Video: A Tax Shift for Baltimore City
This video explains some ways a Tax Shift can help everyone in Baltimore to thrive:
Promotes affordable land access for housing, urban farms, and businesses
Curbs land speculation and land hoarding, thereby reducing land price booms and busts
Promotes savings and capital formation to invest in local job creation – individual entrepreneurs, small businesses and cooperatives (by reducing taxes on labor and production)
Reduces wasteful and expensive infrastructure duplication, saving taxpayers money
Enhances the efficiency of existing infrastructure and transit
Easy to implement and monitor (“transparent”)
Is an equitable and sustainable source of funding for needed public goods and services
Addresses wealth inequality at its source – the ability of a few landowners to appropriate natural resources and community-created benefits
Baltimore Thrive
Vision and Intention
Baltimore Thrive's vision and intention are to strengthen social and economic building blocks to create optimal individual, social, and environmental health for the City of Baltimore. To accomplish this goal, we recognize the need to enhance citizens’ sense of agency—the ability to understand and choose among alternatives—and the necessity for fair and equitable public policies.
We are particularly concerned about neighborhoods in the “distressed” category where people are experiencing numerous problems such as unemployment, homelessness, low-quality housing, physical and mental health issues, addiction, and high crime. Yet even in these areas, people strive to thrive, raise their children, help their neighbors and friends, and do their best under challenging circumstances. Baltimore Thrive is reaching out to these people and existing social service organizations, offering our assistance in building and strengthening networks of mutual support.
Our efforts remedy patterns of land tenure and taxation that diminish affordable housing, employment, and public transport while wasting energy and creating pollution. Our research clarifies the causes of current problems and charts the course for necessary policy changes. We also highlight other cities' success in fundamental tax reform.
