Community Wealth Building

UMB is one of the largest employers in Baltimore and spends many millions of dollars each year to buy the goods and services it needs to function. Community wealth building, or community economic development, is the process of using this role as an economic engine to help West Baltimore.

Communities build wealth at the community level. It means hiring people and helping them increase household income. It also means supporting businesses that start and remain in the community, so that they hire local residents and improve local properties. Another method is making housing in the area more affordable by providing down payment support to employees buying homes within walking distance to campus. UMB has initiatives to address these three areas:

Local Hiring

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Through collaborations with on-campus and off-campus organizations, the UMB Office of Community Engagement supports three types of initiatives to support the residents of West Baltimore in finding sustainable employment.

Local Purchasing

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Local merchants hire local workers, improve local properties, and make food available to community members. Local small businesses receive access to training, technical assistance, marketing support, and other resources to help them succeed in selling food. Funded by the Baltimore Integrations Partnership, the program originated as a joint project of the School of School Work's Community Action network.

Live Near Your Work

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The University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Live Near Your Work Program is a homebuying assistance benefit for University employees that offers money toward the down payment and closing costs of homes in select Southwest Baltimore neighborhoods, including the purchase of a home requiring major renovations.

Partnership for West Baltimore

As the two largest anchor institutions on the Westside of Baltimore, the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland Medical Center will work in partnership with our neighbors to build and support a healthy, empowered, socially cohesive, and revitalized community. Click here for more information.