James,

Hope all is going well right now. Wish I could say that I’m using free time to catch up on my writing. But I’m considered essential personnel so I’m still going in to work every day.

Below is a link to a blog I put up a few days ago. Stay safe and I will talk to you soon.

-Brian

Brian Jewell

Mon, Mar 30, 2:06 PM (6 days ago)

James,

Here is my latest blog. Hope you are staying safe and healthy at the moment. I did have an idea for a non fiction book I wanted to get your opinion on. Remember the “Move to Opportunity” program from back in the day? I think this was early nineties. I started doing research to see if maybe this has something to do with how Essex has declined in many ways since everyone started moving in from the city. As I was doing my research I even found out that part of this was part of a psychological/ sociology experiment to see if moving lower income people to middle class neighborhoods would have a positive impact on their lives. Ironically, I even found an old Sun Article supporting the program and attacking the local politicians who were fighting having people moved into their local neighborhoods. Just wanted to get your take on the idea...

Brian, this is a good subject to tackle with discretion. For instance, stick with socio-economic descriptives of the criminal class that was moved into Essex in the 1990s, back when everyone in government knew damned well how The Village of Tall Trees worked out. The County Executive basically threw Essex under the bus to try and shore up higher tax bracket precincts like Towson and Parkville. That strategy finally failed and every precinct in Baltimore County is now a criminal resettlement zone.

This was a cynical move by real estate powers who are doing the same old shuffle, trying to get rid of working people, by bussing in criminal class people, so that the criminal neighborhood—which is closer to the water and has more infrastructure investment—can be gentrified. It's all about money. They ran the #24 bus line out of the Sinclair Lane-Moravia area in the city to Carroll Island, to facilitate one gentrification initiative that took advantage of the #40-Interstate Interchange to generate housing for transplants moving to Maryland largely to work in D.C..

Generally speaking, this was a disservice to all parties.

Historically, a society on the rise, will see lower income folks emulating middle and upper income folks.

A society in decline will see the opposite, middle and upper income folks—there children, that is—emulating the lower class, particularly the criminal class.

I do not think that the planners knew this or intended it as an attack on the social fabric of Essex, but were rather just motivated by greed on one hand and pie-in-the-sky idealism and utopian fantasies on the other.

For research purposes check out E. Michael Jones.