Sandtown
A community in transformation

By Karen Free

Baltimore, Md., often called the "Monumental City" because of its many historic monuments and buildings, is home to the oldest Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States, the nation's first railway station, and the site that inspired the writing of "The Star Spangled Banner." Located just 10 miles north of the Chesapeake Bay on the Patapsco River, Baltimore is primarily an industrial and commercial center known for steel-making, shipbuilding, sugar refining and other food processing.

But there is another Baltimore, the Sandtown area of the city's west side. A historically black inner-city area, its name is derived from the trails of sand that dropped from wagons leaving town after filling up at the local sand and gravel quarry. But wagons weren't the only things headed out of town.

"Sandtown used to be a thriving community," explains LaVerne Stokes, a life-long resident and co-executive director of Sandtown HFH. "Everybody worked. It had a bakery, factories, movie theaters. Billie Holliday was born here, and the Royal Theater was the premier stop -- second only to the Apollo -- for all the jazz greats. After the rioting in the '60s, a lot of people left. Things began to go downhill from there."

She's right: According to U.S. Census figures, Baltimore's population declined from a high of 950,000 in 1950; to 906,000 in 1970; to 787,000 in 1980; to 736,000 in 1990. The mass exodus was a result of civil rights-related rioting across the Bay in nearby Cambridge, Md., in 1967, which quickly spread throughout black inner-city neighborhoods.

That year, Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown told a crowd: "It's time for Cambridge to explode, baby. Black folks built America, and if America don't come around, we're going to burn America down."

The next morning, a fire had consumed two entire city blocks as well as a school.

But the people of Sandtown, according to Stokes and others, have always had a deep sense of community, and while many moved out, many chose to stay -- even though staying meant living within a 72-block area of dilapidated, vacated row houses, and lacking the political and financial clout to rebuild their community.

In 1987, a wheelchair rolled onto Sandtown's streets. In it sat Allan Tibbels, a quadriplegic who, along with his wife, Susan, their two young daughters and a seminary graduate friend, Mark Gornik, had made a deliberate decision to relocate from the suburbs to Sandtown. Theirs was a desire to live out the principles of the John Perkins model of Christian community development, which calls for sharing the gospel with others through evangelism, social action, economic development and justice. It's done by following a process of relocation (living among the poor), reconciliation and redistribution (of skills, education and resources so as to empower the community of need).

By all accounts, it was an oddity for white people to be in Sandtown. Skepticism ran high: Many thought they were undercover police officers. For two years, the Tibbels and Gornik worked to build relationships with members of the community. Tibbels quickly realized the "tremendous base of assets" contained within the community of Sandtown. What it lacked was physical and economic resources.

It was the establishment of New Song Community Church in 1988, which began in the living room of Gornik's house, which has proven to be the catalyst for positive change in the past decade in Sandtown. "Sandtown still has a rich sense of community," explains Tibbels, co-executive director of Sandtown HFH. "People live in close proximity to each other; they know each other, care about each other, and watch out for each other. They share each other's joys, celebrations and triumphs, and at the same time, each other's pain, strength and burdens," he says. After establishing the interracial church and gaining acceptance in the community, Tibbels and Gornik learned that the most important issue to Sandtown residents was decent housing. With the help of upwards of 10,000 volunteers a year, an annual blitz-build week, and the can-do attitude of many, the community has built or completely gutted and rebuilt nearly 200 of the more than 600 row houses, including the new construction of 27 houses. "The houses that were condemned aren't condemned anymore," says Tibbels. "Sandtown HFH has set as its focus the renewal of a 15-block area and it's just about accomplished that. Work will radiate out from there, until all these houses are decent once again."

New Song Ministries Defined New Song Community Church, an interracial congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Sandtown Habitat for Humanity. New Song Community Learning Center, a public and private partnership for elementary and middle school grades. New Song Family Health Services, offering primary care for infants, children and adults. EDEN Jobs, offering job readiness and placement, job counseling and career development. New Song Arts and Media, sharing community arts development through Sandtown Children of Praise choir. Newborn Holistic Ministries, offering a transitional recovery house for women.

With New Song Community Church firmly anchored in the community, followed by the establishment in 1989 of Sandtown HFH to address housing concerns, the community began identifying other needs. In 1991, New Song Community Learning Center was established. It houses a daycare program for 3- and 4-year-olds, an after-school program for fourth and fifth graders, and a public school for grades K-3 as well as sixth, seventh and eighth grades. In December 1999, ground was broken on a $4.2 million development project, which will see the construction of a new school large enough to house grades K-12 as well as a community center.

In 1991, in partnership with nearby Mercy Medical Center, New Song Family Health Services began providing primary health care services on a sliding fee scale for infants, children and adults in the Sandtown community. Two years later, EDEN Jobs (Economic Development Employment Network) became operational. It offers job search assistance and placement for unemployed community residents; to date, it has placed nearly 500 people.

To be sure, Sandtown HFH cannot -- and does not -- take credit for all the community development offshoot programs that are meeting the needs of the community. But it is empowering families who choose to stay in Sandtown to do so -- people like Antoine Bennett, for example. The 29-year- old has lived in the Sandtown area of West Baltimore all of his life. Today, he is a Habitat homeowner and he holds down a full-time job as a financial counselor at the health center.

It's Bennett's life experiences that help those who have never been through Sandtown understand its transformation. Bennett lives on a street in a 15-block area that has been the focus of Sandtown HFH's work since 1989 -- the year Bennett, then 18, went to prison. He was born there, he grew up there, and his parents met one block over.

"Allan Tibbels was the first white guy I ever saw up close," says Bennett. "I knew he was a Christian because of his disposition and the things he would say. And my cousin, Fitt, got to know him and spoke real fondly of him."

Fitt often visited his cousin in prison. As his release date approached in 1993, Fitt had some news for Antoine.

"He said, 'Man, you ain't gonna recognize the neighborhood when you get home,' and he was right," says Bennett. "The day I got out of jail there was a snowstorm; between the snow and the changes, I couldn't recognize my own neighborhood. I had to go to a phone booth and call for help."

In 1996, Bennett qualified for a Habitat house. It took him nearly two years to complete his required 430 hours of "sweat equity." "I used to say to myself, 'Is it really worth it? I can rent a house that's just as good.' But owning this house has managed to bring my family together. The cookouts, the parties, the Sunday dinners -- they're in Sandtown now. I love it when I hear someone say 'I'm going to Antoine's house.' "


Karen Free is associate editor of Habitat World.



Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, June/July 2000.
This article may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
©2000 Habitat for Humanity International