"There's a Lot of Good in This 'hood"
By Karen Free

Side streets in Sandtown double as playgrounds and basketball courts.

Eleven years after hanging out its shingle in West Baltimore, Sandtown HFH's achievements are adding up. Nearly 200 row houses, including 27 new construction units, have been built. It has a staff of 20, a thriving family partner committee, a busy construction committee and crew, and an interconnectedness with the community that is unstoppable. It also has a firmly established relationship with The Enterprise Foundation, a Baltimore-based nonprofit group that has provided financing for 50 percent of development and construction costs for each home. It seems everyone has something to say about the growing sense of community in Sandtown.

"We're a stronger bank when there are residents who stay in the community and do business in the community, obviously," says Rahn Barnes, Community Reinvestment Act officer with Provident Bank of Maryland. "But the partnership the bank has with Sandtown HFH is one of its strongest, going back to the 1992 Jimmy Carter Work Project here in Baltimore."

Habitat homewoner Antoine Bennett lives on Leslie Street, where 27 new row houses have been built in partnership with The Enterprise Foundation.

At the Mayor's office, community coordinator Richard Burton, who lives in Sandtown, says when he travels through streets where Sandtown HFH has renovated houses, "you can just feel it when you drive through the area. There's a sense of pride; there's hope. The way Habitat for Humanity works to eradicate the stereotype that people don't care [about improving their shelter situations] is one of its best-kept secrets," says Burton. "You just don't see the same mentality among Habitat homeowners. They've reprogrammed themselves -- they're thinking differently and doing things differently. In order to do what Habitat is doing, you must go into it with passion and an overall sense of wanting to see people moved forward."

Make no mistake about it: Life in Sandtown is an uphill battle every day. Wall graffiti declares the names of people shot and killed on various street corners; drugs, violence, poverty, unemployment and a sense of aimlessness are fierce realities.

But 47-year-old LaVerne Stokes, co-executive director of Sandtown HFH, a Habitat homeowner, and a life-long resident of Sandtown, corrects: "Although Sandtown is one of the most forgotten parts of Baltimore, God has never forgotten us. We have a richness here. You will never see homelessness in Sandtown. People here have a wealth and depth of love," she says. "There's a lot of pain and struggle, but there's also good, right here in the 'hood."





Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, April/May 2000.
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©2000 Habitat for Humanity International