“Growing Up Baltimore:” Local Youth Battling Unforgiving Economic Factors

In the narrow 800 block of North Rose Street in East Baltimore, a couple of dozen young black men are milling in front of two rowhouses waiting for the Rose Street Center to open. the Center, IS a community outreach program that works with the most marginalized members of the city –

“Without an education, it ain’t too far that you can go.”

“Dwayne,” is a 21-year-old father of two young children, who dropped out of school at 16. After “hustling” on the streets and several run-ins with the law, he’s taking classes towards earning a GED.

“Quentin,” a 19-year-old also with prior arrests, says he can only find occasional temporary work..

“Ain’t much jobs around here gonna accept an ex-offender, or a person that got felonies on their back.”

Tony Martin, a youth counselor at Rose Street, just 24-years-old himself, says those who don’t face the same tough choices as these young men…shouldn’t judge them unfairly. They’re facing long odds not only to find a job, but also to avoid ending up in a coffin, at the March Funeral Home, down the street.

“Some of ‘em is gonna be at March Funeral Home. And the rest of us are gonna be out here just like zombies. Any means necessary, gotta survive.”

Across the room from “Dwayne,” a 20-year-old, who wouldn’t give his last name, says survival is the name of HIS game.  He has two children and provides for them by “trapping” or dealing drugs.

“I’m a do me. You feel me? As far as the streets, I got to keep money in my pocket and make sure my family good, for real. I just turned to the block, even though I don’t want to be out here. But that’s what’s supporting me right now and keeping money in my pocket, making sure my family good and got something to eat, and stuff like that.”

Dwayne says he’s still hoping to land a regular job later.

Since 1970, Baltimore has lost 84 percent of its manufacturing jobs, which offered gainful employment to low-skilled workers. Many manufacturing firms either went out of business, or moved elsewhere to areas where corporate taxes and labor costs were lower.

Dwayne says that kind of job and that kind of salary are out of reach of his generation.

“If you was to have the opportunity to have a job, like as far as your parents are concerned, you know, we wouldn’t even be in this boat right now. We’d be all talking about, or trying to make a difference in the community, instead of trying to be part of the community that’s being made up. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it would be nice to have an opportunity like that, though.”

So, is there a way out of this cycle for young Baltimoreans, especially those in poor neighborhoods?

“Though we have fewer industrial jobs, we have more jobs in health services, educational services, medical research, financial services, and many other services categories, including retail and tourism.”

Anirban Basu, an economist and president of the Sage Policy Group, is also a weekly commentator on WYPR.

“The problem is this: the wages and benefits associated with the new jobs are not always up to par with the manufacturing and industrial wages that have been lost. And, so, what you have is a case of stagnant wages, or worse in some cases, and the lack of a benefits package for many folks, including benefits that relate to their retirement. Things like pension, for instance. That’s the real problem here, even more than unemployment is under-employment…”

“I think the solutions are very simple.”

David Miller of the Urban Leadership Institute in Baltimore. Is among those who see promise in what are called Green jobs. These include many jobs in construction… retro-fitting old buildings to make them energy efficient or building new ones.

“We have to begin to look at convincing some employers to come to Baltimore that are in industries that we can actually teach low-skilled people to get in, to things like, maybe, a fiber-optic factory, Green-based jobs, Green-based economy. I think there are some potential employers out there that we might be able to attract to Baltimore. We need to figure it out pretty quickly because we have entire communities of people that need work. And, right now, there is no place for them to work.”

But how do young Baltimoreans, especially those who are disadvantaged, get from “here” to “there?” How do they prepare? And can they be ready?

Often a high school diploma isn’t enough. Green jobs require additional training. and computer skills are a must. Governor Martin O’Malley has supported job training and expanding apprenticeships.

“The governor often talks about growing the middle class. And the pathway to do that, and one of his top priorities is skills development. So, any skills is gonna give you an advantage in the labor market.”

Eric Seleznow is the executive director of the Governor’s Work Force Board. But he says there is no single solution to solving the state or the city’s unemployment woes.

“Green jobs are not today the savior of urban America, or any part of America right now. They can be, they will be. There’s planning, there’s investment, there’s public policy that’s gonna lead to that. But I would say to most people, particularly in cities, is get that education, get something post-secondary. Graduate from high school, get into an apprenticeship. Get into a community college program. Get some sort of certification or degree.”

Dr. Andres Alonso, the CEO of the city’s public school system, agrees that the challenge is to produce the kind of workforce needed to support the city’s current service-based economy, and a possible Green-based economy in the future.

“I mean Baltimore is the epicenter of the medical industry in this country and if we are graduating kids who can not flow into those jobs, you know, we are not doing what we need to do for those kids. There is no question, that there is an amazing amount of work that we need to do in order to fulfill our moral mission.”

There are indications that city schools are turning around, even though they lag behind most suburban school districts in achievement. But, Anirban Basu says good scores on standardized tests and a higher high school graduation rates won’t determine whether young people, will ultimately be successful in becoming part of the work force. The challenge for many young people in Baltimore, setting long-term goals while trying to fulfill immediate needs.

“Today’s graduates have to know how to learn. It is impossible for any educational apparatus, whether it’s the Johns Hopkins University or the Baltimore City public school system to educate a young person for the economy of 2025 or 2030. Those skills are going to be different from the skills needed today. We need to create young people with the capacity and the willingness to learn. And I think, by and large, I think we’re making progress along that dimension. Is it fast enough to raise living standards? That’s not clear at all.”

Raymond Winbush is the director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. He decades of poor performance by an under-funded public school system. has produced, a generation of mostly young black males ill-prepared to find or keep jobs.

“I’ve rarely seen a generation of young black men who don’t know how to work, don’t know how to go about looking for a job, simply don’t understand the labor market. And that doesn’t even count the black men that are exiting out of prison right now, who will be even more crippled by not having a work history.”

“People don’t kind of pay attention to what they call the youth unemployment of the 17 to 21….”

That’s Dunbar Brooks, a demographer for the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, which tracks statistical trends for the city and the six surrounding counties. He warns that if current trends continue, it will only become harder for young people.

“…Well, here’s what happens. If you keep having, and it’s been some years past, the youth unemployment has been 50 percent. If you keep having year after year, high youth unemployment in the 17-to-21-year age group, then they aren’t employed and they don’t enter the job market. And that continues year after year after year, so, you could have generations of men who have never worked.”

But Brooks, who was raised alone by his mother in public housing on the West Side, says it is a mistake to think that the plight of many young people in Baltimore’s poorer neighborhoods is hopeless.

“I don’t think we can write them off. I think we have to find creative ways to work with them. And we’ve got to give them incentives, so they think that they, at some point, it’s better for me to participate in this activity versus this other activity. And that’s not necessarily monetary. Because, yeah, it’s about ‘green,’ but the whole thing about it is, there’s a whole bunch of other things going on in their life that, when they get into illegal activities, that effect them that they probably want to change, OK, beyond the fact of just having money.”

Brooks adds that legitimate employment, with a regular paycheck and benefits, would be a welcome change for youngsters, who daily face violence dealing drugs on the streets.

Poverty stretching over two or three generations compels many Baltimoreans – both young and old — to enter into the illegal economy, which offers them cash. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Smith, a prosecutor for nearly 30 years, says the impact of drug money into the local economy is far-reaching and cannot be limited to poor neighborhoods.

“Until we stop the money, and specifically the facilitators, the girlfriend who signs the lease for the boyfriend, who doesn’t have credit; the mothers, that help  pick out a gun for their son, because he’s a felon and can’t buy a gun for himself; the real estate agents who look the other way; the car dealers that looks the other way. Everybody looks the other way.”

Retired Baltimore City Circuit Judge Ken Johnson says high-priced defense attorneys — many of them former prosecutors — bail bondsmen and companies that operate private prison, are part of the mainstream economic system that relies on recycling young, unskilled and untrained young black men through the criminal justice system.

“Those who own the prisons, of course, those people have to go to the banks to make loans. And the banks make profits by making these loans. And it goes right down the chain.”

Marginalized youths, adds Johnson, are not so much a law enforcement problem, but a valuable economic commodity.

But there’s more to it than just money changing hands from the underground economy to the legitimate economy. There’s an added cost to the public, especially to pay for government services dealing with the real victims – the young men and women entering the criminal justice system.

By the time many young people reach their teens, the costs of intervention to taxpayers – both city and state – increase dramatically, as they enter and are then re-cycled through the criminal justice system.

“If you take a juvenile who has been placed into treatment, a hardcore juvenile probably goes into treatment three or four times – you’re looking at a minimal investment of 150- to 200-thousand dollars.”

That’s Joe Newman, the C-E-O of the Cornerstone Program, a Denver-based drug treatment program. Before that, he was a 23-year veteran of the Baltimore City police, reaching the rank of Colonel, who helped spearhead the city’s war on drugs in the 1980s.  Now, he focuses on helping young kids.

“If they, in fact, continue on a life of crime and spend 20 to 40 years in prison, which isn’t unheard of, you’re looking at 40-thousand dollars-a-year. So, you’re well into the million dollars, and that’s just the cost of incarceration, not the additional costs associated with it. And multiplying that by the number of kids, who continually cycle into that crime pattern, you’re looking at many millions of dollars.”

With fewer businesses, there are fewer taxpayers, but higher property taxes to compensate for their loss. Municipal services have steadily declined in the city, with little relief in sight. Not only has Baltimore lost residents – about a third of its population of 900-thousand since the 1950s – its tax base is now dwarfed by the six surrounding counties. Baltimore City’s 25-billion dollar tax base is 11-billion dollars less than Howard County, which has a third of its population. Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Prince George’s counties – each with a smaller population than Baltimore — all have tax bases more than twice as large. Montgomery County has six times the tax base of Baltimore City.

The city has revised its corporate tax code to include incentives for businesses to move to the city. But much of that investment has been focused on the Inner Harbor and other areas along the waterside, while many of the city’s poorer neighborhoods continue to languish. Without additional revenues – and jobs — there are few prospects that Baltimore can halt its decline and offer its residents, especially its vulnerable young people, a brighter future.

But, he concedes, expanding Baltimore’s boundaries would be largely unpopular in the suburbs, but necessary for the city’s future survival.   Without additional revenues, he adds, the city will be unable to adequately provide the kinds of social services to a population at-risk.

“Baltimore is like, if you look at any demographic – teenage pregnancy – and you put green pins on the map, as they say, Baltimore’s pens are red on almost every demographic that matters, in terms of quality of life. It’s like right in the middle of like a green belt of thriving area, like Howard County. But everything in there, all the quality of life indicators are down.”

 

Raymond Winbush says there is a solution.

“Baltimore has to be able to expand its environment. And I’m talking about a political issue. And nobody wants to talk about that.” IC: “Baltimore should be able to incorporate some of these surrounding cities to increase their tax base.”

Redrawing and expanding Baltimore’s borders in issue that is barely discussed, and an outcome that is improbable, at best. Until a decision is taken, the Baltimore will continue to slowly bleed, a product of the drug trade that continues to draw in more and more of its young people, who see a future without hope.

Juvenile and family services are overstretched, as a parole and probation, the police and the court system – all forced to come up with new ways to do more with smaller budgets. Arrest figures, the number violent crimes, especially murders, have decreased in recent few years, but Baltimore still ranked last year by the FBI as the nation’s second-most violent city.

How much money? Many of these solutions are going to take lots of resources, resources that simply aren’t there, or won’t be, for the children that need them now.

But until there is an investment on the front-end, early interventions, investment in the public schools and hard-hit communities, the economic forces that perpetuate the hopelessness expressed by many of those on the frontlines of Baltimore’s mean streets will only grow.

And hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young Baltimoreans aren’t waiting around for the Green economy to flower, or wasting their time attending school.

This situation has produced a fatalistic ethos among many young, marginalized African-American men and women in Baltimore and across the country, who feel trapped.

“If I don’t feel like I’m gonna live ‘til I’m 21, then there’s no reason for me to get a diploma, ‘cause it’s not gonna make a difference…”

That’s Ted Sutton, a former drug crew enforcer-turned-community activist, who works with many young offenders and ex-offenders throughout the city. He explained the mindset of many of those he counsels.

 

“There’s no reason for me to focus on starting at the ground level, working the fry board in Burger King or at McDonald’s. I need to condense a whole lifetime in a short period of time. So, I need to do it with quick money, a lot of women and things that I feel are showing success for me.”

In Park Heights in Northwest Baltimore, “Louie,” a 15-year-old drug dealer, or “trapper,” said the streets have provided for most of his material needs since he started “trapping” three years ago.

“When you on the ‘trap,’ you making money, you ‘shining.’ Like you got a nice watch on, you got a nice ‘whip,’ fresh shows, haircut on you and everything.”

Young trappers, like “Louie,” can add and subtract. They know they can easily make hundreds and even thousands of dollars in cash working a corners – a lot more than working at a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant. They’ve also sized-up the dangers, like 19-year-old Jay, who concedes that his life may be cut short.

 

“I’m the type of dude who ain’t scared of death. And whatever I do, if involves me getting killed or something like that, it doesn’t scare me. Ain’t nothing scare me. It’s just like,…sometimes, I just wish I was dead, so the world could just go ahead.”

 

I’m Sunni Khalid, reporting in Baltimore, for 88.1, WYPR.

Our series, “Growing Up Baltimore” is made possible, in part, by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence. The findings and conclusions of our series do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of these organizations.

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