2011 Neighborhood Health Profile - Penn North/Reservoir Hill

Here is the December 2011 Baltimore Health Department report on the Penn North/Reservoir Hill neighborhood. It has a distinct feel of two communities divided east-west by Madison Street. Reservoir Hill, located on the east side of this divide, is the community which is showing signs of a renaissance. Taken together, these two neighborhoods still lag the city average in several health and social indicators.

Baltimore City Neighborhood Health Profile

RHHP Christmas celebration

Joseph's fried spring rolls

Amy preparing fruit plate

dessert table

Mark leads house meeting

Caroling

caroling

This year's Christmas celebration was a nice potluck that Joseph organized. Our monthly house meeting followed dinner and the evening concluded with the tree decoration and caroling.

An early Thanksgiving at RHHP

Pastor Dave sharing the Thanksgiving message

Worship

A feast for 50

Anita and Anna

Amy and friend

Eshelmans

Ruth, Aaron, Anita and Chris

fellowship in the kitchen

I think Jonathan likes my stuffing

We had our pre-Thanksgiving potluck last Saturday. About 50 friends and residents enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving meal featuring two turkeys, two hams and numerous side dishes. The feast was preceded by a short worship. Pastor Dave Greiser shared a Thanksgiving message and Anita Greiser led the singing. It was a great time of fellowship and new friendships. In the week following, we have been dining on left-over turkey.

The annual RHHP non-violent self-defense/safety training

Marty begins with community safety

Bekoli in demonstration

demonstrating a subway scenario

Take this bag! Take this bag!

Yesterday was the annual RHHP non-violent self-defense and response-to-violence training by Marty Langelan.  We were joined by three German Brethren volunteers who recently arrived in the Baltimore for their volunteer assignments. A big thank you to Anna for providing simultaneous translation in Spanish. Also, a big thank you to Ellen for providing soup and cookies for lunch. Thanks also to Laura and Amy for providing garlic toast and salad respectively.

As in previous years, Marty taught us how to develop street-smart habits for staying safe and avoid becoming victims of violence. She also taught us non-violent ways to confront harassment on the streets and other situations. Most important of all, she taught us that personal safety and self-defense begin in our awareness, in our attitudes and through personal preparation. Yesterday's training was particularly relevant as one of our housemates was recently harassed and another physically assaulted but fortunately escaped with minor injury.

Visitors from New York City

Our guests preparing for their presentation yesterday morning.

Adrian, Housing Coordinator for Picture the Homeless

G-K-M makes a point over pancakes

Marcus - homesteader and occupier of an abandoned home

Housing Organizer of Picture the Homeless

Andres, Adrian and Kalaif checking abandoned homes Reservoir Hill and entertaining the idea of setting a chapter of Picture the Homeless in Baltimore 

Shailah, Stephanie and Andres - very nice kids!

In addition to the work day, we also had a delightful time hosting seven housing activists (including three youths) from NYC for the weekend. They are staff and volunteers (homeless or formerly homeless persons) from Picture the Homeless http://picturethehomeless.org/, an advocacy group on homeless issues.  They came to Baltimore for the Fair Development Conference http://unitedworkersassociation.org/ organized by Workers United which Anna, our housemate, is involved with. Our guests conducted a workshop on the establishment of land trusts and the occupation of vacant homes in NYC. They were lovely guests and really enriched our lives by their brief stay with us. They were articulate and passionate about their mission. Although I disagree with them on why many people are homeless, I concur with their goals of putting people into abandoned homes. Our time with them added a dimension to my understanding of the problem of homelessness.

Among the activities of PTH is the occupation of abandoned houses in NYC through occupation and homesteading (squatting) and using existing New York laws to put homeless persons into vacant housing. They begin to fix up these homes and begin to pay utilities and property taxes to establish a record of occupancy. (I am sure I am not describing the process accurately.) It seems to me that with the thousands of boarded-up homes in Baltimore and the inability of the city to deal effectively with it, we could use an organization such as this. In fact, this is an idea that is brewing among our guests. I took them on a short tour of Reservoir Hill and showed them some blocks with vacant homes where such an approach might work. They were impressed with the possibilities.

Our guests left us late this morning to participate in a United Workers march in downtown Baltimore after which they took a bus back to NYC.

Ellen with our guests

Fall work day at RHHP

Elaine working hard

Laura and Elaine doing some serious scrubbing of the kitchen wall

Scrubbing the filter in the hood

Pizza lunch

Cleaning the back staircase

Yesterday was our Fall work day in which we did some deep cleaning of the kitchen and changed the batteries in most of the smoke alarms.  We also updated the inventory of repairs that needed to be completed. We celebrated our accomplishments with the customary pizza lunch.

RHHP displays at the Atlantic Coast Conference Fall Assembly

Ellen with Bekoli and Ruth Karebu.

Conference moderator, Warren Tyson, opens the session.

Ellen with Pastor Sam Walters, associate pastor of the Great Joy Fellowship, a church plant in
Delaware which is a Caribbean congregation.

with Warren Tyson

Me, with Delbert Seitz, the conference treasurer. Showing some of the
remodeling projects
at RHHP that the conference paid for.

Ellen with Sam Wanjau, pastor of the African Community Church in Lancaster. With him is Ruth Karebu, his wife.
They were interested in how RHHP supported asylum seekers.

Lynn Carlson, who stayed briefly at RHHP when it was still the
Baltimore Discipleship Center,
stopped by.

We decided this year to have a RHHP display at the ACC Fall Assembly held yesterday at the Blossom Hill Mennonite Church in Lancaster, PA. Kenton Bontrager of the RHHP House Committee made a table display and some brochures for the occasion. Our housemate Bekoli, Ellen and I left Baltimore at 6:30 am in order to make it up to the Assembly by 8 am and found the delegates already in the thick of deliberating the conference's business. Several other Mennonite institutions were also present with their displays and we were situated next to the MCC display.

We had a fine time meeting delegates and members of various congregations from around the conference. It was a great opportunity to share the work of the North Baltimore Mennonite Church and ACC through RHHP. Kenton's display garnered much interest among those who attended the assembly.

lunch with members of the African Community Church of Lancaster

As is often the case, the people we met and the connections we established were the highlights of the assembly. Bekoli and I had lunch with the pastor and members of the African Community Church of Lancaster and engaged in an interesting conversation of how the charismatic worship style fit in with the staid style of traditional Mennonite worship.

It was a productive time and we made a number of interesting connections. Ellen found out from the Everence (a Mennonite financial institution) representative that Everence now has a credit union and one may join it without being physically close to a branch. The main requirement is that the person be associated with a Mennonite organization. Therefore, it might be possible for our asylees to set up accounts and begin building their credit after winning their cases. This is important as they rent their first apartments after leaving RHHP.

Ellen with the Everence representative

Several others stopped by the display to learn more about the work of RHHP and we were able to highlight how the conference supported its work.

RHHP resident wins the Whitelock Community Farm Greens cook-off!

It was a beautiful day for the second annual Reservoir Hill Harvest Festival held in the lot across from the Whitelock Community Farm. There was  a soul group and a marching band to raise the noise level to the prerequisite decibel level.

Marching band

the balloon man

Pumpkin coloring

The main feature  was the much anticipated Greens cook-off which comprised two categories - vegetarian and with meat. As mentioned in the previous posting, our RHHP resident chef Remi entered his Cameroonian cabbage with peanut sauce (containing beef and chicken). Visitors to the cook-off paid $10 each to sample the more than 20 entries. The shredded cabbage, smothered in a creamy peanut sauce with a strong suggestion of ginger, stood out among the various permutations of boiled collard greens and ham hocks. Someone who sampled it remarked that he thought it had an Asian character.

Remi receiving the first prize for the greens with meat category.

Remi serving up some samples.

Visitor asking for Remi's recipe

When the votes were tallied, Remi's entry came up on top and he collected a first prize of a $100. He was elated and became for a few minutes a celebrity chef and put RHHP on the neighborhood map, so to speak. Of course, there were also requests for the recipe.

It was also a good time to meet neighbors and make new friends. I met Erin, an Americorp volunteer at the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council, who recently completed a year working in a woman's shelter in Tucson. It turns out that she knows a former colleague of mine who moved to Tucson and had volunteered at the same shelter.

Ellen chatting with friend

Ellen talking to another contestant

Ellen