The McElderry Park is an East Baltimore neighborhood is a community of 3,700 residents developed in the late 1800s for working class families. The area includes Northeast Market, East Monument Main Street District, and Johns Hopkins Broadway medical campuses as amenities. The neighborhood has an active community association, affordable housing, public art, community-managed green spaces, and two public schools.
Since 1990, McElderry Park has lost nearly 4,000 residents, resulting in declining homeownership and increasing vacancy. Just 25% of the households are owner occupied, as compared to 52% on average for the city. However, the homeownership rate was nearly 46% in 2000, meaning that the neighborhood has lost a significant number of homeowners, and a majority of them Black homeowners.
The Milton-McElderry-Fayette Area Plan (MMF Plan), adopted in 2006, guides the revitalization of the McElderry Park neighborhood. The MMF Plan set a vision of creating “a mixed-income neighborhood, one that has a healthy mix of ownership and rental housing, and one that has enough affordable housing to accommodate current residents who wish to remain in the neighborhood over time,” and recommended the community develop a housing strategy.
Community partners are deeply invested in taking action to address the declining homeownership rate, with the goal of creating homeownership opportunities for current residents. The three main community partners involved in this effort are McElderry Park Community Association, Charm City Land Trusts, and Southeast Community Development Corporation.
The McElderry Park Homeownership Plan, developed in 2024, outlines the community’s housing strategy. Click the image below to read the plan!
McElderry Park Homeownership Plan reviewers:
- Cheryl Bryant (Charm City Land Trusts)
- Pastor Gary Dittman (Amazing Grace Lutheran Church)
- David Harris (McElderry Park Community Association)
- Melissa Canady (McElderry Park Community Association)
- Solomon Simmons (resident)
- Harriet Alexander (resident)
- Audrey DeWitt (resident)
- Ali Morris (Southeast CDC)
- Molly McCullagh (Southeast CDC)