Owning a home in Cherry Hill

From the windows of her Cherry Hill townhouse, 74-year-old Deborah Harris can see the public housing complex where she and her five siblings spent part of their childhood.

Harris has called the South Baltimore neighborhood home for more than six decades, and for about half that she has been a proud homeowner in the community of her youth.

“This was the first home I owned,” Harris said as she sat in her red leather sectional, surrounded by family photos. “I’m the only person that lived here, and I’m comfortable.”

Baltimore’s thousands of abandoned homes and empty lots make neighborhood blocks look like smiles with decayed and missing teeth. Vacants are frequently in the news as Mayor Brandon Scott and Gov. Wes Moore pledge to tackle a problem that stretches back generations.

But some of the same places that struggle are home to pillars of their communities — men and women who have lived in and loved their neighborhoods for decades.

There are at least 129,000 homeowners in Baltimore, and a third of them have been in their residences for 20 or more years, according to a Baltimore Banner analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Longtime homeowners tend to be older, Black and women, the analysis found.

Link in bio to read more.

Article by Jasmine Vaughn-Hall.
Video by Krishna Sharma.

#maryland #baltimore

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