Fears Of Displacement And Gentrification Undergird Day Care Battle
By Mark Reutter for Baltimore Brew - Beyond the immediate anxiety public housing residents in East Baltimore express about the closing of the Pleasant View Day Care Center is a deeper distress about the pattern many say it represents: The city is letting private developers and non-profits determine the future of their shelter and social services. Especially in the Oldtown district east of downtown, between Little Italy and the Johns Hopkins Medical Complex, a large concentration of aging public housing has been targeted for renovations to attract mixed-income families. Current residents fear that under this process of “upgrading” they will be forced out of their homes in a Baltimore-style version of the gentrification that has swept through Washington, D.C., Brooklyn, Manhattan and other urban areas with once-large black populations.