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VOL.17, NO.10
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5 0 OCTOBER 2020
More than 125,000 readers throughout Greater Baltimore
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Communities addressing racial justice By Margaret Foster Last June, after four Minneapolis police officers were charged in the murder of an unarmed black man named George Floyd, many Americans became upset by police brutality, particularly against minorities. Some marched in rallies, and others displayed signs on their lawns or windows. At Broadmead, a Life Plan Community in Cockeysville, residents began talking about racial justice. First, the mostly white community’s poetry club decided to read the work of African American poets, such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes — something they had never done before. Then Broadmead’s writing club began penning reflections about their deep-seated views of race. In addition, its book club chose How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi for their next meeting. All of these actions bubbled up from the community, said Jennifer Jimenez Maraña, Broadmead’s director of diversity and inclusion. “The beauty of it is that the initiatives of the residents have been the most powerful,” she said. “We didn’t want divisiveness on race to divide our community.” Since Floyd’s death on May 25, Broadmead has held a daily moment of silence, sometimes accompanied by a prompt for reflection such as, “When did you first become aware of race?” Every week, Maraña hosts a virtual discussion group on Zoom so residents can talk about racial issues. “After one of these conversations, one of the residents said, ‘Wow, this is hard work,’” Maraña said. “It is — because they’re un-learning things…Their eyes are open.” Some residents’ discussions are punctuated by “a-ha moments,” she said, or instances when people say, “Wow, I never realized” how race affects our society. “That reflection, that learning never ends,” Maraña said. “No matter what age we are.”
Trainings for staff At Habitat America, an apartment management firm, staff members are learning more about diversity. This fall some of the apartment management firm’s 428 employees will take training classes such as “Navigate Your Way to
PHOTO COURTESY OF BROADMEAD
The famous program known as Meals
BALTIMORE BEACON — OCTOBER 2020
This year, Dr. Jennifer Jimenez Maraña, Broadmead’s director of diversity and inclusion (right) and June Gee, a resident of Broadmead (left), have had conversations about race and privilege with other residents in the life plan community in Hunt Valley.
Diversity,” according to Maryellen DeLuca, vice president of corporate marketing. “Habitat is offering diversity training throughout the month of September,” DeLuca said, noting that she will also be taking one of the courses. The properties in Habitat America’s portfolio include senior living and multifamily communities, both luxury and affordable. The company manages properties in Baltimore County and Baltimore City, which is 60% black, as well as in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The diversity classes are taught by the Institute of Real Estate Management and the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers. Those housing organizations say they are “committed” to diversity and inclusion initiatives. These initiatives contrast with many housing practices in the 20th century.
From 1938 until the late 1960s, the Federal Housing Administration actually mandated that developers’ property deeds include “restrictive covenants” preventing nonwhite people from buying or renting houses in certain neighborhoods. The FHA noted that these restrictions include “prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended.” It was common practice from Levittown, New York, to Oakland, California for property deeds to include a clause prohibiting owners from selling to non-white people. In addition, the Federal Housing Authority declined to back loans for people in black neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining. Although these policies have been deemed unconstitutional and have been eliminated, their ef fects have shaped some neighborhoods even until today.
Living together, getting along In Hampden, a predominantly white Baltimore neighborhood, two high-rise apartment buildings stand as a symbol of hope. There, black, white, Hispanic and Asian residents live together in relative peace, said Arthur Ruby, property manager of St. Mary’s Roland View Towers. “We’re a very mixed population, with people from literally all over the world,” Ruby said. “When we have people that don’t get along, it’s not for racial reasons.” St. Mary’s Roland View Towers has 360 apartments for people age 55 and up. Hampden attracted notoriety in 1988, when a black family’s house was vandalized repeatedly after they bought a home in the 99% white neighborhood. So far at St. Mary’s Roland View Towers, racial injustice is “something in the news, it’s not something that’s here,” Ruby said. “That’s just the way it is here.”
SEE SPECIAL INSERT Housing & Homecare Options following page 12 BORROWED BLUE PHOTOGRAPHY
World War II roots
PHOTO BY MEALS ON WHEELS OF CENTRAL MARYLAND, INC.
By Robert Friedman For the past seven years, Julia Murray has received several home-cooked meals delivered straight to her doorstep each week. Murray, 79, a retired nurse who suffers from arthritis and asthma, said that getting her food delivered at home by Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland “keeps me out of assisted living or a nursing home.” The pandemic has made the organization change its deliveries from two meals a day — one hot, one frozen — to a once-aweek drop-off of 14 frozen meals. Despite the change, the program “still ‘forces’ me to eat a balanced diet,” Murray said. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the food has not diminished in quality and quantity one bit. I don’t know how they do it; it’s a miracle.” The pandemic brought “rapid and significant changes” to the program last spring, according to the organization’s executive director, Stephanie Archer-Smith. Requests for services from Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland tripled from 25,000 a week to 75,000. Delivered meals are provided to those who cannot shop and cook for themselves, regardless of age (though the vast majority are older adults). Recipients are asked to pay a modest fee based on a sliding scale. “Every day we were getting more and more calls from people saying, ‘Can you help us?’” With senior centers closed and shelter-in-place orders, she said, “seniors were more vulnerable.” Archer-Smith never considered failure. “For me, it wasn’t about if we could still do it, but how we could do it.” Her staff geared up for greater production, churning out boxed frozen meals instead of the usual hot and cold offerings. Because packing meals became more labor-intensive, many newly recruited volunteers worked shifts from before sunrise to after sunset. In addition to now weekly deliveries of meals outside the clients’ doors, the organization also calls clients a couple of times a week to make sure everything is relatively copacetic.
I N S I D E …
ARTS & STYLE Stephanie Archer-Smith, executive director of Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland, packs food in the group’s Baltimore warehouse. Her volunteers and staff are working overtime during the pandemic to meet the needs of an increasing number of Marylanders who cannot shop or cook for themselves.
on Wheels got its start in the United Kingdom during the early 1940s. Nazi Germany’s “Blitz” bombing of English cities destroyed many people’s homes and therefore the ability to cook their own food. In response, a group called the Women’s Volunteer Service for Civil Defense provided food for them. The first U.S. home-delivered meal program began in Philadelphia, in January 1954. Margaret Toy, a social worker in Philadelphia’s Lighthouse Community Center, pioneered a program to provide food that met the dietary needs of homebound seniors and other “shut-ins” in the area.
The spread of COVID-19 resulted in Vince Bittinger being laid off from his administration job in finance at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “I couldn’t just sit around at home with nothing to do,” said Bittinger, 58, a resident of Dundalk. So, since late April, while “looking like mad for another job,” he has also volunteered for Meals on Wheels. He goes two or three days a week to the “kitchen” in Baltimore, picking up food prepared there, packing it into his Chevy Captiva SUV, and making eight or nine deliveries a day to the program’s mostly aging residents of the area.
Volunteers step up; more needed Today’s volunteers are no less heroic.
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Former Pratt librarian’s dream comes true with publication of her children’s book about a windy rescue at Rehoboth page 20 FITNESS & HEALTH 4 k A blood test to detect Alzheimer’s k Tips for online dating LAW & MONEY 13 k Beware of Beirut & other scams LEISURE & TRAVEL k Bucket list adventures
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