BALTIMORE — A corner home on 5th Street.
Outside, and in, it looks like home catalog material. You can't even tell a short time ago, it was one of Baltimore's thousands of vacant and unlivable homes.
"We have a systemic, an infrastructure problem we need to solve," said Jan Eveland, leader of the Action Baybrook community group.
Eveland lives a short walk away from that home in Brooklyn. The community group Eveland leads works on the ground in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Park and Curtis Bay, to do three things: reduce home vacancies, clean up the community, and improve the local economy.
"We were starting to make progress," Eveland added. "People were starting to think of Brooklyn in a positive kind of way - Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. Now people are thinking in a very negative way, and now we have to rebuild that."
The home is half a mile away from the site of a major weekend mass shooting - one of the worst tragedies in Baltimore's recent history.
READ MORE: Two killed, 28 injured overnight in a mass shooting in South Baltimore
This community is just beginning the long journey to heal from that; the Action Baybrook group wants to help the area heal in as many ways as it can.
"We have such a resource, right here by the water," said Denisha Salliey, a volunteer with the group.
Action Baybrook acquires vacant homes, renovates them, and puts homeowners in them. Salliey's eye for home design helped redesign the home.
"I'm proud to be doing something like this - to give people hope about what their neighborhoods and their communities could be like," said Salliey.
The group, partially, can do what it does thanks to the city's Community Catalyst grants - helping this slice of Baltimore, piece by piece, cleanup by cleanup, home by home.
