Smart Growth
Between 1990 and 2000, Baltimore experienced the largest population decline of any American city. Some of the reasons for this decline are obvious. Throughout the decade, violent crime, drug addiction, and weak schools plagued the city without improvement. These evident problems make it easy to overlook another critical reason for Baltimore’s decline — the failure to pursue effective strategies for workforce development and attraction of young talent.

In many American cities, including Baltimore, failing workforce development programs leave thousands of people unemployed and underemployed, even in metropolitan areas with a growing and unmet demand for workers. At the same time, thousands of recent college graduates and young professionals seek opportunities to participate in building strong, diverse communities, but few cities focus on attracting this talent. Cities can thrive by developing these two under-tapped sources of human capital, which will in turn attract companies in search of talent. Unfortunately, most cities, particularly the nation’s older industrial cities, have failed to pursue either strategy with vigor or success. Baltimore is a case study for both types of neglect.

Current Programs Do Little to Address Resident and Employer Needs

Baltimore receives nearly $120 million annually in public funding to support workforce development — activities designed to enhance education levels, employment skills and job readiness, as well as form employer partnerships to increase job placement. These funds should connect Baltimore’s unemployed with businesses’ need for qualified labor, and in turn result in decreased crime and substance abuse, higher rates of literacy for Baltimore’s poor, and an increase in tax revenue for the city. Yet poverty and substance abuse rates have remained high or have grown worse over the past decade, and literacy has not improved. Employers’ difficulties in finding qualified workers have only grown. Overall, the existing workforce development system has failed to produce tangible results.

According to the 2000 Census, Baltimore has a 24% poverty rate — an increase from the 22% rate recorded in the 1990 Census. The Maryland Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration estimates that there are 60,000 drug-dependent people within the city — nearly one out of every ten city residents. Almost 75% of the city’s adults read at the ninth grade level or lower, and 40% of residents older than 25 lack a high school diploma.

Meanwhile, local companies report a strong and steady need for more qualified employees. According to the Maryland Workforce Educational Needs Assessment Survey, completed bi-annually by the Maryland Business Roundtable, “Half of Maryland employers believe the lack of qualified employees has affected the ability of their firm to do business in Maryland over the past year. This belief is universally shared across different industries and sizes of companies. This concern has grown since the first study in 1997.” As recently as October 2002, the Maryland Business Climate Survey published by the University of Baltimore found that 43% of businesses in the state believe high school graduates do not have the most basic skills to perform their jobs. This crisis will only grow worse as skilled workers in the baby boom generation retire.

The workforce development system has failed to address either residents’ or employers’ needs because funding is fragmented among many workforce development programs. Since there is no coordination among these various programs (or between workforce development and economic development strategies in general), workforce development efforts have failed to substantially improve education or job readiness.

In the 2001 fiscal year, $118.5 million in public funding for workforce development went to eight agencies, as shown in the table below. This total does not include the Baltimore City School System, which spent $850 million in FY2001, or workforce programs in surrounding jurisdictions that add significantly to the overall total.

In and of itself, distributing funds to many agencies is not a problem. However, the different agencies fail to coordinate priorities for the use of these funds — thus undermining the overall effectiveness of the city’s workforce development program. In the long run, this leads to employers departing the city for surrounding suburbs or other regions where skilled workers are readily available.

The few residents who do attain employment through the complex mix of local workforce development programs often languish in service-level jobs with little upward mobility and stagnant wages. Why? Because Baltimore’s economic development strategies have largely focused on creating such jobs. Since the 1970s, Baltimore has spent more than $2 billion in economic development subsidies for tourist facilities alone. Such activities have led to more service jobs, including both high-level professional positions and unskilled entry-level jobs — but few middle-income jobs to replace those once provided by the city’s dwindling manufacturing base. The professional positions remain out of reach for Baltimore’s poor, instead going to high-income workers who tend to live outside city limits. The poor can only qualify for the unskilled positions, which provide little opportunity for advancement — thereby weakening incentives for low-income people to work and participate in the legitimate economy.

An increase in the number of unskilled service jobs also raises the demand for city services without increasing the city’s tax base. Unskilled jobs contribute little in taxes, and pay salaries that fail to cover everyday costs such as health care. For example, a new hotel development in Baltimore recently received $36.6 million in subsidies for a property that created 652 jobs — a total subsidy of $56,179 per job. The average pay of these jobs is approximately $20,000, placing them at the bottom of the local pay scale. A family of four whose prime breadwinner holds such a job would qualify for food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Maryland Children’s Health Insurance Program. The $56,179 that taxpayers paid for each of these jobs creates a need for years of additional public subsidy instead of providing true access to self-sufficiency.

There is little hope for such jobs to become self-sustaining. Since youth and women are increasingly joining the service sector on top of the existing low-income, predominantly minority base, the service sector labor market has become saturated. This saturation effectively minimizes the availability of full-time, year-round work with wages high enough to keep employees above the poverty level.

For this reason, while the number of jobs may increase as a result of tourism-focused economic development strategies, the concentration of new jobs in service industries means that growth doesn’t produce greater personal wealth among city residents. In fact, such low-paid job growth may actually widen structural unemployment gaps and lengthen the distance that residents must travel to leave poverty behind.

The Failure to Attract New Residents

Flourishing, growing cities both create opportunities for existing residents to improve their skills and attract talented recent graduates and young professionals. How do they do it? By improving the quality of the urban environment and maintaining the diversity of their residents. According to Richard Florida, a sociologist at Carnegie Mellon University, top destinations for recent graduates such as Washington, D.C., Seattle, Austin, and San Francisco score consistently high in “every measure of natural amenities, lifestyle amenities, and overall environmental quality.”

Places that fail to attract young professionals hinder the growth of their tax bases, jeopardize future civic leadership, and decrease their ability to attract new companies and help existing companies grow. Traditional economic development strategies that focus on downtown business districts too often maintain the status quo. Such strategies, as exemplified by Baltimore’s economic development programs, focus public funds on subsidizing the rent for downtown companies and building garages for downtown employees. In the long run (even sometimes in a few years), these companies will move if subsidies are the only reason for staying. A strong, young talent base can keep a company in town over the long run far more effectively than massive subsidies.

Hope for Cities

Hope for cities like Baltimore lies in creating an overall economic development plan that incorporates both effective workforce development and an effort to attract young talent. Here are six steps to move cities like Baltimore in the right direction:

1. Regional Workforce Development: A city must have a regional workforce development system. In Maryland, instead of being allocated in concert with regional economic markets, as done in other states such as Massachusetts, workforce development funding is allocated and administered by individual cities and counties. Each jurisdiction is responsible for its own programs, and there is no clear incentive for jurisdictions to work with one another. As a result, businesses — which must work with multiple agencies in multiple jurisdictions — face higher recruiting costs.

Since they can only participate in employment training that is available in their city or county, job candidates also suffer in this system. For example, a city may focus its training on low-paying service positions, while the adjoining county may possess plenty of higher paying jobs in manufacturing. Unfortunately, job seekers in the city can’t get training for the manufacturing jobs — even if they have access to transportation to those jobs. While the federal Individual Training Accounts (ITA) program, which provides job training vouchers usable at any state-approved training provider, has helped improve this situation, the program is chronically underfunded. Increased federal and local funding for ITAs, either through taking funds from ineffective programs or through new appropriations, would help overcome obstacles created by jurisdictional boundaries.

2. Coordinate Resources, then Market Them: Governments need a single, unified strategy to coordinate the funding of workforce development programs. The fragmentation of funding, as in Baltimore, often leads to the creation of ineffective and overlapping workforce development programs. This coordinated strategy must work for government agencies, companies, and job candidates, who often find it difficult to understand and access the many city services. Too often, residents become ‘lost’ after multiple referrals to agencies where services do not fit the candidates’ needs or desires.

“One Stop” career centers, created by the 1998 federal Workforce Investment Act, provide all available services in a central location. Due to poor marketing, however, many residents do not even know these “One Stop” career centers exist. This is partly due to a lack of aggressive outreach on local jurisdictions’ parts, and partly due to the centers' internal incentive structure — which prevent them from serving those in most need. To gain additional funding, federal regulations require the centers to demonstrate unrealistic results. This results in senior staff discouraging those they supervise from accepting participants deemed unlikely to find employment. Too often, instead of being given the opportunity to speak directly with job counselors, those clients who do find the centers are directed to a computer to try an Internet job search.

3. Restructure Economic Development Strategies: Too often, state and local business agencies focus on offering huge subsidies, tax credits, or tax waivers when trying to retain or attract new businesses. In certain situations, this strategy can be effective. But these enormous subsidies, as discussed earlier, are frequently offered at the expense of the people whom they are intended to help.

While cities need new developments like hotels, they should pursue more balanced strategies that use smaller subsidies. The money saved from the reduced subsidies should instead be used to train residents for skilled jobs in fields with labor shortages. Building a base of skilled workers will — over the long term — attract companies that seek skilled labor and pay decent wages.

4. Transportation: Cities must improve public transportation systems. Even when jobs exist, existing transportation systems often fail to make those jobs accessible to residents who cannot afford cars. Long commutes via public transit, bus routes that fail to serve neighborhoods with higher-paying jobs, and bus schedules that do not correspond to companies’ work shifts all make transportation a serious problem for lower-income city residents. For these reasons, many low-income workers often commute one to two hours each way for positions that pay less than $8.00 per hour. The high cost of spending hours daily on a bus — including, for example, additional day care — encourage many low-income workers to choose unemployment over ongoing transportation woes.

In Hartford, Connecticut, local transportation providers, the state transportation department, the metropolitan planning organization, job developers, welfare administration agencies, and associations of business and industry came together in the mid-1990s to form BORPSAT (Bunch Of the Right People Sitting Around the Table). BORPSAT performed a mobility assessment, identifying specific opportunities to improve suburb-to-suburb and city-to-suburb access to employment sites. After the study, the local transit agency extended its hours, implemented new city-to-suburb commuter options, and added new routes to job sites in previously under-served areas.

Transportation leadership can also come from the corporate community. In Columbus, Ohio, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and five other businesses agreed to work together to add new bus service to their facilities. They successfully lobbied for the addition of a new route, but received it on the condition that the businesses would pay for 40 passengers each way whether or not the seats were filled. Since ridership has consistently exceeded that number, the businesses have never paid a cent.

In many cities, underused commuter buses can provide a low-cost solution — “capacity transit.” Luxury buses that carry suburban commuters to and from the city can, in between morning and evening shifts, make additional trips to carry city residents to and from suburban jobs. Costs for this effort are minimal, especially if both urban and suburban employers take advantage of commuter tax credits, which provide federal (and in some cases state) tax deductions for businesses that provide workers with transit passes as part of their benefits packages. Such a system could also help make more service on suburb-to-city commuter routes financially feasible, thereby helping reduce both parking needs in central cities and company costs for employee parking. To succeed, such a program requires the full commitment and energy of businesses and elected officials from multiple jurisdictions.

5. The Talent Attraction and Marketing Office: Cities and states spend millions of dollars attempting to attract large, prestigious companies with significant payrolls, and rarely succeed. Cities, regions, or states could yield enormous gains by attracting individuals instead. Economic development agencies should devote resources to attracting young professionals from regions of the country with high concentrations of universities and young talented professionals. Traveling marketing campaigns sent to these regions could include presentations, followed by job fairs with representatives from area employers.

Of course, such efforts will only succeed if cities themselves become attractive places. Cities must invest in parks and open space, recreational opportunities, transportation, education, and improved police protection to make their cities viable. Cities should also try to build a positive image in the eyes of the local and national public. Marketing campaigns can boost local pride among residents and attract regional residents back to the center city. Image building should also include marketing to image-makers in the entertainment industry in order to receive positive placement in television shows and films.

6. The Retention Office: Like many cities, Baltimore is home to many excellent colleges and universities, but students are rarely courted to stay once they graduate. In fact, the very opposite often occurs — university administrators and organizations often disparage the places they call home. If more students remained in their college towns, the critical mass of educated young people might lead more companies to relocate to such cities. Indeed, this pattern of retention is largely what has allowed Boston to grow into a world-class city over the past half-century. Surveys indicate that a majority of leaders in top local firms came to Boston for college and stayed.

People: Cities’ Greatest Assets

At the turn of the last century, Baltimore was the second largest entry point for immigrants in the United States. This large pool of unskilled labor, together with skilled people from past immigration waves, provided the human capital that, above all else, made Baltimore a vibrant and successful city. Cities like Baltimore must once again recognize that people are their greatest asset, and place among their top priorities both improved workforce development programs for low-income residents and the attraction of talented young workers.

A city that makes this shift will become home to residents with more valuable skills and higher incomes, who pay more in taxes. The increased tax revenue will help the city improve basic services and schools, and cut crime, which will in turn attract more people to the city and better equip the city to help its poor, infirm and otherwise disadvantaged residents. This improved living environment will eventually enable the city's economic development agencies to attract more companies than any subsidies could, and cement the city's role as a place of choice for future generations of young leaders. While this vision demands determined leadership and a patient citizenry, the results of developing a premier workforce are worth the struggle.

by Mike Mitchell  ¶ 7:30 PM 1 comments

  Behind The Backlash by Kenneth Durr
If you were born in Baltimore etc..... this is really a good read!!!

White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980

Exploring the effects of desegregation, deindustrialization, recession, and the rise of urban crime...shows how legitimate economic, social, and political grievances convinced white working-class Baltimoreans that they were threatened more by the actions of liberal policymakers than by the incursions of urban blacks.

Chapter 1

A Contentious Coalition

In early 1944 John Cater submitted some verse written by coworkers at Baltimore's booming Westinghouse defense plant to the Baltimore Evening Sun. The paper published the piece, even though Cater disavowed authorship. It was a good thing he did. "Beloved Baltimore, Maryland," written from the point of view of the thousands of migrant defense workers who had flocked to the city for the duration, was a vitriolic attack on everything Baltimorean from its architecture—"your brick row houses should all be torn down"—to its economy. "You make us pay double for all you can sell," the piece concluded, "but after the war you can all go to hell." The Evening Sun received more than a thousand angry refutations. A postal worker dragged two bulging bags full of letters into the Sun Building's lobby, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a contribution of his own. Weeks later "Beloved Baltimore" was still the most popular topic of conversation around town.[1]

This incident, characterized by Life magazine as "The Battle of Baltimore," was less a fight between enemies than a quarrel between partners in a strained, but strong relationship. The coalescence of the New Deal coalition at large, a process also achieved amid the tumult of wartime, was equally contentious. Natives and newcomers, old-world ethnics and southern Protestants, all came into conflict but ultimately formed a political alliance under the Democratic umbrella. This rift between the New Deal coalition's white working-class constituents was fleeting, but there was a much deeper divide between them and the blacks and middle-class liberals who were also integral to the New Deal Democratic coalition, one that was temporarily bridged but never closed during the war years and the four decades afterward.

The Great Depression laid the groundwork for the New Deal order, based on agreement among urban and rural working whites, blacks, and middle-class liberals that grassroots political activity and an activist state could create a more economically equitable society. But in Baltimore, it was not until World War II that a viable coalition came together. Among the uproar, overcrowding, inflation, and anger, key institutions took shape and fragile alliances were formed. Machine politicians began to respond more to ethnic and working-class concerns and less to old-stock business leaders, liberal political groups—chief among them the NAACP—flourished, and industrial unionism became entrenched in Baltimore's workplaces.

This political transition was driven by three broader shifts. First, working-class Baltimore's "new immigrants" of Eastern and Southern European heritage gained political influence that began to rival that exerted by German and Irish ethnics and native-stock whites. Second, Baltimore's black working people, long restricted to unskilled, low-paid work, began to get better jobs—with and without government help. Finally, although many of the southern migrants who worked in Baltimore's war plants returned home as quickly as possible, many more did not. Instead, southern whites stayed to become members of Baltimore's postwar white working class.

The wartime boom made Baltimore, a relatively placid and culturally southern city, look more like a smoky, congested northern industrial city. Its politics also came to resemble that of other post-New Deal industrial cities. In presidential, state, and local politics a "New Deal" coalition of working-white, black, and liberal voters emerged, although each group understood the legacy of the New Deal differently. The most vocal of Baltimore's grassroots New Deal activists, urban progressives, CIO-affiliated laborites, and black civil rights leaders considered the war a political opportunity. Their conception of "New Deal Democracy" included not only the extension of blue-collar workplace rights but also the expansion of rights for blacks in the community and on the job. For Baltimore's white working people, however, the tumult of wartime was fraught with hazards. They welcomed the economic security that industrial unionism and wartime wages brought but resisted social initiatives that seemed to threaten the blue-collar community.

Economy and Society

Baltimore's roots were in commerce rather than industry; as late as 1881 there were still only thirty-nine manufacturers in the city.[2] By the turn of the century there were two hundred, but within a few years, as the nationwide tide of mergers swept the city, outside corporations bought up local firms and Baltimore became known as a "branch plant city."[3] Nevertheless, by the late 1930s municipal leaders touted an "industrial community" closely resembling its northern counterparts.[4] Iron and steel dominated the economy. Sparrows Point, owned by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, was the city's largest single employer, sprawling over two thousand acres where the Patapsco River met the Chesapeake Bay.[5] Although the garment industry sweatshops downtown were closing fast, the textile industry remained Baltimore's second largest employer in the 1930s. Mills built in Hampden, north of the city center, still produced cotton duck as they had for a century.[6]

The transportation equipment industry was more robust. Bethlehem Steel had shipyards at Sparrows Point and along Key Highway in South Baltimore. Maryland Shipbuilding and Drydock was on the southern edge of the harbor.[7] Glenn Martin, built in 1928 at Middle River, eleven miles northeast of downtown Baltimore, was quickly becoming the largest single airplane factory in the world. General Motors (GM) opened plants in Southeast Baltimore in 1934.[8] Electrical equipment manufacturers like Westinghouse and Locke Insulator contributed to the city's industrial diversity. The largest of these was Western Electric, built in 1929 at Point Breeze, just inside the city limits on the northern edge of the bay.[9]

Baltimore's population was as diverse as its industry. A leading destination for nineteenth-century German immigrants, the city more closely resembled Cincinnati and St. Louis than predominantly Irish Boston or New York.[10] These old-stock immigrants had to compete for jobs with blacks much earlier and on a greater scale than those in northern cities where the black populations were smaller. Dependence on the port for employment made these unskilled laborers especially vulnerable to market fluctuations, and in hard times native and immigrant workers exploited racial tensions to force blacks out of work and to protect their jobs.[11]

Baltimore had a southern segregationist inheritance that was, if anything, heightened by what one historian has called the "assertive self-consciousness" of its black populace, 90 percent of which was free before the Civil War.[12] As Jim Crow descended on the border city, skirmishes between white and black labor heightened its effects, so that by the 1910s segregation was more pronounced in Maryland than in any other border state.[13] Up to the 1890s, when an influx of black southern migrants began, there had been few exclusively black neighborhoods in the city. After the turn of the century blacks began leaving overcrowded and disease-infested alleys, displacing whites in upper west central Baltimore, and by 1910 half of the city's blacks lived there. Whites petitioned the mayor to "take some measures to restrain the colored people from locating in a white community"; this resulted in a 1913 ordinance that made segregated housing legal in Baltimore. So effective was white Baltimore's effort that it set precedent for legislation in other cities.[14] This sanctioned black area, twenty-six blocks centered on Pennsylvania Avenue, became a booming black metropolis by the 1930s.[15]

When Eastern and Southern European immigrants arrived at the turn of the century, ethnic working-class neighborhoods coalesced around the harbor. Outlying industrial suburbs included Brooklyn, on the southern edge of the harbor, and Sparrows Point, far to the east.[16] Fells Point, Baltimore's eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century shipping and shipbuilding center, occupied the northeastern edge of the harbor along with Canton.[17] Up a gentle hill to the east was Highlandtown, a largely German community.[18] Pigtown, in the near southwest, was named for its early packing houses. South Baltimore lay just below the city center, and to its east Locust Point jutted into the harbor.[19] Only Hampden, home to Protestant textile millworkers, was largely untouched by the new immigration.[20]

It was at Locust Point that the new immigrants disembarked. Some boarded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and headed west. Others, especially the Poles, ferried across the Inner Harbor to Fells Point.[21] A few got off the boat at the foot of Hull Street, walked a few blocks, and spent the rest of their lives in Locust Point.[22] Over the next fifty years many of the Poles moved farther east into Canton and Highlandtown; others resettled in South Baltimore and Brooklyn.[23] Italian immigrants gathered in a neighborhood on the near east side that became Baltimore's "Little Italy" before gravitating west in later years.[24] Czech, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Greek enclaves also took shape in South and East Baltimore.

The Catholic Church lay at the heart of these ethnic enclaves.[25] The oldest parishes were Irish and German. A few remained that way, but others, like St. Leo's, which became the center of Little Italy, adopted the nationality of its new congregation.[26] The church served as a bulwark for both the existing social structure and the immigrant community. As these immigrants arrived, Baltimore's James Cardinal Gibbons lauded Catholicism's "tremendous power for conservatism, virtue and industry" among working people.[27] In the 1920s and 1930s Baltimore's Catholics shared Archbishop Michael Curley's faith in the "Catholic Ghetto," emphasizing self-sufficiency and disdaining secular individualism. Curley encouraged them to maintain their ethnic traditions and resist "forceful, improper Americanization."[28]

A building boom accompanied this influx of white ethnics, helped along by the institution of ground rent. Under this system, homes were bought and sold but landowners kept the "ground" and charged rent. This cut initial purchase costs, making housing more affordable for working-class people: Canton resident Bronislaw Wesolowski paid a mere $750 for his four-room row house in 1910.[29] Of the forty thousand homes built in the 1880s and 1890s, most were the two-story, narrow red brick row houses that came to typify Baltimore's working-class neighborhoods.[30] White working-class Baltimore prospered in the 1920s. Home ownership rates rose, families bought radios, and a few could even afford cars. Social and political clubs multiplied and ethnic institutions flourished as working people enjoyed rising living standards.

But trouble began near the end of the twenties. Unemployment increased, the economy slipped, and by late 1930 the full effects of the Great Depression had set in.[31] As the number of unemployed grew, private relief agencies joined church and community organizations to meet the needs of the jobless. By the end of 1933 their efforts had failed: one in six Baltimore families was on public relief. Blacks suffered the most, but ethnic Baltimoreans were also hard-hit. Nine percent of the city's population, foreign-born whites received 19 percent of the relief, and the insensitivity of city fathers was instructive.[32] Baltimore's conservative, business-oriented Democrats had long cultivated the ethnic vote with little difficulty. But the depression, the New Deal, and World War II hastened the decline of that system.

The Machine, Labor, and the New Deal

Maryland, like its border counterparts, has been called a "three party state" in which a weak Republican Party vied with two wings of a sharply divided Democratic Party.[33] Up to the 1930s these two wings included Protestant "Bourbon" Democrats in the eastern and southern parts of the state and business-led machine politicians in Baltimore. Customarily, according to one historian, the latter bought the votes of ethnic and working-class citizens "with a drink or a dollar bill."[34] The Democratic machine controlled both city and state politics from the 1870s to the 1910s, dispensing patronage and making policy in conjunction with civic and business leaders.[35] An interparty quarrel in 1919 let a Republican into the mayor's seat, but a two-party system never took hold because in segregationist Maryland the Republican Party was widely considered the party of blacks.[36]

As the citywide Democratic machine deteriorated, district bosses became increasingly powerful. William Curran, who grew up in Southeast Baltimore, ran what has been described as an "all-weather constantly functioning organization" in the 1920s.[37] But when he abandoned Southeast Baltimore for upper-class Roland Park, it signaled trouble for the Democrats. Curran was a Catholic, but he was also a well-known and well-compensated criminal lawyer at home with the old immigrant and native-stock businessmen who dominated Baltimore's Democratic Party. He deeply disliked organized labor.[38] In the 1930s Curran shared power with district boss Howard Jackson, who fit the pro-business, southern segregationist mold even more closely.

As the depression set in, the outlines of the national New Deal coalition began to be discernible in Baltimore, but because the business-allied Democrats had a lock on city politics, the pattern first appeared in Republican votes. In 1934 gubernatorial candidate Harry Nice, despite his Republican affiliation, exploited the popularity of the New Deal by promising a "New and Square Deal for All" and campaigned against the machine rather than the Democratic Party as a whole. Nice cut substantially into the incumbent's Baltimore margins and took office to the strains of "Happy Days Are Here Again." The Republican got crucial support from ethnic defectors in the city's eastern working-class wards.[39]

In the presidential races, Baltimore's move to New Deal Democracy was clear. In 1928 the most heavily Catholic wards backed Al Smith, but Protestant working whites supported Herbert Hoover and gave him a slight edge.[40] In 1932, however, Franklin Roosevelt carried Baltimore's white working-class wards by comfortable margins.[41] Four years later the city gave Roosevelt a more decisive victory: turnout was heavy and his margins exceeded even those in other industrial cities like Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.[42] Most important, in 1936 FDR got the black vote in one city ward and did very well in others that had always voted Republican.[43] Overall, from 1930 to 1936 the nature of Baltimore's electorate changed. Working-class ethnics and black voters who had often stayed home were now turning out for "New Deal" candidates, be they Democrat or Republican.[44]

In 1938 Thomas D'Alesandro, a former Curranite with his base in ethnic East Baltimore's Little Italy, broke with the old guard to run for a congressional seat.[45] Distancing himself from the district bosses and their business allies, D'Alesandro waged a pro-labor, pro-New Deal campaign and won.[46] By the 1940 presidential election the shape of the city's New Deal coalition was clear. FDR got 65 percent of the black vote, 96 percent of the ethnic vote, and 97 percent of the vote from people living in substandard housing.[47] A year earlier, conservative Democrat Howard Jackson had retained the mayor's seat by a slim margin. But World War II provided the opportunity, and organized labor the effort, that broke the conservative hold on Baltimore Democratic politics.

In 1939, despite three years of CIO activism, the Baltimore Association of Commerce continued to boast that the city's "labor was notably conservative in its relations with industrial management."[48] In a sense, Baltimore combined the best of two worlds: the heavy industry of the North and the low wages of the South. Since the late nineteenth century the city had been home to dozens of AFL craft union locals, but the Red Scare and the open-shop drive of the early twenties sent them all into sharp decline.[49]

During the 1930s organized labor's dominant institution was the conservative, AFL-affiliated Baltimore Federation of Labor (BFL). There were some outposts of labor militancy, particularly in the garment and maritime trades, but the BFL generally took an accommodating approach toward labor-management relations. Few of the "new immigrants" and even fewer blacks found acceptance in the ranks of its affiliated unions.[50] Organizers who began working in the steel, shipbuilding, automobile, and electrical industries after the founding of the CIO in 1936 met with stiff employer resistance.[51] Some Baltimore employers, such as Bethlehem Steel and Western Electric, were anti-union stalwarts nationwide. But even General Motors, which recognized its Michigan workers after the Flint Strike, held out against the Baltimore Autoworkers until 1940.

Up to Pearl Harbor, Baltimore's reputation as an open-shop town was well founded. Stiff employer resistance had its effect, but labor activists blamed the Baltimore workers themselves for lagging behind other industrial cities in unionization. "In Baltimore," one organizer complained in 1937, "people crawl. Nothing moves, and the earth is still flat." The editor of the independent journal, the Baltimore Labor Herald, concurred that "nothing encouraging ever seems to happen in Baltimore."[52] By the time the nation began mobilizing for war, industrial unionism had scarcely a foothold in Baltimore.

White Workers for the Wartime Boom

Glenn Martin and Bethlehem Steel started taking defense orders even before the European war broke out in the fall of 1939. Although recent construction had doubled the plant's capacity, Glenn Martin had a $110 million backlog by 1940. At the same time Baltimore's shipyards had $80 million worth of orders to fill.[53] Industrial expansion swelled payrolls across the city. Glenn Martin's workforce expanded from 3,500 employees in 1939 to a 1943 peak of 53,000.[54] Bethlehem Steel's Fairfield Shipyard, established near Brooklyn to build Liberty Ships for the U.S. Maritime Commission, opened in 1941 with 350 workers. By the end of the year it employed 10,000.[55] Baltimoreans considered defense work a blessing—one called working at Fairfield "wonderful." Albert Arnold worked seven-day weeks his first year there, making $54 per week to more than double his previous income.[56] Fairfield's employment peaked at 46,700 in October 1943.[57] Few reached the gargantuan proportions of Glenn Martin or Fairfield, but nearly all local industries expanded for wartime production. At the end of 1939 manufacturing employment in Baltimore stood at 150,000. By May 1942 it had jumped to 251,000 with four out of five workers in war industries.[58]

Jim Crow's hold on Baltimore ensured that white migrants would fill most of these jobs: employers, state and local employment services, and the Baltimore Federation of Labor were equally uninterested in helping blacks into any but the most menial jobs.[59] The director of the Maryland Employment Service told an investigating congressional staffer that although there were lots of potential black workers in the city, "Baltimore is an old, conservative city with certain traditions to uphold."[60] Denied entrance to the State Employment Service's main office, blacks were directed to an annex where only common laborers were hired.[61] Glenn Martin asserted that the white mechanics at Middle River would walk out if blacks got high-paying production jobs and thus confined its black employees to a small plant in Canton.[62] Martin, like other Baltimore industrialists, felt no responsibility for solving the city's "social problems."[63] Local businesses were also reluctant to employ women in nonclerical work.

The combination of racial discrimination and industrial boom transformed Baltimore socially. Companies began advertising in southern states, and the Maryland Employment Service assured its counterparts in the South that it would take workers trained there.[64] Baltimore's population grew from 859,000 in 1940 to 1,250,000 by late 1942.[65] Within another year, about 150,000 to 200,000 migrants had arrived, and most were from the mountain South: Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee, in that order.[66] Many of the migrants came to stay, but others soon left, unable to find housing. Still more grew disillusioned by working conditions, transportation problems, and cold weather. More than 3,000 war workers quit their jobs and left Baltimore each month during 1942. Others "shopped around" for better work, making turnover a major problem.[67]

In Baltimore as in other industrial cities, scarcity of housing was the biggest wartime crisis. Builders erected more private homes than ever before but resisted building low-income rental housing. The federal government and the city built projects like Brooklyn Homes, which provided five hundred apartments near Fairfield Shipyard. The Farm Security Administration set up trailer camps at Middle River and Fairfield.[68] Many of the new defense workers moved into old blue-collar neighborhoods. South Baltimore was an especially popular destination since it was closer to the shipyards and had more rental property available than East Baltimore. In January 1941 South Baltimore's weekly paper, the Enterprise, reported that "thousands of workers are pouring into South Baltimore plants daily." One merchants' group, hoping to keep war wages in the community, lamented that apartments were "virtually unknown" and home owners had little room to spare.[69] One common solution was for property owners to subdivide their homes and businesses into apartments and become absentee landlords.[70]

Crowding was the rule. In Brooklyn, for example, thirty men employed at Fairfield Shipyard shared four rooms, sleeping in shifts, and one toilet.[71] The first newcomers established "home base," friends and relatives joined them, and migrant enclaves sprang up. In South Baltimore's "Kentucky Colony" one landlord rented out fifty-six rooms in five row houses to more than twenty-five families—over one hundred people in all. The heads of these families, men like Luzell Nettles and Israel Elkins, worked at Fairfield Shipyard and Revere Copper and Brass.[72]

Migrants from the mountain South were subject to discrimination rooted in a tenacious "hillbilly" stereotype. South Baltimore merchants wanted their money, but most other residents wanted them gone. Some locals resented the high wages they were making.[73] More disliked the leisure activities on which they spent those wages. A Lutheran minister expressed both attitudes when he said that "they are here to make money and have a good time."[74] "This part of town had a bad name," one second-generation Italian woman recalled later; "the bars were lousy … all kinds of carryings-on and tearing things up."[75] "Lousy" or not, the bars were also becoming increasingly unfamiliar places to Baltimore natives. During the war, the city's jukeboxes were mostly stocked with hillbilly tunes strange to urban ears.[76]

Working-class home owners were especially distressed at the toll the influx took on their neighborhoods. A South Baltimore woman felt that migrants "didn't give a damn because they were just here for the wartime moneymaking," with the result that "South Baltimore eventually became rundown, beat up." Others saw this as the point when their neighborhoods began to go downhill.[77] Some of the criticism reflected the biases of the observers. Heavy turnover at the plants was reflected in the neighborhoods, and although signs on each floor of the Kentucky Colony buildings said "Don't throw garbage into the sink," a visiting journalist found the apartments "surprisingly clean." Similarly, in Baltimore County, residents apprehensive about the newcomers reported a crime wave that police could not confirm.[78]

Despite the stereotyping and the hostility from both sides exhibited in the flap about the poem "Beloved Baltimore," most migrants were clearly industrious. One West Virginia native, a ship carpenter at Bethlehem Steel's Key Highway Shipyard, claimed to support his own family of eight, his brother's family of four, and his mother on his wages. He also sent money home to pay off debts.[79] Few could make their earnings go as far. Too often, those expecting "a pot of gold" in Baltimore found instead a high cost of living that consumed most of their earnings.[80]

Migrants resented their hostile reception and longed for respect. Harry Isner, a carpenter from Elkins, West Virginia, appeared before the U.S. House Committee Investigating National Defense Migration in July 1941. During his testimony a congressmen interrupted to expound on the possibility that Isner could be out of work in both Maryland and West Virginia after the war: "He will be floating, like a good many others in the country." Isner respectfully cut the congressman off and said, "well my intentions are, if I can do so, to buy me a home and locate here permanently, if I can get some money ahead."[81]

White native Baltimoreans were only temporarily ambivalent about the southern newcomers. In early 1944 the Baltimore Evening Sun concluded that they had been "praised and criticized, but ultimately accepted as part of the local scene."[82] More important, both southerners and Appalachians lived under a distinct color line, as did Baltimore's ethnic working people.[83] A new white working class had united with surprising ease because in the neighborhoods and on the job, everybody was white. But this was not the case at the polls.

Mobilizing Workers and Votes

Before World War II about 35,000 union members lived in Baltimore, most of them affiliated with the AFL. By November 1942 the ranks of organized labor had grown fourfold, not counting the company unions established at Glenn Martin and Western Electric.[84] The city and state CIO fought hard for these gains, but ultimately the war made the difference.

The most difficult of the CIO's unionizing drives was at Sparrows Point. Bethlehem was the cornerstone of "little steel" and notoriously anti-union. The Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC) had low expectations, sending only two men to organize one of the largest steel plants in the world.[85] Residents of the company town stood to lose homes as well as jobs and viewed the effort with trepidation, so most of SWOC's support came from ethnic Southeast Baltimoreans and blacks consigned to the mill's dirtiest and lowest-paying jobs.[86] Most of the steelworkers, according to Brendan Sexton, one of the organizers, were southern whites who were "anti-black, but not violently so."[87] Accordingly, the company tried to use race to its benefit, warning white workers that they could lose their jobs to blacks if the CIO got into the plant.[88]

By 1940 the CIO was trying mightily to get into Bethlehem Steel and Glenn Martin because they were huge plants dependent on defense contracts—and federal law mandated that government contractors must bargain in good faith with unions. A strong company union at Glenn Martin helped fend off the CIO challenge, but Bethlehem, its Employee Representation Plan outlawed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), resorted to more repressive measures. The company used Pinkerton agents, armed "special police," and even local law enforcement officers against SWOC.[89] Even the FBI cooperated, planting an agent in a Highlandtown row house to monitor a SWOC organizer's activities.[90]

The next year Sparrows Point and the Bethlehem shipyards—including the mammoth Fairfield Shipyard—recognized the CIO under the multiple pressures of continuing worker militancy, mounting defense orders, and threats of federal intervention. GM and Westinghouse did likewise.[91] At Glenn Martin, though, the United Autoworkers (UAW) found it difficult to recruit from among the mostly southern white workers.[92] The aircraft plant was a prize sought by the International Association of Machinists as well as the UAW. It was also fiercely defended by the company union. The UAW got an NLRB election in June 1943, but only 40 percent of workers voted CIO whereas 42 percent voted "no union."[93] In September the CIO finally prevailed with 49 percent of the vote, but its hold remained shaky throughout the war.[94] The election won, it still faced "the job of making union people of the people in that plant."[95]

By the war's midpoint, a liberal leadership had begun to coalesce in Baltimore. It included officers of the state and local CIO, middle-class whites, many of them associated with the Union for Democratic Action (UDA), and civil rights leaders affiliated with the NAACP and the Urban League. Together, they helped make Baltimore politics New Deal politics.

The city's CIO unions banded together to form the Baltimore Industrial Union Council in July 1937. The Maryland and District of Columbia Industrial Union Council was organized shortly afterward.[96] Both groups, recognizing that industrial unionism owed its existence to New Deal support, were avowedly political in orientation. By 1939 the AFL and the CIO routinely mobilized to promote progressive national and state legislation. The city and state CIO councils pushed for wages and hours bills at the statehouse which, despite vigorous efforts, were defeated.[97] But in a few short years organized labor had become a formidable political force. The state CIO's per capita income was a little over $5,000 in 1942, but within a year it had increased 250 percent, and the state CIO mobilized working voters with its own edition of the CIO News and a weekly legislative report.[98] Wartime mobilization promised more potential working-class support for liberal causes, yet it also posed a challenge: how to transmit the growing union ranks into votes. Concerned that just such a development might disrupt politics as usual, the Maryland legislature passed a "Declaration of Intentions" law requiring all prospective voters to register one year prior to voting, a measure designed to disenfranchise the thousands of war workers in the state. The CIO fought back and in the fall of 1943 launched a massive campaign to register war workers for the 1944 elections.[99] The institution that thrust organized labor most forthrightly into liberal politics was the CIO Political Action Committee (PAC). In 1943 the state CIO began creating arms of the PAC in Maryland's congressional districts, beginning with the Third Congressional District covering much of working-class Baltimore. One of the first things that district CIO-PAC officials did was meet with Congressman D'Alesandro, Baltimore's New Dealer.[100] They also sought help from the Baltimore chapter of the Union for Democratic Action. In 1941 anticommunist activists, intellectuals, and trade union officials formed the national UDA.[101] The Baltimore UDA was founded the next year by a similar coalition. Important members included noted liberals affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, government officials, and labor leaders. The group sponsored a series of public meetings aimed at bringing government, business, and labor together to discuss Baltimore's wartime problems and enthusiastically supported the CIO's Declaration of Intentions Act campaign, providing printed materials and working with unions and other civic organizations to help spur registration.[102]

In segregationist Baltimore, the issue that most clearly distinguished the emergent liberal coalition was its support for civil rights. Leading the push was the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. Founded in the 1920s, the Baltimore NAACP languished until the mid-1930s, when energetic leader Lillie M. Jackson emerged from the city's black middle class and mobilized African Americans around antilynching and "don't buy where you can't work" campaigns to make the Baltimore NAACP one of the most powerful branches nationwide. Jackson's daughter established a dynasty by marrying Clarence Mitchell, a Baltimorean and a national NAACP leader. A second center of power in the black community was the Murphy family, which published the Baltimore Afro-American, one of the nation's leading black papers. For the next forty years, black Baltimore's political strength would depend on the state of the alliance between these two families.[103]

Civil rights activists, like labor leaders, saw the war as an opportunity to bring about social change. In 1942 local NAACP official Dr. J. E. T. Camper led a march on Annapolis to pressure the state to enforce equal opportunity in employment and housing.[104] The Baltimore Urban League, run mostly by whites, was less confrontational and worked effectively behind the scenes to open up jobs and training programs to blacks.[105] One small, but ultimately consequential, victory was gaining the abolition of a municipal ordinance requiring segregated toilet facilities in industries.[106]

The chief objective of all these liberal groups, both black and white, was to turn out the vote. The first test of the new activist coalition came in the 1943 mayor's race. The incumbent Howard Jackson, sensing trouble, had entered into an alliance with old rival William Curran, guaranteeing Jackson all the votes that the Baltimore machine could muster. His opponent, Republican Theodore McKeldin, forged close ties with civil rights groups, ran hard against Jackson's "greedy political machine," and won.[107]

It took a Republican—although not the Republican Party, which never really operated as such in Baltimore—to break the old-line Democratic hold on the city. Blacks who had changed parties to vote for FDR and the New Deal in 1936 switched back to vote for the racially progressive McKeldin. Three black wards that had voted 54 percent for FDR that year went 71 percent for McKeldin in 1943.[108] More significant, Baltimore's ethnic and working-class whites broke with the Curran machine and reversed parties to back the liberal candidate. Voters in white working-class wards 1, 23, and 24 voted for McKeldin by a margin of 63 percent, higher even than more reliably Republican outlying middle-class precincts.[109] The importance of the switch is underscored by the fact that although McKeldin beat Jackson decisively, every other Republican candidate lost by a substantial margin.

The major test for labor came the next year, when Franklin Roosevelt ran for a fourth term. Although the Declaration of Intentions Act remained on the books, and city and county election boards made registration as difficult as possible for war workers, the Baltimore City CIO-PAC, established in April 1944, worked hard to get out the working-class vote.[110] There was an early morning rush to the polls by war workers in East and South Baltimore, but turnout overall fell from 85 percent in 1940 to 65 percent in 1944.[111] Roosevelt's margins were also smaller in 1944, but working whites gave him 70 percent of the vote and Baltimore's blacks went three to two for FDR.[112] Although middle-class voters in outlying precincts voted decisively against him, Roosevelt got a plurality in Baltimore and swung Maryland to the Democrats.[113]

Although demographic and social shifts meant that it was only a matter of time, it was a twist in machine politics that made the 1944 election the pivot on which the Baltimore Democratic Party swung from old line to New Deal. The district controlled by Boss Jack Pollack was becoming majority black, and alert to changing political realities, he broke decisively with the Curran-Jackson machine and allied with the liberals. Curran responded with increasingly strident attacks on the New Deal, hastening the end of his influence. From that point on, factional bosses who relied on the support of labor and ethnic groups took control over Baltimore's Democratic politics.[114] Previously white working-class votes could be bought cheaply, but the liberal organizations demanded legislation instead of favors, ensuring that statewide, Bourbon-Baltimore Democratic coalitions would become increasingly hard to maintain.[115]

After the 1944 election the president of the Baltimore Industrial Union Council crowed that "the newly won strength that labor has gained by exercising its political rights will now be used to push a program of fully expanded industry, an end to race bias and security at home and the achievement of a lasting organization of world peace."[116] Such overarching rhetoric foundered on the details: local events suggest that a more modest assessment may have been in order.

Race, Housing, and the Limits of Liberalism

Baltimore's working-class whites and blacks may have increasingly been partners on the tally sheets, but they voted in different precincts and working whites preferred it that way. At the highest levels of political and intellectual leadership, Alan Brinkley has observed, World War II marked a period of transition between the reform liberalism of the early twentieth century and the rights-based liberalism that succeeded it.[117] But that was a transition that Baltimore's blue-collar residents were not prepared to make. They supported government efforts to cushion the effects of the free market and modestly redistribute wealth at the polls, but their actions at home and on the job demonstrated that they did not share the racially inclusive liberal vision extolled by social progressives in civil rights and labor organizations.

During the war years blue collarites steadfastly resisted New Deal efforts that even remotely threatened white neighborhoods, and since the residential boundaries established in the 1910s remained largely intact, the battle lines were drawn over public housing. Projects for both white migrants and blacks were proposed by the city and opposed by citizens, but in each case outcomes were quite different, demonstrating precisely where white working-class Baltimore drew the lines of both inclusion and exclusion.

In June 1939, when the city unveiled a federally sponsored project for white families to be built on a Southeast Baltimore site known as "Area D," civic groups from working-class Southeast Baltimore mobilized to oppose the project and found themselves in conflict with a leadership that invoked the New Deal in the name of racial inclusion. A liberal city councilman and a CIO official praised it at a Board of Estimates hearing, but the crowd of three hundred "roared its disapproval."[118] In another confrontation, a proponent's characterization of the project as "a New Deal measure" infuriated opponents from a Czech neighborhood.[119] Nevertheless, there was not enough clamor to stop Area D, and in 1940 the first white migrant war workers moved in. One of the most potent arguments during the controversy had been that despite assurances to the contrary, blacks might be allowed in; but they were not, and that made all the difference.[120] Baltimore residents never succeeded in blocking a single white housing development, and by 1943 there were seven large-scale projects in the city.[121] By mid-1943 over twenty thousand separate units of war housing for whites had been constructed in Baltimore, much of it with federal assistance, but wartime housing for blacks had yet to be built.[122]

Blacks suffered disproportionately from Baltimore's wartime housing crisis. From 1940 to 1942, 33,000 blacks came to Baltimore, half of them from rural Maryland and half from the South. The newcomers squeezed into the ghettos, where rents shot up and housing deteriorated. One 1942 study estimated that the city's black population—then at about 20 percent of the total—was packed into 2 percent of its residential space.[123] But white Baltimoreans steadfastly opposed any relief.

When, in the summer of 1943, a plan for a federally financed black housing project at Herring Run near the Area D site was proposed, citizens mobilized again but this time more effectively. In July, in front of a crowd of eight hundred hostile whites, Mayor McKeldin cautiously backed the plan, but, caught between two key constituencies, he disavowed any responsibility, claiming that final authority rested with the federal government.[124] The Baltimore CIO joined the NAACP and the Urban League in backing the Herring Run plan, but it came at a price since local politicians were much more attentive to white working-class concerns than to the arguments of organized labor.[125] "Politicians with whom we had developed friendly relations took the occasion to launch bitter attacks against the leadership of the CIO," one labor official complained.[126] This contention at the top deepened into a split between the leadership and the rank and file. The leadership of Local 43 of the CIO's International Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers (IUMSWA) endorsed the housing plan, but one of its members suspected that Washington was only courting black voters for the 1944 presidential election.[127]

Three city councilmen led the opposition, but among the more vocal opponents to the Herring Run plan were white home owner association leaders, Catholic priests, and even a rabbi.[128] One influential adversary was Lutheran minister Luke Schmucker, who had previously condemned white migrants at the Area D project for not being "interested in anything but making money." But the black housing threat led Schmucker to portray the migrants in a different light. Noting Herring Run's proximity to the Area D site, he complained that "middle class defense workers" would be set upon by blacks "in the streets, in the cars and buses, in the stores and movies, and even in the schools."[129]

The debate over Herring Run took place in the midst of escalating racial tensions nationwide. In Buffalo, a nearly identical controversy was raging spearheaded by priests representing their Polish and Irish Catholic parishioners.[130] In Los Angeles, white sailors had recently attacked Mexican American zoot-suiters, and only a month earlier, three days of rioting in Detroit left twenty-five blacks and nine whites dead.[131] A number of citizens who wrote angry letters to McKeldin had Detroit on their minds. Most expressed anxiety over property values and personal safety. Some explicitly blamed integrationists for racial tensions, agreeing with one man who warned that "it would not take much to set off another Detroit episode in Baltimore City."[132] The Baltimore NAACP applauded McKeldin's "courageous leadership" on the issue but spoke too soon.[133] Housing for Baltimore's black defense workers was not destined for a white area: McKeldin bowed to the greater pressure and settled on a site at Cherry Hill, insulated from Brooklyn and South Baltimore's white neighborhoods by water.[134]

The Color Line on the Shop Floor

Wartime exigencies brought an even more concerted challenge to racial segregation in industry. In early 1942 about nine thousand blacks worked in Baltimore's war industries; a year later there were twice as many, and by mid-1944 forty thousand black defense workers were on the job in city plants. By the end of the war companies that had once excluded blacks were advertising in the Afro-American, although according to the Baltimore Urban League's Alexander Allen, it was "the economics of the situation" more than Roosevelt's "fair employment" Executive Order 8802 that finally cracked Baltimore's segregated shop floors. "Some companies just ran out of workers to hire," he recalled.[135] The big CIO unions backed increased opportunities for blacks, but a public posture in favor of civil rights was easier to assume than enforce.[136] Total exclusion gave way fairly easily, but the white rank and file resisted working closely with blacks and tried hard to prevent them from taking skilled positions. One black member of Local 43 of the IUMSWA warned leaders of the state CIO that "if you are just going to give lip service and do nothing, you are going to be sorry."[137] The largest CIO union in wartime Baltimore, IUMSWA was also the most vulnerable to conflicts between natives and southerners, blacks and whites.[138]

Before the war, native Baltimoreans had used southern stereotypes to denote undesirable labor. A 1938 organizing flyer condemned "plow-jockeys and bean-pickers" willing to toil for low wages. These sorts of workers, the flyer said, constituted a menace to "bona-fide union men."[139] By 1940, however, the union was using southern images to appeal to, rather than to shame, workers. One leaflet, advertising a pipe fitters' department meeting, featured a sketch of an overall-clad worker, pipe wrench in hand, uttering "recken I'll be there."[140] Three years later, candidates for union office appealed to the Appalachian "ex-coal miners" at the Fairfield Shipyard and publicly sympathized with the controversial 1943 coal miners' strike.[141]

In the shipyards, so many workers were southerners that Baltimore natives may have realized that they had little choice but to get along. Still, white workers felt less pressure to coexist with blacks. African Americans were limited to maintenance or unskilled jobs that kept them away from whites, who, in turn, displayed a firm resistance to any further encroachments, regardless of CIO rhetoric.[142] Bethlehem's Sparrows Point Shipyard is a case in point. According to the U.S. Employment Service, Sparrows Point was "an old established plant" with many senior employees—a marked contrast to the turbulent Fairfield Shipyard with its large, undisciplined, mostly southern-born workforce.[143] If experience had been a determining factor, then Sparrows Point would have been peaceful. Instead, an attempt by black workers to surmount barriers of skill set off racial conflict.[144]

In late July 1943 fifteen blacks were admitted to a training school for riveters at the Sparrows Point Shipyard. The news soon spread to the riveting department, and after white riveters walked out in protest, the company removed the blacks from the class. When eight hundred black employees gathered to demand that the company resume the training, management—with approval from union leadership—complied. Meanwhile, white riveters marched through the yard gathering support. Thousands of whites ended up encircling a group of black workers who had to be escorted out of the yard by police. State police and federal troops stood by for eight days; the shipyard workers did not return to work until the company and the union pledged to adhere strictly to seniority in promoting riveters.[145]

IUMSWA leaders were convinced that a violent race riot had been narrowly averted at Sparrows Point. But one union official denied that the membership was in any way responsible. Instead, he said, "non-union men," both black and white, were "the chief agitators."[146] Civil rights leaders, on the other hand, had long known that racial tensions in Baltimore's shipyards were high; the NAACP observed that "the union was not as vigorous as it should have been in aiding the colored members."[147] Whites attacked labor from the opposite side. One of the most powerful arguments the UAW's opponents used at Glenn Martin was that the CIO would allow black workers on the shop floor.[148] One Machinists Union leaflet went further, exploiting the sensitive issue of skilled work for blacks. "If you want a negro boss," the flyer said, "vote for the CIO and get him."[149]

As economic necessity put more blacks in Baltimore's workplaces, white workers became even more determined to enforce the boundaries between skilled "white" work and unskilled labor. By the end of the Great Depression there were few of the company unions left that had been so ubiquitous in the 1920s. Wartime mobilization dislodged Glenn Martin's company union, but still the one at Western Electric hung on. There, as part of an effort to forestall CIO organizing, the Point Breeze Employees Association (PBEA) mobilized southern, ethnic, and native whites against workplace integration. It was so effective in accomplishing both that it ultimately triggered a federal plant seizure.

Before the war, Western Electric had a workforce of 2,500. At its wartime peak it employed nearly four times that number.[150] In late 1941 the company began hiring black workers and segregating its restrooms to comply with the Baltimore plumbing code. In early 1942, after the Urban League got the plumbing code changed, the company desegregated its washrooms. Meanwhile, as the proportion of black employees in the plant rose from 2 to 29 percent, whites became increasingly embittered.[151]

The precipitating event occurred in August 1943, when a black woman was promoted to a supervisory position and twenty-two white women working under her walked out.[152] In response, leaders of the Point Breeze association took up the issue of the desegregated washrooms, circulating petitions and threatening to strike.[153] In October the membership authorized a strike, but the PBEA agreed to postpone it until a December War Labor Board hearing. The War Labor Board backed the company, the union struck, and President Roosevelt ordered the army to take over the plant that produced critical communications cable. When the army finally left in March 1944, Western Electric's restrooms were effectively resegregated, although the company and the government described things differently.[154]

A complex of issues underlay the Western Electric strike, but most important the PBEA was using race to shore up its support. Both the Machinists and the United Electrical Workers had been trying to organize the plant, and at the time the NLRB was investigating the PBEA's reputation as a "company union."[155] Also, as a committee of black employees pointed out, although the union made the integration of facilities the ostensible strike issue, the factor of skilled employment was definitely involved.[156] By making a black woman an inspector, Western Electric had violated the same tacit agreement restricting blacks to unskilled positions that Sparrows Point Shipyard had.

The PBEA had relatively little difficulty getting white workers to draw the line between themselves and their black coworkers. Few other local defense plants had integrated restrooms, and white workers reported being taunted by neighbors who called the plant "nigger heaven." Some whites were also convinced that "the policy of the company [was] to coddle the negro in order to court government approval" and that supervisors favored blacks at whites' expense.[157]

It was easy to blame southerners for the racial strife at Western Electric. One worker accused black women of calling some employees "poor white trash," and during the War Labor Board hearing one army official complained that the "philosophy of legal customary segregation in the South seems to pervade the whole atmosphere of these Western Electric discussions." Segregation could not be challenged in the South, he said, but "when one of these questions arises in the North where there has been a lot of immigration of southerners, we are too prone to want to yield to their sentiments and attitudes."[158]

Although women precipitated the strike, men conducted it. When picket lines formed, they were almost exclusively male. In addition, most of those who crossed the lines were older workers whereas those who manned the lines were younger. Older workers were more likely to have been Baltimore natives, and younger workers were more often migrants.[159] When the army reopened the plant, though, those remaining out were mostly skilled workers, fewer of whom are likely to have been newcomers.[160] This suggests that although southerners readily joined the PBEA's effort, they were relatively quick to desert it. Though initiated by the local union leaders, the strike depended on southerners for critical support. But while the migrants were willing to help others enforce the color line, they declined to do it alone.[161]

When it came to race, the PBEA represented the prevailing attitudes of many white Western Electric workers. Few were moved by the strident condemnations of the Baltimore CIO and its insinuations that they were being manipulated.[162] Furthermore, white determination to enforce the color line can only have been strengthened by the left-led United Electrical Workers' strident denunciations.[163] Good unionists who happened to be Communist Party members were sometimes tolerated in wartime Baltimore, but Western Electric's workers never gave the UE a hearing, despite its persistence.[164] Not surprisingly, the UE had tried hardest to organize Western Electric's blacks: its only full-time organizer there was a black man.[165]

It is telling that the strike at Western Electric was touched off by women. By the war's end, 38 percent of Baltimore's industrial workers were female and the number doing war work had shot up 97 percent from 1940 to 1944.[166] As early as September 1942, Western Electric's workforce was 35 percent female, and by the end of the war over 55 percent were women.[167] Most of this increase came as women replaced draftees or transients, and although some were Baltimore natives, plenty of wartime working women were migrants themselves. Many of these women, like their male counterparts, agreed with the assessment of "Beloved Baltimore" and left town at the war's end. But about half—including a Louisiana man who helped write the poem, yet later married a Baltimore woman—made their peace with the city and its residents and became part of the postwar white working class.[168]

What Was Left Undone

By 1945 Baltimore, like its counterparts in the industrial North, was home to a strong industrial union movement, a growing civil rights community, and a political system increasingly sensitive to the power of ethnic and black working-class voters. In addition, the wartime economic boom provided southern and ethnic blue collarites with their first, albeit limited, taste of the plenitude on which the postwar New Deal order was premised while giving black working people a foothold in the industrial economy. But between working whites, blacks, and urban liberals, intractable problems remained. Baltimore's blue collarites had rewarded the Democratic Party as much for what was left undone as for what it accomplished.

Although New Deal legislation delivered little in terms of civil rights, President Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802, issued well after wartime pragmatism displaced New Deal fervor, marked a decisive first step toward the rights-based liberalism that would hold sway in postwar America. In response, urban liberals, labor, and civil rights progressives most responsible for mobilizing urban voters formulated a vision of racial inclusion that was sharply at odds with that held by urban white workers. White working people had seemingly attained long-sought economic rights and political representation. Liberal leaders in Baltimore as elsewhere, therefore, sought to use the economic growth and expansion of the federal government that began during the war as a platform on which to build a new, more inclusive social order.

Working-class whites were much less ambitious. For them, the New Deal order promised social security rather than social change. And despite the rhetoric of equality nominally embraced by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, the workplaces and especially the neighborhoods of Baltimore's white working-class voters remained unaffected by racial change. Liberals seemed to have delivered much and demanded little, and working whites found few reasons to waver in their loyalty to the party of the New Deal. But in the postwar years, as the programmatic liberalism began to emphasize civil rights over economic rights, keeping this contentious coalition together would require a real commitment to racial equality, one that Baltimore's working whites were not prepared to make.  ¶ 10:58 AM 0 comments

  The Spaces Of Utopia by Oscar Wilde
I have lived in Baltimore City for most of my adult life. I think of it as my home town and have accumulated an immense fund of affection for the place and its people. But Baltimore is, for the most part, a mess. Not the kind of enchanting mess that makes cities such interesting places to explore, but an awful mess. And it seems much worse now than when I first knew it in 1969. Or perhaps it is in the same old mess except that many then believed they could do something about it. Now the problems seem intractable.

Too many details of the mess would overwhelm. But some of its features are worth pointing out. There are some 40,000 vacant and for the most part abandoned houses in a housing stock of some 300,000 units within the city limits (there were 7,000 in 1970). The concentrations of homelessness (in spite of all those vacant houses), of unemployment, and, even more significant, of the employed poor (trying to live on less than $200 a week without benefits) are everywhere in evidence. The lines at the soup kitchens (there were 60 of them in the State of Maryland in 1980 and there are now 900) get longer and longer (30 percent of those using them have jobs according to some informal surveys) and the charity missions of many inner-city churches are stretched beyond coping : The inequalities - of opportunities as well as of standards of life - are growing by leaps and bounds. The massive educational resources of the city (Baltimore City has some of the finest schools in the country, but they are all private) are denied to most of the children who live there. The public schools are in a lamentable state (two and a half years behind the national average in reading skills according to recent tests).

Abandonment of the city: housing in Baltimore. In 1970 there were circa 7,000 abandoned houses in Baltimore City. By 1998 that number had grown to an estimated 40,000 out of a total housing stock of just over 300,000 units. The effect on whole neighborhoods has been catastrophic. City policy is now oriented to large scale demolition (4,000 were demolished between 1996 and 1999 and another 11,000 demolitions are planned). The 'official' hope is that this will drive the poor and the underclass from the city. The idea of reclaiming older neighborhoods - particularly those with a high quality housing stock - for impoverished populations has been abandoned even though it could make much economic and environmental sense.

Charity in the city: Our Daily Bread in downtown Baltimore. Our Daily Bread run by Catholic Charities feeds around 900 people daily. Visited by the Pope, it has long been a flagship operation for servicing the inner city poor. But in 1998, the Downtown Partnership, led by Peter Angelos, the multi-millionaire owner of the Baltimore Orioles (salary budget for baseball players at $90 million annually), began to agitate against poor people circulating in the downtown area because they supposedly fostered crime, devalued properties and deterred redevelopment. The Partnership urged the city to set up a `social services campus' for the poor away from the downtown area. Catholic Charities was asked to seek a less central location. In April 1999 it was announced that Our Daily Bread would be moved to a renovated building donated by Angelos, symbolically tucked away behind the city jail in an impoverished neighborhood. When local residents complained Catholic Charities abandoned that site and began looking elsewhere. The bourgeoisie, as Engels argued, have only one solution to social problems - they move them around while blaming those least able to deal with the burden.

Chronic poverty and all manner of signs of social distress reign in the shadow of some of the finest medical and public health institutions in the world that are inaccessible to local populations (unless they have the privilege to clean the AIDS wards for less than a living wage or have medicare/medicaid status or a rare disease of great interest to elite medical researchers). Life expectancy in the immediate environs of these internationally renowned hospital facilities is among the lowest in the. nation and comparable to many of the poorer countries in the world.

Poverty in the city: in the shadow of "Johns Hopkins Hospital". The Johns Hopkins hospital and its associated School of Public Health are rated as among the best in the world. Yet the life-expectancy of individuals in the city is abysmally low and the health statistics in the immediate environs of these institutions tell an appalling story of impoverishment, marginalization, exploitation, and neglect. The pawnshops, the crumbling storefront churches, the bailbondsmen, all in the vicinity of the hospital, signify the social distress. But a crumbling mural expressing the desire to 'Climb Jacob's Ladder' out of misery to a condition of self­acceptance and reliance provides a glimmer of utopian desire. The living wage campaign in the city), and in Johns Hopkins (with its slogan of 'Climbing Jacobs Ladder) give hope for one step up that ladder.

(63 years for men and 73.2 for women). The rate of syphilis transmission is the highest of any city in the developed world (according to WHO statistics) and there has been an explosion of respiratory diseases (more than doubling for all categories in the city between 1986 and 1996, according to data collected for the Environmental Protection Agency, but led by an astonishing increase in the asthma rate from around 8 to nearly 170 per 10,000 inhabitants). The only notable public health success recorded in the city is the dramatic curbing of TB infections. This happened by way of a public health commissioner who, having had military medical experience in Vietnam, saw fit to adapt the Chinese communist idea of `barefoot doctors' to urban Baltimore and thereby bring the city's TB rate down within a decade from its unenviable position of worst in the nation to below the national average.

The affluent (black and white) continue to leave the city in droves (at a net rate of over a thousand a month over the last five years according to the Census Bureau) seeking solace, security, and jobs in the suburbs (population in the city was close to a million when I arrived and is now down to just over 600,000). The suburbs, the edge cities, and the ex-urbs proliferate (with the aid of massive public subsidies to transport and upper-income housing construction via the mortgage interest tax deduc­tion) in an extraordinarily unecological sprawl) - long commu­tes, serious ozone concentrations in summer (almost certainly connected to spiraling respiratory ailments), and loss of agricultural land. Developers offer up this great blight of secure suburban conformity (alleviated, of course, by architectural quotations from Italianate villas and Doric columns) as a panacea for the breakdown and disintegration of urbanity first in the inner city and then, as the deadly blight spreads, the inner suburbs. And it is there, in that bland and undistinguished world, that most of the metropolitan population, like most other Americans who have never had it so good, happily dwell. Residency in this commercialized `bourgeois utopia' (as Robert Fishman,1989, calls it) anchors the peculiar mix of political conservatism and social libertarianism that is the hallmark of contemporary America.

There has been an attempt of sorts to turn things around in the city. Launched in the early 1970s under the aegis of a dedicated and author­itarian mayor (William Donald Schaeffer) it entailed formation of a private-public partnership to invest in downtown and Inner Harbor renewal in order to attract financial services, tourism, and so-called hospitality functions to center city. It took a lot of public money to get the process rolling. Once the partnership had the hotels (Hyatt got a $35 million hotel by putting up only half a million of its own money in the early 1980s), it needed to build a convention center to fill the hotels

Bourgeois Utopia: suburban sprawl. Like many other metropolitan regions in the United States, Baltimore has exploded outwards at an extraordinary rate Impelled by a complex mix of fears of the city, compounded by racism and class prejudice, the collapse of public infrastructures in many parts of the city, and attracted by the 'bourgeois utopian' desire to secure isolated and protected comforts, the elect of this prop""" indivadualism has been to create a remarkably repetitive landscape of low-density sprawl coupled with total dependence on the automobile. The ecological impacts are strongly negative and the social and economic costs of tragic congestion and infrastructure provision are rising rapidly.

Developers'utopia: Baltimore's Inner Harbor renewal. Almost everything to be seen on the present skyline of Baltimore's Inner Harbor has been constructed since around 1970. The background buildings largely represent off office and hotel spaces with high rise condominiums (both of which proved hard to sell of except at cut-prices) guarding either end. The tall condominium on the left was built on valuable land 'given away' to the developer in return for promises of help elsewhere that never materialized. In the foreground are the leisure and tourist activities that focus on the harbor front (Rouse's investments in a series of Pavilions occupy the central corner oftheharbor).Built through a public-privatepartnership' much of the development has had a checkered history. The Hyatt Regency Hotel (center top) gave Hyatt a $35 million hotel for an investment of $500,000 (the rest was public moneys). While this investment eventually turned out successfully for the city, the Columbus Science Center (with the white fluted roofline center bottom) cost $147 million of publicly secured private moneys but its main function, a Hall of Exploration, was forced to close in 1997 after nine months of operation. Rescued from bankruptcy by a State takeover, the building is now run by the University of Maryland with a marine biotechnology center as a main tenant.







get a piece of what is now calculated to be an $83 billion a year meetings industry. In order to keep competitive, a further public investment of $150 million was needed to create an even larger convention center to get the big conventions. It is now feared that all this investment will not be profitable without a large `headquarters hotel' that will also require `extensive' public subsidies (maybe $50 million). And to improve the city image, nearly a half billion dollars went into building sports stadiums for teams (one of which was lured from Cleveland) that pay several million a year to star players watched by fans paying exorbitant ticket prices. This is a common enough story across the United States (the National Football League -deserving welfare clients -calculates that $3.8 billion of largely public money will be poured into new NFL stadiums between 1992 and 2002). The state spends $5 million building a special light rail stop for the football stadium that will be used no more than twenty days a year.

This is what is called `feeding the downtown monster.' Every new wave of public investment is needed to make the last wave pay off. The private­public partnership means that the public takes the risks and the private takes the profits. The citizenry wait for benefits that never materialize. Several of the public projects go belly up and an upscale condominium complex on the waterfront does so poorly that it gets $2 million in tax breaks in order to forestall bankruptcy while the impoverished working class - close to bankruptcy if not technically in it - get nothing. `We have to be competitive,' says the Mayor and that `if they fail then no one else will want to invest,' apparently forgetting that the higher tax bills on the rest of us (including those who might upgrade their properties) is also an incentive to join the exodus from the city to the suburbs that has long been under way.

There is, of course, a good side to the renewal effort. Many people come to the Inner Harbor. There is even racial mixing. People evidently enjoy just watching people. And there is a growing recognition that the city, to be vibrant, has to be a twenty-four-hour affair and that mega bookstores and a Hard Rock cafe have as much to offer as Benetton and the Banana Republic . A hefty dose of social control is required to make such activities viable and signs of such control are omnipresent (Plate 8.9). The wish to be close to the action brings some young professionals (those without kids) back into center city. And when `gentrification' in the classical sense of displacement of low-income populations has occurred (as it has mainly around the harbor) it has at least physically revitalized parts of the city that were slowly dying from neglect (Plate 8.10). Some of the seedier public housing blocks have been imploded to make way for better quality housing in better quality environments. Here and there, neighborhoods


Public investments in the city: stadiums and a convention center for the affluent. During the 1990s nearly a billion dollars went into two publicly-financed sports stadiums ($500 million), an extension to the Convention Center ($150 million) and other major downtown projects (e.g, the addition of a light rail stop for the football stadium to be used no more than twenty times a year for $5 million). The argument for such investments is that they create jobs and generate income. But a careful cost-benefit analysis by two respected economists (Hamilton and Kahn, 1997) showed a net loss of the baseball stadium investment of $24 million a year. Meanwhile, libraries have been closed, urban services curtailed and investment in city schools has been minimal.

Public subsidy and private gain: the story of Harborview. After the Key Highway Shipyard closed in 1982 (with the loss of 2,000 jobs), the vacant site (top) became a focus of lengthy controversy. Approval was finally given in 19871o build a series of high rises on the site, in the face offterce local community opposition because the sheer scale of the project threatened the intimacy of existing neighborhoods and because access to the waterfront would be compromised. Funding for the project, initially confused by a mortgage foreclosure and multiple transfers of developer rights, was finally (and abruptly) procured from southeast Asia (Parkway Associates, then awash with surplus funds, put up the money without question since the site reminded their agent of Hong Kong). The project immediately hit difficulties with the financial crash of October 1987 and never seems to have turned a profit after the first tower was opened to much fanfare ('a new style in urban living') in 1993 (penthouse apartments marketed for $1.5 million). Eventually bailed out by a $2 million tax relief package in 1998, the developers have thrashed around to find nd ways to make the site more profitable. Proposals included building three more towers to make the first tower more viable. In 1999, construction began on luxury town houses and 'canal homes'with some modest high rise construction layered in between on the landward side. Another tower may yet be built.  ¶ 6:31 PM 0 comments

  Glossary of Re-Gentrification Terms A to B
A

AAA tenant: A rating given to a prime tenant with the highest credit rating. The term is often used to describe the credit rating of a retail store. For example, a developer who plans to build a shopping center will seek a "triple A" tenant to help secure financing.

Absorption rate: A rate that is a forecast of how quickly properties can be sold or leased in a given area. For example, if a developer can lease 20% of the units available to the market in a given area for a given time, the absorption rate is 20 percent.

Abstract of title: A condensed history of the title of a property. An abstract of title should be a chronological history of recorded instruments that affect the title of the subject property. In some states, an attorney does a title search using an abstract. After a title search, the attorney issues an opinion that can be used to obtain title insurance.

Abstract of title: A summary of the public records relating to the title to a particular piece of land. An attorney or title insurance company reviews an abstract of title to determine whether there are any title defects which must be cleared before a buyer can purchase clear, marketable, and insurable title.

Abut: Connect or join. If two pieces of property touch each other, they abut each other.

Abutment: A load-bearing vertical member of a structure. A wall or a column are examples of abutments.

Acceleration clause: A clause in a note, bond, mortgage or deed of trust giving the lender the right to demand the remaining balance due and payable before its original date because regular mortgage payments are not made or for breach of other conditions of the mortgage.

Accessory building: A building or structure detached from but on the same property as a main building. Examples of accessory buildings are garages, storage buildings and guest houses.

Accident and health premium: A premium paid by a mortgagor for an insurance policy to ensure the continuance of mortgage payments if the borrower is disabled or ill.

Accommodation party: One who accommodates another by signing a note or a bill without receiving compensation (a note being a negotiable instrument such as a promissory note).

Accrued interest: Interest earned but not paid since the last due date.

Acoustical tile: Tile that absorbs sound. Acoustical tile is often used in the ceilings of apartment units and offices.

Acre (AC): Land that measures 43,560 square feet. A lot 208.71' x 208.71' is 4,840 square yards, 4,047 square meters, 160 square rods, 0.4047 hectare or 43,560 square feet.

Act of God: An event that causes damage by nature such as a flood, earthquake or winds; an occurrence not caused by man.

Action to quiet title: A court action to establish ownership of real property. This court action usually removes any interest or claim to title of real estate. The action results in removing any cloud on the title. Normally a lender will not commit to a mortgage with a cloud on the title. If the complainant is successful in the court action, the title is made quiet, or is clean.

Ad valorem: A method of taxation using a fixed proportion of property value; for example, real estate taxes collected at the rate of a specific dollar amount of appraised value or assessment. People use the ad valorem method as a formula to decide how much tax to pay the government. A commonly used formula for computing taxes is as follows (assumptions: properties are assessed at 25% of valuation, appraisal is $100,000 and the tax rate is $7.50 per $100): $100,000 x 25% = $25,000 1�2 $100 = 250 ($100 units), 250 x $7.50 = $1,875 1�2 12 (12 months) = $156.25 per month

Adaptive reuse: Providing a new use for an older, but sound, structure. An example would be an abandoned warehouse converted into business or residential condominiums.

Add-on interest: Interest added to the amount of the loan on the front end, or beginning of the loan repayment period. The balance is then paid by installments. This form of interest is much more expensive than simple interest paid on the entire amount for the entire term of the loan.

Adjoin: Connect or join. If two pieces of property touch each other, they adjoin or abut each other.

Adjustable living expenses: Expenses you can change, such as costs of groceries, utilities, telephone.

Adjustable Mortgage Loans (AML): See Adjustable Rate Mortgage

Adjustable-Rate Mortgage (ARM): A mortgage where the interest rate is not fixed, but changes during the life of the loan in line with movements in an index rate. The rate is usually based on indexes tied to the nation's economy. You may also see ARMs referred to as AMLs (adjustable mortgage loans) or VRMs (variable-rate mortgages)

Adjusted basis: The original cost of the property plus improvements (including what it cost to sell the property), less depreciation. Calculate the gain on the sale by subtracting the adjusted basis from the sale price.

Advance: To give someone a draw or payment by making them a loan.

Affordable Housing Program (AHP): A program of the Federal Home Loan Bank system which allows the Regional Banks of the System to make subsidized funds available through member institutions for the production of affordable housing to serve families below 80 % of their area median income (AMI).

Agrarian: Something that relates to land or to a distribution or division of land.

Agreement of sale: Known by various names, such as contract of purchase, purchase agreement, or sales agreement according to location or jurisdiction. A contract in which a seller agrees to sell and a buyer agrees to buy, under certain specific terms and conditions spelled out in writing and signed by both parties.

Air rights: The right to use the space or air above the ground but not the ground itself. Air rights can be sold or leased. Ownership of land includes air rights above the property. Some use of air rights, such as traveling through airspace by airplane no longer require the approval of the property owner.

Alcove: A recessed room connected to a main or larger room.

Alienation clause: A clause closely associated in meaning with Due-On-Sale Clause and Acceleration Clause. An alienation clause in a mortgage can give the lender the option to call the loan (declare the entire balance due) when the property owner transfers ownership, title or interest without the lender' s consent.

Alienation: A transfer or conveyance of property. Alienation is voluntary when it is with the consent of the owner. Involuntary alienation is a transfer of property without the consent of the owner, as in a foreclosure, adverse possession and eminent domain.

All Inclusive Trust Deed (AITD): Also known as a Wraparound Mortgage. A junior lien on a property which encompasses the senior financing. Enables the borrower to increase the amount of borrowing without paying off the original loan or paying the higher interest rates associated with other types of secondary financing. The borrower makes one payment (usually to the seller) from which the senior financing is paid with the balance going to ward the holder of the Note. May be advantageous to the seller in that he can experience an additional return on money (the senior financing) which he never loaned.

All-Inclusive Trust Deed (AITD): A new deed of trust securing a balance due on an existing note plus new funds advanced. This technique is similar to a wraparound mortgage.

Allodial system: Ownership of land with the owner having full and absolute dominion over the property. This system is the basis for our property rights in the United States. A contrasting system is the feudal system, which gives ownership to a king or sovereign who gives rights to the citizenry to occupy the land for a period of time.

Allowance for vacancy and income loss: An allowance used on pro-forma or profit-and-loss projections for income properties. You subtract an allowance for vacancy from gross income to decide net effective income (income before expenses). An investor cannot use rental property that is 100% occupied. Depending on the market area, the vacancy allowance for income properties such as apartments is usually from 5% to 10% of the gross rental.

Alluvion: The gradual building up of soil deposited by water against a shore.

Alluvium: Soil deposited by accretion along the shore or bank of a river.

Amenity: A natural or man-made feature that increases the value of property. Examples would be a view of a golf course or the ocean, or a beautifully landscaped yard.

American Bankers Association (ABA): A professional organization of banks based in Washington, D.C., that lobbies the federal government and monitors federal and state laws and regulations on issues pertinent to the banking industry.

American Institute Of Architects (AIA): A professional organization of architects. All registered architects subscribe to AIA' s standards of ethical practice.

American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA): A professional organization of certified public accountants. AICPA is responsible for developing "GAAP" accounting -- generally accepted accounting principles. AICPA awards the CPA designation.

American Institute Of Real Estate Appraisers (AIREA): Formerly,.a member organization of the National Association of REALTORS (NAR). AIREA severed its affiliation with NAR in 1990 and merged with the Society of Real Estate Appraisers to form The Appraisal Institute. The Appraisal Institute officially began operation on January 1, 1991.

American Land Title Association (ALTA): An organization comprising title insurance companies, abstractors and attorneys specializing in real property law. ALTA has adopted many title insurance policy forms that standardize coverage nationally for property owners and lenders. Many states require ALTA standardized title insurance policies.

Amortization schedule: A list showing the payment number, interest payment, principal payment, total payment and unpaid principal balance. People sometimes call an amortization schedule a curtail schedule.

Amortization schedule: A timetable for payment of a mortgage showing the amount of each payment applied to interest and principal and the remaining balance.

Amortization: A payment plan which enables the borrower to reduce his debt gradually through monthly payments of principal. Fully amortized loans are paid in full at the end of the loan term.

Amortization: Loan amortization is paying off a debt or mortgage, usually by monthly payments. Regardless of whether a loan is a level payment mortgage, graduated payment mortgage, adjustable graduated mortgage or variable-rate mortgage, if it is an amortized loan there will be a portion for interest and a portion for principal reduction in every payment of the loan.

Amortization: The repayment of loan principal through equal payments over a designated period of time.

Amount financed: The base loan amount without regard to closing costs, discount points or mortgage insurance premiums. This dollar amount is associated with a disclosure statement used in compliance with the Truth-in-Lending Act.

Ampere: Measure of electrical current equal to the current produced by the force of one volt through the resistance of one ohm.

Anaconda mortgage: A mortgage that uses the subject property as collateral for all debts from various loans owed to the lender. Courts may disagree with what an anaconda mortgage intends since they may require a direct relationship between each loan and the collateral acquired by the loan proceeds.

Anchor bolt: A bolt that attaches the sill of a house to the foundation wall.

Anchor tenant: A retail store in a shopping center used as a major draw to the center. The presence of an anchor tenant helps secure financing for the center and enhances the chance of success for other tenants as it draws the public to its store. The store is normally part of a major chain and is a name easily recognized by the public. Depending on the size of the shopping center, there can be several anchor tenants.

Ancillary income: Income that is secondary in nature and not the main reason for being in the business; income that an investor would not receive if they were not in a particular business.

Annex: To attach or add; to add to something else.

Annual Debt Service (ADS): The total amount of principal and interest to be paid each year to satisfy the obligations of a loan contract.

Annual Percentage Rate (APR): A measure of the cost of credit, expressed as a yearly rate. It includes interest and points as well as other charges. It provides consumers with a good basis for comparing the cost of any loan, including a proposed mortgage loan.

Annual Percentage Rate (APR): A method for calculating an interest rate to the interest collected, discount points charged to either purchaser or seller or both, certain costs related to closing and mortgage insurance premiums.

Annual percentage rate or APR: The cost of a borrower's credit as a yearly rate. Defined by the federal Truth in Lending Act, it includes finance charges as well as the contractual interest rate.

Annuity: An assured income for life or for a given time. This term normally relates to the insurance industry, but is sometimes used in comparison with certain kinds of high-quality income from real estate investments.

Appointments: Decorative items such as furnishings and equipment in a building.

Apportionment: A division of expenses, liabilities, responsibilities or property among individuals.

Appraisal institute: An organization that officially began operation on January 1, 1991. The Appraisal Institute is the result of a merger of the former American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers (AIREA) and the Society of Real Estate Appraisers. The surviving designations are the MAI (Member of the Appraisal Institute) and SRA (Senior Residential Appraiser).

Appraisal report: A written opinion of value. The report contains the estimate of value; date of valuation; certification and signature of the appraiser; the purpose, qualifying conditions and description of the subject property and its ownership; a neighborhood description; the approaches to value; and the final determination of value. An appraiser shall report the present market value for existing properties and proposed developments. The appraiser may report a value as of the conclusion of construction and as of the projected date when stabilized occupancy is achieved.

Appraisal: An estimate of a property's fair market value by a licensed professional. Lenders take the appraisal into account when deciding whether or not to make loans.

Appraisal: An expert judgment or estimate of the quality or value of real estate as of a given date. Relies upon one or more of three different types of valuation approach depending upon the property type and current or anticipated usage: The Market Approach, Cost Approach or Income Approach.

Appraisal: An opinion of estimated value for a specific purpose of a described property on a given date. An appraisal can be either written or verbal.

Appraised value: The dollar amount of value given to the property appraised. There are three major approaches to estimating value of real estate. The market approach bases value on the sales of other comparable properties. The cost approach bases value on what it will cost to replace the property. The income approach bases value on the income produced by owning the property. In most appraisals all three approaches will be used, with the appraiser stating what approach was most influential in making the final determination of value.

Appraiser: One who estimates value on a professional level. Many appraisers have designations such as MAI (Member of the Appraisal Institute), SRA (Senior Residential Appraiser), SREA (Senior Real Estate Analyst) and SRPA (Senior Real Property Appraiser).

Appreciation: An increase in the value of a house due to changes in market conditions or other causes.

Appreciation: An increase in the value of property. The opposite of depreciation.

Appropriation: The private taking of property and dedicating it to public use. It is also the dedication of public land for a private use.

Appurtenance: An item attributable to the land, such as improvements or an easement. Something that comes from outside the property but is considered part of the property and transfers with the property upon sale or other transfer. A utility easement is an example of an appurtenance.

Apron: An area such as the entrance to a driveway or the concrete portion around a swimming pool.

Arm's-length transaction: A transaction between individuals who do not have a conflict of interest or reason for collusion. The parties are as strangers to each other. The value of property should be questioned for fairness or accuracy if there is not an arm's-length transaction between the seller and buyer. An appraiser should not use comparable sales not closed by an arm's-length transaction in the market approach to value.

Arrears: At the end of a period. You pay interest on home mortgages in arrears. You pay rent in advance. For example, a mortgage payment due May 1 is for the interest for April; rent due May 1 is for the month of May. The term can pertain to delinquent mortgage payments. A mortgage loan that is three months delinquent can be said to be three months in arrears.

Artesian well: A deep well where water rises to the surface by natural pressure.

As is: Property sold in its present condition with no warranties made about the plumbing, heating, electrical system or infestation of termites is said to be sold "as is."

Assemblage: Combining pieces of property to make one large, attractive property. The added value is plottage. People often use option contracts with the practice of assemblage.

Assessed valuation: The dollar amount or value on what real estate tax is levied. If a property worth $100,000 is assessed for tax purposes at 50% of value, the assessed valuation is $50,000. County or township tax assessors normally make appraisals for tax reasons. Many state laws require properties to be reappraised periodically. If the taxpayer disagrees with the appraisal, he or she can appeal to a board of appeal or board of equalization.

Assessed value: Dollar amount assigned to taxable property for tax purposes by the county tax assessor. It is usually a statutory percentage of market value. (Not to be confused with appraised value.)

Assessed value: The valuation placed upon property by a public tax assessor for purposes of taxation.

Assessed value: The value of real property established by the tax assessor for the purpose of levying real estate taxes.

Assessment: (1) The fair market value of property for tax purposes. (2) An expense appropriated to a unit of a whole such as a condominium assessment for common grounds, maintenance or an additional charge for improvement. (3) A levy for adding a product or service to a neighborhood, such as curbs or sewers. (4) A value given to a property owner for the taking of the property by the process of condemnation.

Assessor: Commonly called a tax assessor, an assessor is the individual charged with determining the fair market value for tax purposes. Tax assessors do not set the tax rate; they merely set the value for tax purposes.

Asset: Something of value that you own. An asset could be a car, a retirement fund, stocks or bonds, or even a valuable piece of furniture.

Assign: The act of transferring rights or property to another.

Assignee: One who receives rights or property. An assignee stands in the place of the assignor for rights, liabilities and interest in the property.

Assignment of Mortgage (A/M): A transfer of a mortgage from one mortgagee to another. Sometimes, FHA will accept an assignment of a mortgage to help a qualified, distressed mortgagor.

Assignment of servicing: A process of assigning the servicing rights from one lender to another.

Assignment: Transfer of one person's rights under a contract to another.

Assignor: One who assigns rights or property.

Assumability: When a home is sold, the seller may be able to transfer the mortgage to the new buyer. This means the mortgage is assumable. Lenders generally require a credit review of the new borrower and usually charge a fee for the assumption. Most mortgages now contain a due-on-sale clause, which means that the mortgage may not be transferable to a new buyer. Instead, the lender may insist that the entire balance is paid in full when the home is sold. Assumability may benefit the seller especially during periods of higher interest rates or after periods of property depreciation.

Assumable mortgage: A mortgage that can be taken over ("assumed") by the buyer when a home is sold.

Assumption of mortgage: An obligation undertaken by the purchaser of property to be personally liable for payment of an existing mortgage. In a full assumption, the purchaser is substituted for the original mortgagor in the mortgage instrument and the original mortgagor is to be released from further liability in the assumption, the mortgagee's consent is usually required. The original mortgagor should always obtain a written release from further liability if he desires to be fully released under the assumption. Failure to obtain such a release renders the original mortgagor liable if the person assuming the mortgage fails to make the monthly payments. (Not to be confused with a subject-to purchase.)

Assumption: The transfer of the seller's existing mortgage to the buyer.

Atrium: Usually a space in the center of a building with a translucent ceiling and sometimes decorated with such amenities as a water fountain and tropical plants.

Attachment: The actual taking of property into the custody of a court to serve as collateral for a judgment sought in an impending suit. Law, not private consent, creates the lien. This form of legal action is not available for obligations secured by collateral, as in the case of a mortgage.

Attestation: The act of witnessing a signature on an instrument.

Attic: The portion of a house between the ceiling of the top floor and the underside of the roof. There must be access to an attic. By inspecting an attic you can check for signs of structural problems in the rafters and joists and assure that there is adequate ventilation.

Attornment: A tenant's formal recognition of a new landlord. A mortgagee, who becomes an owner by foreclosure, with the tenant recognizing the mortgagee as the new landlord, has a defense against claims for rent by the defaulting mortgagor. Attornment starts a new tenancy between the new owner and the tenant.

Attractive nuisance doctrine: A legal doctrine holding that a property owner must protect children from injuring themselves by an attractive danger such as a swimming pool. As an example of adhering to this doctrine, a property owner should build a fence around a swimming pool.

Average life of a mortgage: The average number of years one dollar of principal investment remains outstanding in a mortgage loan. The average life is used in deciding the true yield of a mortgage. A 30-year mortgage is said to have an average life of 12 years; a 10- to 15-year mortgage has an average life of 7 years. Investors base the yield of a mortgage on the average life as opposed to the original term.

Avulsion: The sudden removal of land by action of a body of water, such as a river.

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Backfilling: The act of putting back dirt removed for construction. You backfill by filling the gap between the foundation wall and the yard so that water will drain away from the building.

Backup contract: A term often used with contracts to buy real estate. A backup contract is a contract that will replace a prior contract in the event of failure to perform or close by the parties of the prior contract. The seller should get a release from the buyer on the first contract before canceling the contract and proceeding with the second, or backup, contract.

Balloon mortgage: A mortgage loan with periodic payments of principal and interest that do not completely amortize the loan. The balance of this type of mortgage loan is due and payable in a lump sum at a specified time in the future. The borrower pays interest regularly, but may or may not make small principal repayments during the loan period. The unpaid balance is due at a specific time in the future as stated in the mortgage or deed of trust. For example, if you borrow $30,000 for 5 years, or 60 months, and the interest rate is 15%, your monthly payments will be only $375. But the payments cover interest only, with the entire principal due at maturity in five years. Thus, the borrower must make 59 equal monthly payments of $375 and a final balloon payment of $30,375 (the principal plus the last interest payment). If the borrower cannot make the final payment, the borrower must refinance (if refinancing is available) or sell the property. Some lenders guarantee refinancing when the balloon payment is due, although they do not commit to a specified interest rate. The rate at refinancing could be much higher than the borrower's current rate. Other lenders do not offer automatic refinancing. Without such a guarantee, the borrower could be forced to start the whole business of shopping for mortgage funds again, besides paying closing costs and front-end charges a second time. A balloon mortgage can be a senior or junior mortgage; i.e., a first or second mortgage.

Balloon note: A Promissory Note which requires only partial or no amortization (principal reduction.) Balloon Notes result in an eventual Balloon Payment. A Balloon Note may be coupled with an Extendible Rider which allows for the extension of the loan term as long as certain conditions are met. (Such as on 5/25 and 7/23 loans.)

Balloon payment: Amount of loan principal remaining unamortized and outstanding at the end of the mortgage term.

Balloon payment: The final payment in a balloon mortgage. The balloon payment ends the mortgage; the mortgage is paid in full. This final payment is called the balloon or bullet.

Balloon payment: The final payment of the balance due on a partially amortized loan.

Baluster: The support for the rail in a staircase; one of a series of upright posts.

Bank Holding Company (BHC): A corporation that owns interests in one or more banks.

Bankrupt: A corporation, firm or person who files for relief from the courts and surrenders all assets. Bankruptcy is a condition in which liabilities exceed assets and the person or business is unable to pay the creditors. Bankruptcy may be voluntary or involuntary. Involuntary bankruptcy is when a creditor forces payment of a debt of $1,000 or more and the debtor cannot pay. There are several chapters of bankruptcy. A lender will most likely encounter the following chapters:

* Chapter 7 covers liquidation of the debtor's assets.
* Chapter 11 covers reorganization of a bankrupt business.
* Chapter 13 covers repayment of debts by individuals (commonly called wage-earner). Som e plans may provide for full payment of debts, while others arrange for payment of reduced debts.

Under Chapters 7 and 11, dismissal of bankruptcy means that the debts, but not the liens, are dismissed. The courts must close the bankruptcy to release the liens. Under Chapter 13, dismissal means that the court has thrown a person or business out of bankruptcy. That person or business is no longer under the court's protection and is subject to the action of creditors. In reviewing a loan application from a person who has taken bankruptcy, lenders look at three important points: (1) the reason for bankruptcy, e.g., an inability to work due to bad health, an accident, etc., (2) the type of bankruptcy taken (the chapter) and (3) compensating factors.

Bankruptcy: When a person is declared by a court to be unable to pay her or his debts, that person is in bankruptcy. That person must then turn over any money or properties to a trustee, a person whom the court appoints, for management.

Base line: A surveyor' s term used to show an east-west line.

Base rent: The minimum monthly rent due to the landlord. Typically, it is a fixed amount.

Baseboard: A board that runs along the base of the wall where it meets the floor.

Basement: The space that is below the first floor. Basements are usually wholly or partly below the exterior grade. Basements should be checked for signs of water leakage. Dampness in comers is a sign of moisture problems, and water marks along the base of walls or any cabinets suggest that there is or has been some serious water leakage.

Basis points: A term used in relationship to interest rates. One basis point is equal to 1/100 of 1 percent. Basis points are used to describe the yield of a debt instrument, including mortgages. The difference between 9% and 9.5% is 50 basis points.

Basis: An unadjusted basis is the cost of the property minus the land value. Cost plus capital spent to modify the improvements minus the land value is the adjusted basis. For the purposes of determining capital gain or loss, it is the total cost of the property compared to the sales price minus the costs of the sale.

Basis: The total amount paid for a property, including equity capital and the amount of debt incurred. For a LIHTC project, the initial value that is eligible for tax credits.

Batten: A narrow board normally used to cover a joint or space between boards, often called a batten board.

Baty: The strip of insulation placed between the studs of a wall or joists of a ceiling or floor.

Beam: A load-bearing support that can be made of wood, iron, stone or other strong material.

Bearer bond: A coupon bond payable to the individual who has possession of the bond.

Bedrock: Solid rock for a foundation of a large building.

Bedroom community or suburb: Residential area for commuters who work at a nearby large city or employment center.

Before-tax income: Income used to decide yield from an investment before it becomes taxable to the investor. It is income used in an offering of an investment without regard to the investor's taxable income bracket used in filing income tax returns.

Belly-up: A project, business or venture that has failed is said to have gone belly-up.

Beneficiary: See Deed of Trust.

Billing cycle: The date a bill is sent out and the payment due. Some bills are sent out on the first of the month, some on the fifteenth, some on other dates.

Binder: A preliminary agreement, secured by the payment of earnest money, under which a buyer offers to purchase real estate.

Biweekly mortgages: Mortgage where payments are made every two weeks as opposed to more conventional monthly payments. Biweekly mortgages can be offered in any mortgage amount and term, at a given interest rate. Shorter payment intervals accelerate equity through faster amortization that will shorten the loan maturity.

Blacktop: A paving surface usually made of asphalt.

Blanket mortgage: A single mortgage used to secure a debt for money loaned on several properties such as the lots a builder owns in a subdivision. It is important for the borrower (mortgagor) to ask for a partial release clause in the blanket mortgage. A partial release clause will release each lot that is sold for a stated amount that is a portion of the entire debt. Without a partial release clause, the entire debt
l have to be paid before the mortgage is released.

Blanket mortgage: Mortgage lien secured by two or more property parcels.

Blended rate: (1) A first-mortgage lender can use a blended rate in an advertisement to induce mortgagors to refinance and pay off their old low-interest-rate first mortgage. The first-mortgage lender could offer a 10% interest loan as compared to the going rate of 12% if the mortgagor will refinance the existing mortgage that is at 8 percent. (2) A second-mortgage lender or a wraparound lender will advertise not to pay off the old mortgage with the low rate and short term remaining, but instead, to place a second mortgage or wraparound loan behind the first and have a blended rate below market interest rates for first-mortgage loans.

Blighted area: Usually an inner city area where property values are falling and buildings are deteriorating.

Blockbusting: An illegal practice of promoting panic-selling in an all-white neighborhood because someone of a minority or ethnic background has moved into or is said to be moving into the neighborhood. The blockbuster will try to gain illegally from depressed prices either by buying or listing the properties at far below market values.

Blueprint: An architect's or designer's detailed plan for a building. If you remodel your house, you will probably need a blueprint.

Board and batten: Siding with batten boards nailed over cracks between wider boards.

Board foot: A piece of wood that is one foot square by one inch thick; 144 cubic inches = l'x l'x 1".

Board of adjustment: A government body that hears appeals concerning zoning matters. A Board of Adjustment can grant zoning variances.

Board of equalization: A government body that hears appeals concerning real estate tax assessments. If a property owner thinks the assessment is too high, they can appeal to the Board of Equalization. This board can lower assessments, causing a lower real estate tax.

Board of realtors�: The local association of REALTORS� who belong to the State and National Association of Realtors.�

Board of review: See Board Of Equalization.

Boilerplating: Standard language found in contracts, deeds or deeds of trust, and in covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs).

Bona fide: Genuine; sincere; in good faith. The term can be used in a sentence such as, "this is a bona fide offer to purchase your real estate."

Bond value: The mortgage bond's cash flow (or underlying collateral) that upholds the value of the bond. The mortgage bond's value is restricted to the mortgage loan's unpaid balance.

Bond: A formal certificate that evidences a debt and outlines the terms. It is a formal promise to pay a lender a specified sum of money at a future date -- with or without collateral. The promise must be in writing and signed and sealed by the maker (borrower). The balance owed is paid on a future date with a series of interest payments in the interval.

Bond-type security: An investment security, especially a mortgage-based one, that has the characteristics of a typical corporate bond, including a long-term, fixed rate of return and repayment of principal at maturity.

Book value: An accounting term used to show the value of a business as a whole or particular asset, such as real estate. You show the value by accounting records that give the cost of the assets plus any improvement minus depreciation. It is the value of an asset. Depending on the reason for valuation, book value may be marked down for a distress sale, but it is normally never marked up to reflect an increase in value.

Boot: Cash or other non-real-estate assets exchanged for real property.

Boot: Something of value given to even the exchange of like properties. For example, if parcel A is worth $100,000 and is exchanged for parcel B (worth $80,000) and $20,000 in cash, the boot is the $20,000 in cash.

Boring test: Using samples obtained by boring deep holes in the ground to decide the strength of the subsoil for construction purposes.

Borough: A section of a city, similar to an incorporated village, that has control over local matters. New York City has five boroughs.

Boti'om land: Low land situated near a body of water.

Bottom line: A phrase that means the net result, such as after-tax cash flow, or the final consequence.

Bracing: Placing boards between floor or ceiling joists to prevent them from twisting.

Breach of contract: Failure to perform according to the terms of a contract. The party who has not breached the contract can rescind the agreement and sue for damages or for performance.

Breach of trust: Abuse of the responsibilities or authority as set forth in a trust agreement.

Break-even cash ratio: Equalization of the ratio of operating expense plus debt service to gross income (1:1.) Interpreted as the occupancy level that must be achieved to break even.

Break-even point: A point when gross income will cover operating expenses and the debt service.

Breakpoint: The Sales threshold over which percentage rent is due.

Bridge financing or bridge loan: Short-term mortgage financing between the end of one loan or financing instrument and the beginning of another.

British Thermal Unit (BTU): A unit used to measure the efficiency or capacity of heating or cooling systems. A unit of heat required to raise one pound of water One degree Fahrenheit at sea level.

BTU: See British Thermal Unit.

Buffer strip or zone: Land between two areas of different use, such as commercial and residential.

Builder's risk insurance: Insurance used to protect builders against fire and special risks while they have buildings under construction.

Building code: Local and State Laws that set minimum construction standards.

Building line or setback: Distances from the ends and/or sides of the lot beyond which construction may not extend. The building line may be established by a filed plat of subdivision, by restrictive covenants in deeds or leases, by building codes, or by zoning ordinances.

Building permit: A written permit that must be purchased from the local government by anyone doing remodeling or rehabbing work on a property.

Buydown: With a buydown, the seller or borrower pays an amount to the lender so that the lender can offer a lower rate and lower payments, during the earlier portion of the loan term. If the seller pays, he may increase the sales price to cover the cost of the buydown. Buydowns can occur in all types of mortgages; fixed rate, interim fixed and adjustables.

Buyer's agent: A real estate agent who works for the buyer of a house, not the seller.  ¶ 6:29 PM 0 comments