What Happened in Sandtown-Winchester? Understanding the Impacts of a Comprehensive Community Initiative

We use multiple longitudinal data sources and propensity score matching to assess the long-term outcomes of the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) in the Sandtown-Winchester community of Baltimore. This comprehensive community initiative, implemented in the 1990s, remains one of the most well-known urban revitalization projects in the country, due to its significant funding (more than $100 million) and comprehensive approach to neighborhood redevelopment, including housing construction, education reform, and employment services. We find significant increases in homeownership and reductions in unemployment in Sandtown. However, there were limited gains elsewhere, as poverty remained high and local schools did not show sustained improvement. Our findings speak to the durability of social inequality in high-poverty and racially segregated neighborhoods, and underscore the need to further develop rigorous standards for research that evaluates community-level interventions.