
The false promise of zoning bills being pitched as a path to affordable housing
Councilman Ryan Dorsey and Mayor Brandon Scott are instituting a sweeping overhaul of Baltimore zoning rules that will hurt residents of this “city of neighborhoods” [OP-ED]
Above: Carson Ward and Keondra Prier in their Reservoir Hill neighborhood in Baltimore. (Corky Ward)
As community leaders who have grappled with the same stubborn housing problems that plague so many Baltimore neighborhoods – lack of safe affordable housing, unscrupulous real estate speculators, absentee landlords, gentrification – we were intrigued when lawmakers unveiled legislation meant to bring about positive change.
But having looked at the package of zoning bills being touted by Mayor Brandon Scott, Councilman Ryan Dorsey and others, we just don’t see it.
We see no evidence that eliminating the two-staircase requirement, parking minimums and bulk and yard requirements will result in affordable housing.
And yet the bills are moving very fast through the City Council and coming up for a preliminary vote by the full City Council tonight. Dorsey and Scott say they’re the result of an ambitious mandate, asking:
How can we develop and repopulate the city while making it more affordable to the average, everyday person?
Why we’re so concerned is because we don’t think these bills answer that very important question. And honestly, we feel it’s been very misleading to describe the bills in that way.
The rationale behind the mayor’s so-called Housing Options and Opportunity Act package is similar to the premise of the book “Abundance” published earlier this year by two journalists, The New York Times’ Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson.
One of their main arguments is that getting rid of burdensome government rules – including zoning restrictions and environmental reviews – would usher in a new era of innovation, prosperity and plentiful housing.
But would throwing away the rules benefit the average person? Or will it just result in cheaper building standards?
Is it visionary housing reform? Or simply a way to help developers cut costs?
It’s a debate that’s being playing out nationally and one we hope to stimulate in Baltimore with this piece, which we wrote in dialogue format.
Abundant Falsehoods
Keondra Prier: Why be so upset about the abundance bills? This sounds like a great issue to solve. Why would anyone oppose them?
Carson Ward: Because it’s a bait-and-switch. The abundance bills promise affordability, but there’s no evidence they actually will deliver it.
Keondra: This concept of “abundance” is a neoliberal theory that assumes if you free up the pockets of developers, affordable housing will trickle down. That if you remove the barriers and constraints of our zoning code, development would be more imaginative and beautiful. That the main barrier to affordable housing is regulations.
Carson: But they’re not testing anything to confirm this hypothesis that doing any of this will lead to safe and decent affordable housing. The city’s decision-making is premature. I mean, why would you lower the guard rails? Baltimore is already a scammer’s wet dream.
The concept behind the abundance movement is that excess government regulation is the main barrier to affordable housing.
Predatory development concentrated in the city’s Black communities is having disastrous impacts lately. According to Bloomberg, banks have stopped lending to small developers in Baltimore altogether. Scheming portfolio developers who view our housing stock as holdings, will not pull permits or pay taxes or water bills. Then, when the bills pile up and the property is forced into foreclosure, they profit from the auction sale. Sadly, tenants are exploited in the process and caught in the middle.
This a financial indictment and an indication of a housing collapse. What we’re pointing to is actually about a much bigger issue – a housing malaise that would be exacerbated by these bills. There’s already a lot of dysfunction in our code enforcement and our permitting process that leads to unsafe and unlivable housing.
The combination of these bills, this dysfunction, and developer speculation makes us prey. It removes the barriers in a city where they can already basically do whatever they want.
Building Equity on Unequal Ground?
Keondra: “Abundance” imagines a world in which every city in America has the same housing history, standards and barriers to affordability. It presumes the solutions are 100% the same. On its face, you can see how that is definitely not true.
Carson: Yes.
Keondra: I think why you see serious opposition from other Black residents, is that these bills require you to live in this imaginary space where redlining or racialized and classed zoning reform didn’t occur. Where housing covenants don’t exist, every neighborhood is equally as dense, our housing stock is the same, our residential history is the same. So, we – those who are most affected by Baltimore’s housing history – have to ignore that Baltimore foundationally was built separate and unequal.
A backer of one of the bills – to allow apartment projects to be developed without providing off-street parking – said it would help ease the city’s housing shortage by getting rid of outdated zoning rules “written to segregate our city.”
What I’m noticing is a sense of pain from Black residents, including myself, who are stepping up in opposition because we know that it would create chaos for seniors and everyone else in a city where public transportation options are few and far between.
• At a fiery hearing, bill to end parking space requirement for developers gets community pushback (8/12/25)
We all know that trickle-down economics doesn’t work. We’re living in a moment where so many social services are being cut, yet we’re being told by our city leadership that capitalism is going to save us. And we know it’s not true because the rug is being pulled from beneath us, right now.
A universal approach isn’t going to work here. It has to be community by community.
Carson: A universal approach isn’t going to work here. It has to be community by community. We have to stop pretending we all live in the same Baltimore. Through our zoning code, our city ensured that someone in Edmondson Village doesn’t have the same quality of life as someone in Remington. Ask them if they have equal access to homeownership and business opportunities, public transit, decent schools, clean water, safe streets or affordable groceries. They don’t. Everyone knows it, and the city isn’t solving this problem.
Carson: So they have put forth this hypothesis without any data backing it up. So what would work?
Keondra: Solutions for creating affordability for middle and lower income folks are not usually found in the market. Instead, we can look to programs like rent control, rent stabilization and housing cooperatives. Those things have data.
We can look at them all along the East Coast in our actual sister cities. I would look to Philadelphia, Wilmington, New York or D.C. What have they done to retain their residents who need more affordable housing? Philly, for example, tried a 10-year tax abatement, and it was really successful.

The brightly painted rowhouses of Auchentoroly Terrace. BELOW: In Abell, pink flamingos, the American flag and LGBTQ Pride. (Fern Shen)
A Leadership Crisis
Carson: So who’s disappointing you the most with this legislation?
Keondra: I’d have to say it’s the mayor. To watch him use the language of Black scholars but uplift white supremacist logic is really painful.
He may make a nod to the work on redlining, and how the city was at the forefront of creating all of these long-lasting zoning tools and systems to ensure racial separation. He uses that language not to undo it, but instead to signal to people to lower their criticality around what his actual day-to-day actions are. It’s actually quite the opposite. We need to be on high alert.
Is gentrification any less harmful because it’s administered by someone who looks like the people who are being displaced?
It’s dangerous to apply urbanist theories that flatten racial history and apply ahistorical theory to a city that was really the author and the originator of racialized applications of zoning law. While he has a lot of power to make sure that this mandate is answered in a way that’s reflective of the needs of our city right now, he’s not doing it.
Carson: Yeah, actions speak louder than words. In these new bills, there’s nothing stopping developers from pricing people out of the community. And when residents can no longer afford to stay, what happens? Gentrification. Are we supposed to accept this just because the mayor is Black? Is gentrification any less harmful because it’s administered by someone who looks like the people who are being displaced?
Needed: Repair, Not Rebranding
Keondra: We both listened to Mayor Scott’s recent interview on Midday with Tom Hall. During their conversation, Scott skirted the question of public opposition by saying the public is afraid of change. Do the people who oppose the abundance bills fear change?
Carson: I feel gaslit. We are not opposed to growth, density or reform. We love Baltimore and want it to thrive. This is just not the right way to do it.
Keondra: We’re actually looking for more radical change, not less. Opposition is often misread. I was accused of hating density – so I took a look at a density map. What I found is that density, more often than not, is in the Black Butterfly. Segregated, majority Black areas are the most dense. Where you see low density is the former White Flight neighborhoods, like Ashburton, or neighborhoods where there are housing covenants, like Roland Park and Guilford.
What you saw in City Hall is a lot of white residents coming up, saying “we should be able to have density in our neighborhoods,” and you’re right, you should! And you know why you don’t? Because of historic racial policy.
So if the city wanted to address (1) abundance and density (2) affordable housing and (3) the history of racialized zoning, they could do that by focusing on neighborhoods that lack density. For dense neighborhoods, like Reservoir Hill, affordability would come from opportunities to own and from government-enforced rent stabilization.
Carson: What is your expectation of what should happen here? I think about when we went to the Planning Commission meeting. Their stance was, the fact that the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) is ineffective in code enforcement and the permitting process is not a good enough reason for anyone to oppose this. I feel that pushing this major legislation through so rapidly is going to create a bigger problem.
Keondra: The most obvious thing that needs to happen is cutting out the rot at DHCD. Why is it so dysfunctional? Unlike in other cities, DHCD combines real estate development and code enforcement. If your mandate is to develop real estate and also to enforce the code, the incentive is to let the latter lapse to ensure that housing is developed.
Broken Process = Broken Neighborhoods
Keondra: What are your thoughts on the legislative process?
Carson: The city is fast-tracking the abundance bills. It should alarm anyone who believes in transparency or public trust. It’s crazy that these bills bypassed the Council’s Housing and Economic Development Committee. These are housing bills, after all, with sweeping implications for affordability. Their primary effect is on residences. The Housing and Economic Development Committee exists for exactly this reason. It should have had jurisdiction instead of Dorsey’s Land Use and Transportation Committee.
The whole process has been secretive and undemocratic. We had to rely on word of mouth just to know the hearings were happening. It feels like strategic exclusion, and it’s eerily reminiscent of the exclusionary tactics used when Baltimore invented racial zoning. We felt silenced.
Keondra: If there’s been anything abundant about the process, it’s that lobbying and business groups were clearly informed about how to navigate the bill process. We only know on a week-to-week basis, so it’s very difficult to organize in opposition.
Carson: What is your response to people who say this is a way to help minority and smaller developers?
Keondra: I would say that the level of dysfunction in our current housing landscape requires really well planned-out development. Developers should take up a small role in solving our housing issues. And the city, in partnership with CDCs, should be in the driver’s seat to make sure they are good-faith business people, not predators. The city needs to incentivize the idea that you’re investing in your home and community, and the benefit you get is stable housing and opening businesses that your community needs.

In her church’s community garden, Poppleton resident Valerie Thomas reflects on the future of her neighborhood. (Fern Shen)
Who Benefits?
Carson: Alright, so, who would you say these abundance bills benefit?
Keondra: We’ve answered that – developers.
Carson: Read the fine print. There are no rent caps. There are no affordability mandates. There are no tenant protections. When there are no mandates, the money saved doesn’t go into lower rents. It goes into profit margins.
My question is this: How come developers who’ve already failed the city keep getting more incentives?
• To reach Reservoir Hill Association (RHA) President Keondra Prier and Chair Carson Juliette Ward, or to learn more about RHA, visit https://www.