Building PARKS Holistic Housing for Women

At Sisterhood Agenda, we are building PARKS Holistic Housing, a new affordable housing development for women and families in Baltimore County that provides safe spaces in the form of sustainable supportive housing, eco-friendly buildings, green spaces for health and healing, and trauma-informed case management for optimized care and resource coordination.

As a nonprofit HUD-certified CHDO, we hope that you will join us in creating a beautiful, intentional community housing model that can be scaled and replicated throughout the state and U.S.

We invite you to join us, uniting our voices in support!

As an organization led by African American women, we are a unicorn in this housing development space.

Month after month of promises for funding, it’s been over two years now and Sisterhood Agenda has not received any of the funding allocated for PARKS Holistic Housing from Baltimore County. Furthermore, the goal post keeps moving.

No other Baltimore County grantee we know has had this experience, especially a HUD-certified CHDO.  Sisterhood Agenda is committed to building evidence-based, eco-friendly, climate change resilient permanent supportive housing (PSH) with green space. 

What is happening, unfortunately, continues a trend of discriminatory practices that resulted in a Housing and Urban Development lawsuit against and reconciliation act with Baltimore County’s Department of Housing and Community Development in 2017.

As a result of many issues, Sisterhood Agenda has its own ongoing HUD investigation.  Unfair practices, different laws, rules, and procedures for our organization are ongoing, including most recently:

1. Baltimore County DHCD split Sisterhood Agenda’s total funding allocation into two separate grant applications because they simply refused to fund the initial funding allocation. The Director told us that the first grant application was for predevelopment and Sisterhood Agenda will have to submit another separate grant application for construction, only after predevelopment had been completed. 
   
   
2. Sisterhood Agenda is a nonprofit offering needed services in the Councilman’s district. Yet, Councilman David Marks filed to downzone Sisterhood Agenda’s PARKS Holistic Housing properties to make it undevelopable. He also engaged in other hostile activities, including unlawful Code Enforcement and emails rallying against affordable housing which is erroneously described as “Section 8 housing.” Last year, indicative of his blatant abuse of power, Marks tried to force Sisterhood Agenda to relinquish Sisterhood Agenda’s County property acquisition and move our construction trailer as mandatory conditions to simply schedule a meeting with him. 
   
   
3. In their draft annual action plan, Baltimore County DHCD has a surplus carryover of over $7 million of unspent HUD funds because “projects did not move forward as planned” from previous fiscal years.  Currently, they have over $10 million in unspent HUD funds when the County and nation are facing a housing crisis. 
   
   
4. After passing Grants Review and the 15^th day of Council review on July 11, 2024, the County is now claiming that Councilman David Marks requested a full County Council grant review at an upcoming legislative session for Sisterhood Agenda’s grant application when Marks did not follow Code requirements to submit his legislative request in writing to the Grants Administrator within 14 days of the grant’s recommendation on June 26, 2024.
   
   
5. Last week, Sisterhood Agenda team members were told that Sisterhood Agenda’s “voices need to be louder” and that we required “more support” despite knowing only two people who had any opposition to PARKS Holistic Housing and Sisterhood Agenda’s demonstrative local support from over 50 residents, 20 community partners, 3 local businesses, two nearby homeowner associations,  and letters of support and testimonials from residents, NAACP, Corporation for Supportive Housing, Community Action Network, Turnaround, and many others. 

When the community speaks, is the newly redistricted Councilman listening? 

Instead of being receptive, residents who expressed support for PARKS Holistic Housing were harassed by telephone, email, and social media to the point their families, residences, and jobs were threatened by the power of the Councilman's position and Savanna Weber, a hostile neighbor. Ms. Weber consistently evoked Councilman Marks in her defamation, misinformation, and disinformation campaigns. 

One individual who was defamed by the hostile neighbor after being supportive earlier this year apologized for not being able to offer more public support saying, “I really want to support you all.  But I’ve got to feed my family.  I can’t go through that again.” 

Another resident was defamed and even charged with trespassing by Ms. Weber, a criminal offense, in an outrageous attempt to dissuade community support for Sisterhood Agenda’s PARKS Holistic Housing. Sisterhood Agenda was there as a witness for her defense. The charge was dismissed when Ms. Weber did not show up in court.

This is why we did not publish a lot of the names of Middle River residents who support Sisterhood Agenda’s PARKS Holistic Housing; so that they would not have targets on their backs.

 Another thing happened…. On April 7, 2023, approximately one year after the harassment and the disinformation campaign, Sisterhood Agenda was impersonated at Williams Estate by an African American woman who rode around the community and disparaged residents in an attempt to negate our good will, erroneously saying that she was a representative from Sisterhood Agenda and that Sisterhood Agenda was buying the mobile home park.   

Sisterhood Agenda stands firm and refuses to be bullied, harassed, and intimidated into silence.  As we have for 30 years, we support the needs of the communities we serve.

Sisterhood Agenda subsequently filed a Complaint against Savanna Weber. 

As a result of Sisterhood Agenda’s issues, HUD is investigating Baltimore County Government representatives AGAIN.

Sisterhood Agenda, Inc. has spent over $300,00 of our funds, considerable time, and effort working with Baltimore County and the residents in Middle River for over two years.  This is where we are now.

If you continue to support Sisterhood Agenda’s important work, please let Baltimore County representatives know that you care.  All support emails go to Councilman David Marks directly:  council5@baltimorecountymd.gov and cc the following for documentation: 

council1@baltimorecountymd.gov, Council2@baltimorecountymd.gov, council3@baltimorecountymd.gov, council4@baltimorecountymd.gov, council6@baltimorecountymd.gov, council7@baltimorecountymd.gov, jrbenjamin@baltimorcountymd.gov, tboswtick@baltimorecountymd.gov, sister@sisterhoodagenda.com, ABaker@rosenbergmartin.com, ibartman@offitkurman.com

Also, you can call Councilman David Marks’ office at (410) 887-3384.

OUR UNITED VOICES MAKE THE DIFFERENCE!

Thank you for reading

In the Spirit of Sisterhood,
Angela D. Coleman, MBA, CNN
Sisterhood Agenda, Inc.
President

Links:

• PARKS video
• PARKS Community Success
• PARKS and Our Motivation