What’s happening?
Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby is asking Mayor Brandon Scott to allocate $200 million of the city’s $641 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act for a new legislative package called “House Baltimore.”
What does the plan include?
The first phase of the plan includes bringing back Baltimore’s $1 housing program, providing grants up to $25,000 to help residents cover emergency fixes, and giving $5,000 grants to seniors facing foreclosure due to predatory reverse mortgages. In the second phase, officials will offer rent subsidies, make changes to the city’s inclusionary housing law, and expand city tax credits for entrepreneurs and people with college debt so they can buy homes in the city.
Anything else I should know?
Regarding the plan’s impact, Mosby said, “The communities that will benefit are the very ones hurt by redlining and modern-day subprime loans, the ones ignored for decades while the city steered money and good fortune away from East and West Baltimore… the communities we want to target are the exact same places where the census shows we’ve suffered so much of our population loss.”
You can read more here.
