Are the profits from Baltimore’s tax lien system worth the harm to Black homeowners – and the city?

Arnita Owens-Phillips had always promised herself one thing: She would hold onto her simple brick rowhome in East Baltimore. Her son Corey used to tell her when he was young that one day he’d buy her a big house in the city. “Cause I’m your boy,” she recalled him saying. “I’m going to take care of you.” Corey died at 17 when he was struck by a car, and yet his mother always felt he had fulfilled his promise: She used money received from a settlement in his death to buy the home just south of Baltimore Cemetery.