Repairs for Legacy Homeowners
Dozens of Johnston Square residents are benefiting from the Johnston Square Legacy Homeowner Repair Program, which is enhancing their homes and their long-term quality of life.
Fostering New Partnerships
In 2023, we partnered with the Maryland Department of Housing, Community Development (Maryland DHCD), and Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization to pilot the Johnston Square Legacy Homeowner Repair Program. Since launching, this program has assisted more than 30 Johnston Square Homeowners make major long-deferred repairs and improvements to their homes, many of whom live on the same blocks where we are rebuilding abandoned homes. We are fostering new partnerships to expand this program to another group of local homeowners, with ongoing support from Maryland DHCD, The Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs, and Enterprise Community Partners’ Thome Aging Well Program.
Helping Homeowners Thrive in Place
Johnston Square is a neighborhood of century-old rowhomes, and many of their owners are in need of a reliable and no-cost repair program to help them keep up with the wear and tear that all aging homes experience over time. The Johnston Square Legacy Homeowner Repair Program ensures that, if a homeowner wants to stay in Johnston Square as their community undergoes revitalization, they have every opportunity to do so—and can do so in a home that offers them as good a quality of life and as much opportunity to build equity as any new home in the neighborhood.
The Legacy Homeowner Repair Program serves as a proactive anti-displacement strategy, reaffirming our dedication to ensuring that our reinvestments in Johnston Square actively elevate and support the residents who have sustained this community through both prosperous and challenging times. It also helps ensure that the whole blocks we are restoring can remain whole, and that they continue to be spaces where new and legacy residents can thrive together.
Martia’s Story
When Martia was young and moving often, her visits to her grandparents’ home in Johnston Square were a source of stability. They had purchased the home on the 600 block of East Chase Street in the 1970s, and her grandfather had established himself as a local entrepreneur. Martia remembers the Johnston Square of her youth having a strong sense of community—a family-oriented environment where neighbors looked after each other. Her youth was filled with messages of the importance of homeownership, of self-determination, of building something from nothing.
By the time Martia was 21, her grandparents were aging out of their home, and they gave her the opportunity to own it. For Martia, taking ownership of the home was both a way to sustain her family’s legacy and to create a foundation for her own pathway as a homeowner and entrepreneur. But homeownership was also challenging: as the home aged, it needed substantial repairs, and it became overwhelming to keep up with them. Martia began looking for support.
When Martia met Regina Hammond and joined Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization, she learned about a series of neighborhood resources she never knew existed—including the Johnston Square Legacy Homeowner Repair Program. Working with Regina and ReBUILD’s team, Martia was able to join the program and receive support for major repairs.
The Legacy Homeowner Repair Program will enable Martia to own and live in a stable and high-quality home for the first time. Martia’s new beginning on homeownership has given her a fresh outlook on her future and a new opportunity to fulfill her potential. Her regrowth will take place as part of the regrowth of the entire Johnston Square community—a community that is becoming more and more like the strong, unified Johnston Square she remembers from her childhood.
A Local Pilot
The Legacy Homeowner Repair Program is exclusive to Johnston Square homeowners, and there is currently a waiting list for this program as we seek resources to broaden its availability. We hope the program will serve as a model for how legacy homeowners can be supported and sustained in other Baltimore neighborhoods undergoing the revitalization process.
Good Homes Change Lives
