SANDTOWN’S REBOUND
May 15, 2002
By Douglas Sahmel
Douglas Sahmel is a second year master’s student at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies in Baltimore. He helped conduct the institute’s study on Sandtown-Winchester.
There’s Good news for Baltimore, but is anyone listening?
The distressed Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood in West Baltimore is about to embark on a new phase in its revival. Nonprofit groups, with federal and private assistance, plan to build or renovate 334 homes for low-income Sandtown residents over the next three years.
Yet observers may view this enterprise, like the federally funded empowerment zone program itself, as an elaborate way of throwing money down the drain. Neighborhoods like Sandtown, the cynics argue, are simply too distressed to turn around, and the visionaries active there are engaged in laudable but ultimately futile efforts. Such hopeless neighborhoods are best left for dead, grumble the cynics.
Indeed, for many, patience has worn thin regarding Sandtown, one of Baltimore’s most historic neighborhoods but also a perennial problem child. Sandtown, which covers 72 square blocks and is home to more than 10,300 people, has been the target of a comprehensive revitalization strategy for more than a decade, a period when millions of dollars have gone into the neighborhood from a variety of sources.
The evidence suggests, however, that Sandtown may not be the lost cause that some think it to be. What’s more, it shows that this new phase in Sandtown’s recovery should be a cause celebre. A 2000 report by Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies master’s students found that physical capital initiatives like those slated to resume in Sandtown can drive neighborhood improvement, particularly when part of a broader revitalization strategy.
The study, titled “Neighborhoods Moving Up: What Baltimore Can Learn from its Own Improving Neighborhoods,” examined changes in median sales prices of residential properties in Baltimore from 1990 to 1999 as a measure of neighborhood improvement. It found that Sandtown-Winchester improved significantly throughout the 1990s despite the bleak picture for all of Baltimore.
Median sales prices increased by 376 percent in Sandtown-Winchester between 1990 and 2000. While Sandtown’s trajectory began from a relatively low median value, this increase is over the same period, only one-fourth of all 203 Baltimore City Census tracts experienced any increase in property values.
So what drove this impressive resuscitation of Sandtown’s housing stock during the 1990’s? Physical capital initiatives, according to the data.
In Sandtown-Winchester, several large housing projects came to fruition in the 1990’s, of which the most notable were the Enterprise Foundations’ Nehemiah project and New Song Ministries’ Habitat for Humanity project. While Sandtown’s median sales price increase originated with these efforts, what is most noteworthy is that the neighborhood’s rise in sales prices sustained itself over time, precisely the desired effect.
Other factors were also likely at work. For example, the comprehensiveness of the revitalization approach being pursued in Sandtown may have fomented a critical mass of attention toward the neighborhood. In addition, there are strong neighborhood associations there.
The story of Sandtown, which many regard to be a sad tale of decline, is about to begin a new chapter. We should turn the page with optimism.
