell the tax credits and invest the proceeds as equity in housing developments, allowing them to borrow less and offer rental units at more affordable prices to low-income families…
And although micro means small, there’s nothing little about the impact of their work, including tackling the issue of homeless veterans in the Phoenix community with the use of tiny homes…
Wednesday night, the city struck a deal to relocate to transitional housing the homeless Baltimoreans who had erected an encampment on the steps of City Hall. These residents of our city have a right to be angry with many generations of our leaders, and to have chosen a very public venue to voice that anger…
Baltimore, along with other parts of the nation, is confronting a housing crisis — not the crisis that a decade or so ago caused the collapse of home ownership and mortgage lending. This is a rental crisis. The rent affordability gap means that 25 percent of Maryland renters spend 50 percent or more of their household income on rent. In Baltimore City alone, some 150,000 cases are filed in rent court each year and approximately 7,000 families are evicted.
The community land trust model is an extremely attractive mechanism for maintaining and expanding the stock of affordable housing. Currently there are approximately 160 community land trusts operating in every region of the country.
