“There’s money to be made in community”: Real estate developers, community organizing, and profit-making in a shrinking city

ABSTRACT

Ethnographic studies of neighborhood change have painted vivid portraits of the conflicts between new and legacy residents over norms, power, and resources. These findings, however, are out of sync with shrinking cities where gentrification and revitalization are inexorably intertwined. In particular, they neglect the expanded role of supply-side actors in molding the social life of changing communities. This article uses ethnographic data combined with 72 interviews with developers, landlords, and residents in a Baltimore neighborhood undergoing unprecedented levels of reinvestment. In a context where neighborhood change is driven primarily through public–private partnerships, we find that for-profit actors invest well beyond bricks and mortar and into arenas typically reserved for the government and nonprofit sectors. In our case, developers organize community events, take over or replicate existing community organizations, and monopolize online organizing tools. Though these activities are designed ultimately to serve the interests of developers, we argue for a more dialectical relationship: whereas the state becomes increasingly reliant on private firms for neighborhood revitalization, those firms become increasingly reliant on the best practices of community organizing for profit-making.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Elaine Carpenter for her invaluable research assistance with the preparation of this article. Members of the JHU Poverty and Inequality Research Lab, specifically Stefanie DeLuca, Kathryn Edin, Tim Nelson, Eva Rosen, and Rachel Butler, provided detailed and helpful comments. The authors further acknowledge Christina Ambrosino, Brianna Bueltmann, Mollie Cueva-Dabkoski, Darriel Harris, Lily Kairis, Freddie McCall, Mia Monkovic, Deirdre Powell, Ben Schwartz, and Will Shefelman for assistance with data collection and coding.

Notes

1. Following common practice, we aligned the neighborhoods defined by Baltimore’s Department of Planning with 20 census block groups to facilitate historical data analysis.

2. In the Baltimore context, an abandoned property is one that is currently uninhabitable. In most cases, they have been boarded up by the Office of Code Enforcement. We were not able to observe whether a property was unoccupied (vacant in census terminology). Similarly, the “renovated” determination was based on signs of exterior renovation. We also noted vacant lots and commercial structures.

3. Author’s tabulation from administrative data provided by Baltimore’s Department of Code Enforcement.

4. This number is fairly fluid depending on funds availability; $2,000 of the subsidy comes from Baltimore as part of a citywide Live Near Your Work program. The remainder is provided by the university.

5. A corner coffee shop recently opened to great fanfare within the developer community.

6. This figure was calculated from administrative data on all sales prices in the neighborhood including investor sales and non-arms-length transactions. Sales of less than $5,000 or more than $1,000,000 are excluded. Figure is reported in 2017 U.S. dollars.

7. Houses on the corner—in other words, at the end of a set of row houses—are generally more valuable given that they have an additional wall of windows.

8. The figures Roger uses in this quote are purely illustrative. But they are largely in alignment with typical sales in the community.

9. Here and throughout, we report the perspectives of developers to illustrate the beliefs that motivate their behavior, not as evidence to support their claims. Like many supply-side actors, developers rely on folk theories of collective action.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Johns Hopkins University Office of the President.

Notes on contributors

Philip Garboden

Philip M. E. Garboden is a doctoral student in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His work examines how housing policy impacts the lives of poor families. His work has been published in City & Community, Housing Policy Debate, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Cityscape. He holds an MPP from Johns Hopkins University.

Christine Jang-Trettien

Christine Jang-Trettien is a doctoral student in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research examines urban sociology, economic sociology, social inequality, and public policy. She is currently managing a large-scale, longitudinal study on neighborhood revitalization in Baltimore. She holds an MA from Columbia University.