For a long time, we’ve known that food insecurity has a negative effect on Marylanders. But as we continue to gather more, and take a deeper dive into local data, our research and reports are showing some surprising information about how much where families live affects how much hunger impacts their lives.
Geography plays a role in which of the different root causes (lack of financial resources, transportation or dependent care challenges, etc.) families are forced to overcome.
Our colleagues at the United Way of Central Maryland offer excellent insights into the intersection of geography & hunger, through their A.L.I.C.E. Report.
(noun) A household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.
In 2022, ReBUILD Metro and BUILD engaged national housing experts to complete a new study on Baltimore’s citywide vacancy crisis. Their report, Whole Blocks, Whole City, analyzes the crisis in unprecedented detail and illustrates why it has been so intractable. The report also offers bold and actionable strategies to tackle the crisis at scale: using ReBUILD’s successful revitalization of East Baltimore communities as an exemplar, the study stresses the need for a “whole blocks” model that would change both how we examine abandonment in Baltimore and how we fix it.
As ReBUILD continues striving to transform communities in East Baltimore, we are committing ourselves to advancing “whole blocks” solutions that resolve abandonment in communities citywide. Our online Whole Blocks Toolkit will offer an expanding series of tools and resources to help mission-driven redevelopers of abandoned row houses plan, finance, and execute strategies to resolve abandonment across entire blocks in order to restore and revitalize the neighborhoods they serve.
Further Updates
For more details about BUILD’s successes, commitments and coverage in the press, click on the links below.
The U.S. government does not use the term “hunger” but defines and regularly measures the incidence of two related conditions.
One is “low food security,” or not always being sure of having enough money to pay for food.
The other is “very low food security,” skipping meals or not eating for a whole day or longer because there is not enough money for food.
The term “food insecurity” refers to households in either group. Bread for the World considers food insecurity to be hunger. Americans frequently interpret “hunger” or “food insecurity” to mean that someone does not have enough food.
And, of course, it’s true that not having enough food is hunger. But the two terms also encompass not just the number of calories available to people, but the nutrients they consume.
Since nutritious foods tend to cost more and may be harder to access in low-income neighborhoods, people who live below the poverty line are too often forced to choose cheap foods that may be filling but do not provide the nutrients needed for good health. Their health—especially the health of children—can and does suffer as a result.
2nd Thursday of the Month
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Washington, D.C., May 19, 2025 – Bread for the World issued the following statement on the House of Representative’s budget reconciliation package, which is expected to be voted on this week.
“The House budget reconciliation package does little to help the most vulnerable families and instead includes numerous provisions that will push millions of children deeper into hunger and poverty. Bread for the World opposes this harmful package and strongly urges lawmakers to reject it,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World.
The reconciliation package makes significant changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in order to cut $290 billion from the program over ten years – the largest single reduction of domestic food assistance ever enacted. The bulk of the funding cuts come from pushing costs of the program on to states, imposing strict work requirements on unmarried couples, single parents, and other guardians with children over six and older adults up to age 64, and limiting future benefit increases.
On May 13, Rev. Cho sent a letter to House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson, Ranking Member Angie Craig, and members of the Committee outlining Bread’s concerns with the harmful SNAP provisions.
Read ArticleMay 14, 2025 - This Just In!
Our partner, Bread for the World is on Capital Hill TODAY in the room where SNAP cuts are being voted on the House Agriculture Committee. They coalition is paused to pray in the halls of Congress. Will you join us in Prayer for SNAP AND write Congress?
View VideoOn Baltimore’s East side, rehabbing – not razing – a blighted block.
April 29, 2025Sixty years ago when Sharon Duncan was a girl, her mother rented their two-story rowhouse on Mura Street for $12 a week.
By the time Sharon was an adult and employed at a hospital, she moved a few doors away and paid a landlord $275 a month. Given the option of buying the house, she jumped in at $15,000.
She’s lived on Mura Street, in Johnston Square, for 40 years now – long after most of her neighbors left.
Read ArticleWASHINGTON, D.C.– Bill O'Keefe, Executive Vice President of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), along with other organizations, is urgently calling on Congress to protect and prioritize poverty-reducing international humanitarian and development assistance in FY26 Appropriations.
In a written testimony submitted to the House Subcommittee on National Security and the Department of State, O'Keefe urged Congress to maintain funding for critical programs that address global health, development, disaster relief and migration challenges. The total funding request for these programs amounts to about $30 billion.
‘Scale and speed’: State wants to fast-track redeveloping Baltimore’s vacants(OSV News) -- As deadly wildfires ravage Los Angeles, Catholics are mobilizing to help those impacted.
Catholic Charities USA -- the official domestic relief agency of the Catholic Church in the U.S. and a member of Caritas Internationalis, the church’s global network of humanitarian organizations -- is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, which can be accessed through the agency’s website at catholiccharitiesusa.org.
“As usual, 100% of the funds raised go directly to our local agencies in the affected areas who are offering emergency and long-term relief to those who have been displaced or are suffering as a result of the wildfires,” Kevin Brennan, CCUSA’s vice president for media relations and executive communications, told OSV News in a Jan. 9 email…
Observing Poverty Awareness Month
January 8, 2025
Harry Schiffman, LMSW is a lecturer at Rutgers School of Social Work. He explains the significance of Poverty Awareness Month and ways social workers and allied professionals can observe it this month and beyond.
Tell us a bit about your journey to social work.
My journey to social work started as I watched my mother being active in the Borough Park community in Brooklyn where I grew up in the 1950s. She was active in both the synagogue that we belonged to and the yeshiva that I attended. She was always involved in community-wide events and activities.
(OSV News) -- As deadly wildfires ravage Los Angeles, Catholics are mobilizing to help those impacted.
Catholic Charities USA -- the official domestic relief agency of the Catholic Church in the U.S. and a member of Caritas Internationalis, the church’s global network of humanitarian organizations -- is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, which can be accessed through the agency’s website at catholiccharitiesusa.org.
“As usual, 100% of the funds raised go directly to our local agencies in the affected areas who are offering emergency and long-term relief to those who have been displaced or are suffering as a result of the wildfires,” Kevin Brennan, CCUSA’s vice president for media relations and executive communications, told OSV News in a Jan. 9 email…
Read Article“The Face of Poverty” by student artist Megan Jackson is a national entry of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) Multimedia Youth Contest. This contest allows students in grades 7-12 to learn about poverty in the United States, its root causes, and faith-inspired efforts to address poverty, especially through CCHD. The contest is sponsored by CCHD and RCL Benziger.
From the Baltimore Banner
Baltimore isn’t the only place that has struggled to reduce a glut of vacant properties: several other cities and towns also are dealing with decades of flight to the suburbs, the Great Recession housing crash, and the lingering effects of redlined neighborhoods or other remnants of racist or discriminatory practices.
Some states — including Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. — have been able to use a $1.5 billion Obama-era program to prevent foreclosures and address neighborhood blight, but Maryland did not qualify. Baltimore’s vacant house problem is so stubborn and pervasive that no one tool, developer or community association alone can solve it, but those working on the issue say the city should try new ideas, tap community resources and pursue legal options to make progress.
The Baltimore Banner went looking for examples of how other cities have addressed vacant and blighted housing. These are some of their stories.