Issues within Curtis Bay
Health, Food Access, Vacancies, and Crime in the Curtis Bay Community
Curtis Bay is a small community in Baltimore City Maryland. This area is home to a medical waste incinerator, a coal pile and a landfill, causing many issues for the neighborhood and it's residents. This story map showcases issue within Curtis Bay and what is being done by the city and it's community members to fight back.
Vacancies
The map below shows the number of vacant homes and vacant lots within Curtis bay. Many of these vacant areas are clustered together, including one well known cluster of town homes where the Hazel St. fire occurred in 2017, burning down an entire row of homes.
Vacant lots
The town-homes after the Hazel St. fire in July 2017, which still sit vacant today.
Curtis Bay Piers owns the pier and coal pile within Curtis Bay.
Comparison between crime locations and vacancy locations.
A survey form for community members to help document issues that occur relating to vacant homes/lots.
Health
Curtis Bay is highlighted as a Healthy Food priority area in Baltimore City (Johns Hopkins). The highlighted area of Curtis Bay that needs more healthy food is where the majority of the population lives, shown below using the population density map, the orange area shows moderate population density.
Health-Curtis Bay
Johns Hopkins developed a map showing different areas within Maryland that may be under-served by grocery stores, areas of high diabetes, and many other types of information.
Curtis Bay residents gather together to protest the development of an incinerator in their community in 2016.
Delivering better nutrition: Baltimore opens virtual supermarket
Crime
The major crime categories in Curtis Bay since 2014 are larceny, assault, aggravated assault, and auto-theft. The map below shows locations of crimes committed and a heat map layer which showcases that the most crime occurs along Route 173, Pennington Avenue.
Curtis Bay Crime
New Safe Streets location opens in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay
The Safe Streets program recently added a location in the Brooklyn & Curtis Bay community. Safe Streets helps with early intervention for students to hopefully help lead them into their futures that will not result in committing crimes.
Villa Maria Community Resources Safe Start Program
Food Access
Access to food is very limited in Curtis Bay, there are a handful of restaurants and only four markets to purchase food from. There is no grocery store within Curtis Bay.
Curtis Bay Grocery
An article talking about the issue of lower income families not being able to afford healthy food sold in their communities.
Curtis Bay community members and students starting the compost and food scrap pile at the community garden.
Community Leader Rodette Jones of Curtis Bay opened the community garden in to help serve fresh fruits and vegetables to her community. Curtis Bay was identified as a priority healthy food access area in 2018 because of the lack of fresh food available within the four food markets within the neighborhood.
