Employment is better than joblessness. But amid the euphoria from winning a $100 million empowerment zone grant for Baltimore, the Schmoke administration has to face reality: This city's future cannot be tied exclusively to newly created start-up jobs paying less than $15,000 a year, which is what the empowerment proposal mostly envisages.
Baltimore's economic decline and blight are due to two primary factors: an exodus to the surrounding counties that has removed 250,000 middle-class residents from the city's tax base and a loss of well-paying jobs. Unless these trends are reversed -- and more neighborhoods attract a wider range of racial and income diversity -- the city's decline will continue.
This is the time to try to achieve this challenging goal. If the residential and commercial areas around the Johns Hopkins medical institutions in East Baltimore can be improved, perhaps more staff and doctors can be persuaded to live in surrounding neighborhoods. That's why a stronger linkage of the Hopkins complex to Fells Point is so crucial. That's why new, desirable housing in all price ranges and rents is needed.
Pigtown, just west of Oriole Park along Washington Boulevard, was already moving in this direction before its inclusion in the empowerment zone was announced. An alliance of Pigtown churches has been building low-income housing in the area. Columbia-based Ryland Group, the nation's No. 3 homebuilder, is due to start construction on 113 market-rate homes next year, increasing the number of middle-class families living in recently built or renovated townhouses. Such developments cannot be mere islands of affluence, however; there have to be bridges to the rest of the community.
"It's not enough to build housing. If we don't have jobs and if we don't have jobs that pay people more than the minimum wages, then we can't build or sell houses," said Kimberly Bares of Tri-Churches Housing.
Creating quality jobs is a daunting task. But it can be done by making sure that existing employers want to stay and expand in the city and new companies are attracted to Baltimore. In that respect, the recent move of two start-up companies to a South Baltimore incubator building is a positive sign. Similarly encouraging is the keen interest of Sylvan Learning Centers, the rapidly expanding Columbia tutoring and testing company, in relocating its headquarters to an Inner Harbor site.