Our Mission

In 2019, we became aware that low-wage healthcare workers in the Southwest Partnership footprint - which encompasses the University of Maryland Medical Center ecosystem - have a hard time finding affordable housing near their work, and many of them are single mothers. This launched our quest to redevelop properties to address this housing gap and we soon received the support of the Union Square Association and its residents.

Because we are working to rehabilitate a formerly redlined commercial corridor in the “Black Butterfly”, our approach is to restore the social and cultural rather than the built environment only. For this reason, we co-create with the community.

To this extent, our projects usually call for a provision of amenities that are lacking in our beautiful yet underinvested communities. These amenities tend to be of a commercial or retail nature. For example, our current 5-story new construction on W Baltimore St will offer a teen makerspace with a 3D printer on the ground floor after community members lamented the lack of productive and creative outlets in the neighborhood for their teenagers.

Concurrently with the built activities, we work with the community to develop the cultural, political, and socioeconomic dimensions of our projects. Spatial justice, the notion of who gets to be represented in a space, cannot be ignored in this 21st century. For example, the fenestration of our building at 1401-1403 W Baltimore St elegantly incorporates motifs of the Ndop fabrics of Cameroon and Kente fabrics of Ghana as a celebration of the multiculturalism of our community. Through our participatory model, we ensure that our projects maintain the community’s diversity.

We collaborate with our architects at Gensler to design buildings that reflect the cultural diversity that makes the strength of our communities.

Ndop fabric of Cameroon