The With Us For Us Coalition wants a future Baltimore City where all neighborhoods are safe, healthy, thriving – and funded by the property taxes of large hospitals and universities.
The group of over 20 Maryland-based organizations drew a sizable crowd to the gathering at Red Emma’s Wednesday night to host a public panel and collect signatures for their community wealth fund initiative.
Community wealth funds “turn traditional economic development on its head, and create more inclusive and sustainable economies that are really focused on locally-rooted and broadly-held ownership,” said Loraine Arikat, senior policy analyst at 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
Ten thousand Baltimore city residents need to sign a petition in support of the initiative to secure a spot on the November 2024 ballot. If passed, large “anchor institutions” like Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland would be required to contribute a higher share of the property taxes they’ve been exempt from since 2010.
PILOT – an acronym for “payment in lieu of taxes” – currently allows 15 hospitals and universities in Baltimore to collectively pay only $6 million each year, instead of the $110 million they would otherwise owe, the coalition says. The arrangement, run by the Baltimore City government, is up for renewal in 2026.
“When we think about our problems in the city, it really comes back to the long history of racism, and policies and decisions that have been made intentionally, by design to continue segregation,” Arikat said. “And so when we call on these institutions to pay their fair share, it's really making sure that they are actually investing in our communities, and that we have a say in how those funds are being used.”
The funds would be directly allocated to programs like daycares, housing cooperatives, and recreation centers, Arikat said, all run by community leaders.
“They're building relationships with people on the ground,” she said. “They're building community leaders. They're focusing on healing, justice and trauma healing. They're focused on building worker power, and also expanding community control of land and decision making.”
The community fund would be run by a 15-person commission of Baltimore City residents, including the mayor and administrators in housing and development. But the majority of seats would be reserved for worker-owned businesses and unionized employees of hospitals and universities, Arikat said.
“We want to make sure that there is a representative group of people that is deciding how the funds should be implemented, to make sure that we're keeping racial justice and reparations at the forefront,” she said.
Raychel Gadson, development coordinator for the South Baltimore Community Land Trust and a PhD student at Johns Hopkins University, said giving community members the money to enact change is key.
“Being able to actually direct funds directly into community members' hands, into stabilizing people where they are…means that people will get to create the improvement that they want to see,” she said.
Sandy Peeples, an organizer for Teachers and Researchers United, Johns Hopkins’ graduate student workers union, said the only way to gain that power is by taking it.
“The institutions don't want the same things we want,” Peeples said. “My paycheck comes from Hopkins. And I know that my community isn't safer from what Hopkins wants. The only alternative to that is building sources of power, to take what we need, and force Hopkins and other anchor institutions to cede power, to cede ground by taking it.”
Wednesday’s panelists, like Peeples and Gadson, were all community organizers in different aspects and areas of the city. And they all know what they would do with the community wealth fund money.
Marisela Gomez, founder of the East Baltimore nonprofit Village of Love and Resistance, said she would expand opportunities for healing and compensation for grassroots advocates. Tisha Gunthrie, a community organizer and local therapist, hopes the funds would go towards expanding childcare access.
Peeples said the possibilities for funding are endless.
“I was thinking about beautiful, expansive, timely public transit. I was thinking about community safety,” they said. “I was thinking about what it'd be like to live in neighborhoods that could thrive in a million different ways and all be provided for and not divested from.”
Ethan Eblaghie, a Baltimore Student Union (BSU) representative and senior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, encouraged young voters to join the cause.
“There are a good half a dozen BSU members that are headed to Hopkins next year. And we know that not only are we the next generation of voters, we're also the next generation of university students, of workers within the labor force here in the city,” he said. “And ultimately, we are going to be the ones that are most at risk if our communities aren't invested in in the future.”
