Reflecting on Resources

While both of my projects this summer are based in mapping, the sources I’m using to carry out these efforts are distinctly different.

My main project with Right to the City and Homes for All centers around mapping the current state of the land and housing movement as told by HFA’s member organizations, which in turn will inform the 10 year organizing strategy which staff and members will work on during the Homes For All  Renter Power assembly later in July. Instead of pulling from a pre-existing set of data, we’re collecting the information from our member organizations through a Google Form census. The survey covers a wide range of topics, addressing current and upcoming campaigns, successful tactics and weaknesses in infrastructure, finances, and more.  

Although the survey is rather long, most of the information relevant to the visualizations I’ll be creating (types of campaigns being run, resource needs, etc.) is pretty easy for members to compile. But the last section, which covers the demographics of the organization’s membership, leadership, and staff based on race/ethnicity, gender identity, socioeconomic class, languages spoken, and disability, has proven to be the hardest for members to complete, as it requires information they likely haven’t kept track of. Since it’s important for RTC/HFA to have this demographic information as a non-profit, we’ve asked members to at the very least provide estimates for each section, with the option of editing their submissions once they’ve collected all necessary information. This has made it slightly easier for people to fill out the form. Additionally, we’ve been pulling campaign-related information from a survey around rent control that HFA and one of its member groups were distributing concurrent to mine.

In total, the we received over 40 responses ahead of the assembly, which provided us with a snapshot of the movement that we were able to turn into compelling visualizations about the number of HFA-supported tenant unions,the themes of active and future campaigns being run by local groups, and more. In addition to encouraging people to fill out the online survey, the facilitators allotted time during the program for members to participate in a collective mapping of their groups’ key victories, type of active campaign, and size of member base in preparation for the 10-year strategy development. This project, as well as a similar one conducted the night before which captured victories of groups between April 2016 up to June 2018, really helped members understand their power, both within their respective group as well as the larger HFA network. As they added their own post-it notes to the clusters growing around each city, it became evident that every little action that happens at the local level has been building up to something greater than they might have initially realized. Members seemed to find both really helpful, so I’m looking forward to having more complete datasets to provide members with resources that more clearly map their impact. In addition to building off of the work that I’ve already started, I’m looking forward to creating a story map that focuses on the human side of my data– the victories, the anecdotes, the people, the things that HFA/RTC haven’t been able to capture alongside statistics.

My side research project uses maps created on ArcGIS to historicize Baltimore’s current state and reveal the ways in which the municipal government is repeating the same mistakes made in the past and continue to put black Baltimoreans at a disadvantage. This topic is quite close to my heart as a resident of the suburbs and the daughter of a city native who, during the 2015 uprising, realized that many of my white classmates from the county, let alone the entire country, had a very narrow understanding not only of the events which led to initial pushback, but of the generational trauma to which black Baltimoreans have been subjected, viewing them as “thugs” rather than citizens who have been left behind by the system. I’ve made it one of my life missions to reverse the effects of one-sided CNN coverage and The Wire, to provide people an opportunity to view the city I love and the people who inhabit it from an angle more aware of the city’s long history of discriminatory practices which continue to define the lives of its black citizens, as well as what changes can be made to improve conditions for all. As a result, I’ve done much research on this in the past and have plenty of resources that offer the historical background, like “The Hero’s Fight: African Americans in West Baltimore and the Shadow of the State” by Patricia Fernández-Kelly, Rat Film, and various scholarly articles.

Screenshot from Baltimore’s Open Data platform.

While these resources have helped inform the direction I’d like to go with my project, I’ve also turned to reports produced by the Baltimore Housing Roundtable (a Right to the City/ Homes For All member organization), as well as data on evictions/vacancies and municipal development from Baltimore City government’s Open Data program to provide the substance with which I’m populating my maps. There is some concern on my end as to how up to date/ accurate the datasets provided on the platform are, as in the past I’ve encountered datasets were supposed to accurately reflect Baltimore Police Department’s interactions with its citizens which I felt concealed the reality of the situation. Yet for the most part, the sets I’ve been using seem to be correct and reflect the hardships faced by residents of neighborhoods that have been systematically deprived of resources. Additionally, I’ve been using University of Wisconsin professor Paige Glotzer’s research on Baltimore’s Roland Park, the first North American suburb, to look more directly at how the city as well as British investors put money into developing the area at the expense of excluding the city’s sizable black and Jewish populations– a decision that continues to impact surrounding neighborhoods to the benefit of Roland Park’s white upper-class residents