The U.S. Forest Service the agency was
created basically to restore degraded
landscapes in this country so we've
always been a conservation agency but
once again right from the start we were
always engaged in restoration. More than
100 years after the U.S. forest service
was established to restore forested and
rural landscapes we find that urban
landscapes are also in need of
stewardship and restoration. Baltimore
like dozens of post-industrial U.S. cities
faces a suite of challenges including
lack of economic opportunity high rates
of unemployment and thousands of vacant
and abandoned homes that contribute to
blight and crime instead of simply
planting trees in the city
the U.S. Forest Service together with
partners see a much larger opportunity to
improve environmental economic and
social outcomes
this is one small piece of a larger
story about how the U.S. Forest Service
works together with partners to improve
lives in urban areas we've had now kind
of a long-standing partnership with the
U.S. Forest Service and that's really
been beneficial on a few different
fronts one there's been a funding source
that's come to us to help us explore the
feasibility so that we can even
determine whether or not this kind of a
project was doable. The Forest
Service together with Humanim, details
deconstruction saw opportunity where
others only saw blight. Fundamentally, when
we get here we have to clear the houses
of debris and then we try to harvest all
the wood that's harvestable. These
houses happen to be very much intact and
so we're getting a great harvest of
lumber out of these houses and once
that's done you really do have an empty
brick shell inside all of these units
with just a few joists left in for basic
stabilization and so what's exciting
about here is here in Baltimore what's
going on is not only are we investing in
urban forestry. But we’ll also have this
great opportunity
to deconstruct buildings instead of just
demolishing those and then reusing the
material creating jobs for the
deconstruction creating more jobs with
them being able to use the material.
While the active deconstructing a home
create six to eight times more jobs than
demolition and saves waste from being
sent to the landfill the benefits
compound further when we consider the
jobs created by the reuse of the
materials so for service was
instrumental early on and figure out how
we could create and build distribution
channels to make sure that the would
find a home at a market rate that would
sustain the business model they friended
some of our R&D to reduce some of our
inefficiencies and improve our processes
but perhaps the most far-reaching
implications of this partnership have to
do with what happens to these
neighborhoods once these abandoned homes
are removed you take it from from urban
blight abandoned buildings and then you
create these wonderful green areas but
then these become places where it's part
of the neighborhood it's part of the
community in it adds that quality of
life the city of Baltimore has tore down
the last six houses in this block be
addressed with 15 15 to 15 25 they tore
those down so we could have the
community could have the entire arts out
of the block of most of these houses
were built a little more than a hundred
years ago but because of the benign
neglect unfortunately was in the
community's best interest to tear them
down the real driving force behind doing
what we do is to create jobs for people
who have social barriers to employment
so when you look at West Baltimore East
Baltimore where you have zip codes that
have unemployment rates that approach
30-percent those are some drastic
numbers and you know that the economy in
those communities is struggling because
there's nobody there with money to
support the stores and leave the vendors
and and the other needs that need to be
met you know that would normally be
purchased our community has no food
market no health clinic,
no senior center, no bank, no community
action center.
We have none of those, so what we
hope it on the even side of the block is
to bring businesses here for I guess necessities
that the community
presently doesn't have. That's what made
me excited about this particular
industry is it could create so many jobs,
it was self-sustaining financially and
it had some pretty serious environmental
impact positives as well. I think it has
a positive impact on the community
anyway socially and psychologically
because they see their neighborhood not
just being destroyed but being
dismantled and then reused and they know
that's what's happening and they know
that their neighbors are getting
employed as a result. the U.S. Forest
Service has also been engaged in
thinking about the question of what
comes next on these plots of land.
Working together with the city of
Baltimore, the Forest Service has
published the Green Pattern Book a tool
to assist and empower residents,
communities, administrative and
non-governmental organizations in
greening these vacant lands and
improving quality of life in the city. We
want to bring a flower garden for our
elementary school which is three blocks
up the street. And what we hope to have
is an amphitheater for our Millennial
generation where they can rap and sing
and talk but we also hope to bring a
farmers market here.
One of the really good ways to summarize
our partnerships actually comes from
Jonathan asaka who works at the
Environmental Protection Agency. What he
says is when the EPA spends ten dollars
in Baltimore to get a hundred dollars of
benefit associated with the investments
that they make. And that's really what we
want to do in Baltimore as in Chicago,
New York City, Philadelphia, and other
cities the forest service provides
science-based information and tools and
shares and leverages resources to create
innovative an informational change that
improves people's lives. We feel like the
Forest Service has understood our
commitment to capture this particular
part of of the ability to salvage and
reclaimed wood that was harvested once
and being harvested again.
And ah has connected us to just really
smart people would help us think through
how to do it better connected us to
others who gives potential links to
other resources both financial and
knowledge capital to help us grow in what
we're doing. We also recognize that what
we're capturing as a material that
doesn't even exist anymore or is very
very difficult to come by.
You're not going to see too many people
harvesting hundred-year-old trees
anymore, it's just not happening.
So that's why we're here and that's why
we need to be here and so just as our
missions changed over time will continue
to evolve as society shifts but it
really comes down to the basic thing
we've always been about and that's
conservation and this concept of
restoration. It's really who we are
whether we're doing it in urban settings
are we doing in rural parts of America