Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Lane.
Kim, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Kim Lane worked in Baltimore neighborhoods for nearly 30 years.
As Executive Director of the Washington Village/Pigtown Neighborhood Planning Council, she created Pigtown Main Street as a program of the larger community development corporation. Pigtown Main Street was accredited in 2000 as one of Baltimore’s first main street areas. After working in other areas of the nonprofit sector and at the Mayor’s office, she returned to join the fun in Pigtown as Director of Pigtown Main Street 3 years ago.
My story: I grew up in a small town in WNY between Rochester and Buffalo. At 20 years old, I packed my 1982 Honda Civic with $700 and moved to Baltimore. I’d been sent the City Paper and saw fascinating job opportunities canvassing for the environment and gun control. I never looked back. I fell in love with Baltimore and the friends I met and worked with in the community-organizing and social justice landscape.
I moved to Baltimore in 1990, and by 1997, I was a Deputy Director of a statewide environmental group with an emphasis on urban forestry and water quality. I also ran a homeless shelter at night in my early years as a Community Organizer for MD Citizen Action. I also became a single mom at age 23 in 1993. I look back now and wonder how that all happened, but when you love what you do and you are young, it’s an energy.
During my early years in Baltimore, my heart still misses many of the people I was blessed to work with. They taught me, schooled me, and forgave me. Ms. Yarborough and others in Park Heights for example became like family and would take my young daughter away from community events, projects, or meetings to their home. We were so lucky to be embraced by so many amazing people in so many neighborhoods.
Once I moved into nonprofit management, I remained in community work including in Pigtown, managing a large family-focused wrap-around program for youth in state custody or returning from incarceration and overseeing grant programs.
Now, as I transition from Pigtown Main Street, people have asked me what I’m most proud of. First, it’s not me. I was a part of a team of doers and believers. I think our biggest accomplishments are happening now: Pigtown is the first neighborhood in the recent past in Baltimore to increase household income while also becoming more diverse.
We are not displacing people because we are keeping homeownership affordable. Our housing is improving because the vacancies are being purchased and rehabbed. We’ve worked intentionally to keep our “Main Street” shops and services for the neighborhood that are for all of the different incomes and cultures in Pigtown. Pigtown remains Pigtown, there’s just some more shine to it.
I’m excited to share lessons learned and support other areas in the city.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The challenges women face cannot be underestimated. It’s improved in recent years, but not enough. It’s been years of men being heard although they are repeating the same words a woman just said at the same conference table.
Those conference tables were filled with too many people who had never done the work, meaning been in it. They’d never cleaned an alley with neighbors, tried to keep a young person in school, fought bureaucracy to open a business, etc. But they had the power and funding. It was and at some conference tables a system of decision-makers remains who have a lot to say but in the end fund or implement policies that don’t empower people or neighborhoods.
A challenge in the nonprofit sector, too many philanthropic organizations don’t support the work that is needed in community development. For example, funding may be available for a food program, but not a way to get better transportation for people to get to jobs. While some needs may be common, the approaches are complex and neighborhood-specific. Funding needs to be more flexible and support community-driven work.
The largest struggle in my opinion are the silos and lack of comprehensive approach to neighborhoods. It needs to be recognized the people living in neighborhoods are the greatest assets, not institutions, programs or projects. We need to start there with community development.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I love Baltimore and everyone should visit us or move here.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pigtownmainstreet.org
- Instagram: @pigtownmainst
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PigtownMainSt
- Youtube: @pigtownmainstreet2836
