Baltimore Revitalization: Employment in Underserved Neighborhoods

With Baltimore's speedy decline came the lack of employment, or decent employment, in the city. More and more of the best and brightest residents are leaving because they cannot afford to stay in the crumbling economy of many struggling neighborhoods in Baltimore City. What exactly can be done to help counteract this decline?

Construction training


Recently, parts of California were ablaze with wildfires. They needed a lot of manpower just to contain the enormous devastation and did not have adequate resources to combat it. One of the unique strategies that they used was to allow inmates to help with the firefighting efforts. These inmates then learned individual employable skill sets and supported the expanded community tackling this enormous disaster in their home state. When they are released, this training can help them to land jobs, and further help rebuilds economic capacity in their communities.

This idea is also helping many people in Baltimore. Demolition, reclaiming of recycled housing materials, and construction are helping hundreds in the community rebuild their neighborhoods. With 55% of Baltimore’s population being jobless, and nearly 10,000 people re-enter the city from prisons annually. Moreover, 4 out of 5 African American males that are not graduating from Baltimore city high schools, and thus have a discouraging low possibility of getting decent employment. So, supporting these types of innovative ideas will help change and improve financial conditions in local neighborhoods.

This is why social enterprise training programs like Baltimore’s JumpStart and Details Construction are so important. These programs teach the people from the local neighborhoods vital skills in order to help rebuild their communities. As a result, they sustain these skills even after the city is fully revitalized, and helps to fill the gap in construction jobs nationwide. And since a lot of the materials used are reclaimed from the dying buildings, this also increases the amount of work for the clean energy sector. Less pollution as a result of reused materials. Even more remarkable would be more intentional thought around creating opportunities that are being rapidly developed for the growth of the renewable energy sector particularly solar and wind.
This is a win-win situation: Train the nearby underemployed, unemployed and reentry population to help rebuild their communities, which then builds more capacity for community economic stability.

Business Development

One of the biggest things that will help the revitalization process is the development and support of small businesses. These help the community make the home that they need and want, as well as create more jobs and opportunities for people in the area to grab ahold of. There is a reason that they are often considered the backbone of the economy.

Anchor Institutions are a vibrant piece of the overall equation as well, such as John Hopkins Institutions, who in partnership with groups like East Baltimore Corporation Inc, is working to help keep the community stable. Without institutions like this helping out, it is unlikely that Baltimore could have survived even this long.


Infrastructure conversations in many communities are a real concern for the near future as budget deficits, emergency patchwork and immediate crisis are threatening the future of most urban communities. The bridges and roads of America have been known to be painfully under kept. As a result, bridges collapse and sinkholes are more common. Baltimore is no exception to this, having a crumbling infrastructure itself with limited resources and a stressed capital budget. So, getting an economy growing is a great way to provide adequate revenue to deal with all of the infrastructural issues.

The people of Baltimore deserve better. They have been plagued with a long history of structural racism and narrow-mindedness, which courageously need to be addressed, and is hindering the progressive, equitable growth of the majority of city residents. There is a lot that we need to do, and we are obligated to assist in any way we can. There is a massive amount of untapped human capital within the walls of Charm city, all we need to do is to collectively strategize a better alignment to a new eco-system that works for all so that Baltimore can flourish into a great city with economically strong families, neighborhoods and communities.