The most recent weekly report from City Hall shows spikes in the number of squeegee workers at some Baltimore intersections — Light and Lombard, for instance, and along President Street. But the overall trend since January, when Mayor Brandon Scott rolled out his big plan to address the issue, has been fewer reports and complaints about workers with spray bottles and squeegees in city streets.
Going by year-over-year complaints — that is, the number of calls from citizens reporting squeegee workers at intersections — the downward trend appears to be significant. According to Faith Leach, the city’s chief administrative officer, Baltimore received 71% fewer calls between the week of Jan. 8, when Scott rolled out his plan, and May 22, compared to the same period in 2022. That’s not the only metric the Squeegee Collaborative uses to measure its effectiveness, but it’s a data point indicating some early success.
Scott’s plan established six no-squeegee zones in areas where boys and young men cleaning car windshields had been a common sight. The absence for relatively long stretches of squeegee workers in these “disallowed zones” has been noticeable.
The Squeegee Collaborative, through the Mayor’s Office of African American Male Engagement, now has 16 outreach workers (up from nine initially) to meet squeegee workers in the street and show them other options for making money.
“We have identified more than 20 hot spots where squeegee workers work, and we actually dispatch our outreach workers across all of those zones,” Leach said. “So, they’re monitoring those zones every single day. And, even if a squeegee worker isn’t in a disallowed zone, our outreach workers will engage them. They’ll get their information, they’ll try to connect them to employment opportunities and/or school if they’re disconnected from school. So we’ve actually been able to connect with dozens of squeegee workers across the city, not just in the disallowed zones.”
The weekly reports from the Squeegee Collaborative are detailed with trend lines on locations, dates and times of squeegee activity. The one for the week ending May 20 showed what Leach acknowledged in my conversation with her — that squeegee work continues at some intersections, including “disallowed zones,” and that some squeegee workers resist the help the city offers.
“These are usually repeat folks that we know very well,” she said. “They still want to continue squeegeeing in disallowed areas or in other parts of the city. So we continue to connect with them and try to offer them resources. But it’s a smaller group.”
There have been some reports of squeegee-related crime since the program commenced in January. But, according to the mayor’s staff, there has been only one arrest, and that appeared to stem from a fight between two people on foot, not between a squeegee worker and a motorist.
There have been 15 warnings issued to squeegee workers since January.
So far, the city says, the outreach effort has resulted in 29 squeegee workers finding jobs.
“The whole goal of this effort is to really connect these young people to productive pathways,” says Leach. “That is what the [outreach workers] are out there doing every day.”
I asked if the city might expand the number of intersections where squeegee work will be prohibited.
“Possibly,” she said. “Initially, when we implemented this, we saw that activity shifts, like a block or two over. … We look at data every single Friday. We’ve been looking at where activity has shifted. So yes, there is a possibility that we could expand the disallowed zones.”
I told Leach about a group of little kids — 10, maybe 11 years old — at Howard Street and the start of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The little ones, she said, present a different challenge.
“You can’t put them in employment,” she said. “So, in most cases, we would be trying to connect with their family members to see if there are issues in the family.”
Warmer weather, the end of the school year, the coming summer — this will be a big test for the Squeegee Collaborative. It was in July last year when a motorist wielding a baseball bat at squeegee workers was fatally shot on Conway Street near the Inner Harbor. A teenager is charged with Timothy Reynolds’ murder. After that tragedy, the Scott administration formed the collaborative to come up with a holistic plan to guide teenagers and young adults away from washing windshields at busy intersections.
“We have an infrastructure in place that didn’t exist before,” Leach said. “We are able to mobilize quickly. So if you called me and said, ‘Hey, there’s some squeegee workers over here,’ probably within 10 minutes or less, someone would be mobilized very quickly just because we’re very organized now around this.”
While calls to the city’s 311 and 911 operations have decreased, the most recent report shows increased squeegeeing in May, with 66 calls during Preakness Week, the highest number since the start of Scott’s initiative. The most calls (13) were about squeegee workers in the prohibited zone on President Street, followed by reports from North Avenue at Mount Royal Terrace (9) and along the MLK corridor (9).
During that same week, the city’s outreach workers engaged 147 kids and young adults. Engagement is good. But the test for the program — really, the hard sweat of this whole squeegee initiative — comes in convincing young Baltimoreans to get off the street and on track for something better.
