By Natasha C. Pratt-Harris
I absolutely love my Baltimore. My Baltimore is gritty. We fight each other sometimes and it can be tragic but we for sure don’t let others fight us without us fighting back. I love that our Baltimore recognizes that the intra-personal fights have got to stop and found a way to reduce homicides holistically and historically.
While Baltimore can piss me off sometimes I still love her. I will not–and none of us should accept abuse from any one we love or from anyone who claims to love us. Abuse can be overt or subtle, intentional or unintentional, part of one’s conscious or one’s unconscious, and it can be to one’s spirit, one’s psyche, one’s everything. Baltimore I love you something good, but the things that are bad are bad and to hear these truths is not a crucifixion on any one person or any one thing but on a city that was built on abusing the marginalized, the maligned, the neglected, especially Black Baltimore. Baltimore we need collective counseling, training and a reciprocal kind of love because while a person like me loves her some Baltimore, I know a lot of us don’t feel like Baltimore loves us right back.
In January 2026 a final determination was entered for my husband’s inherited family home to be sold in a tax lien foreclosure. I remember hearing about tax sales, and as a young person in the city, I thought this was a slam dunk way to get rich, to build that wealth that our people haven’t been afforded, and to do something about vacant, abandoned properties in Baltimore City. As a 20-something-year-old, I was dead wrong. Tax sale liens have and can continue to lead to tragic moments. If it weren’t for me being made aware last month of what happened to my husband’s home, more than 60 years of an inheritance could have been totally lost due to a confusing $888 lien. My daughter offered testimony related to the matter at the Maryland General Assembly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owmlrI6mOa4).
My city and her people (the ones who work for the city) have to do their jobs every day. I see the sisters who put on their best to come to work to answer calls, deal with people’s frustrations, and sit on those hard chairs; and the brothers who will walk from behind their desks, wearing their khaki pants and collared shirts to explain what has happened for a family whose house was foreclosed on due to a tax sale. Then there are the big-wigs who have to break the news to husbands like mine, sending an email saying we’ve done everything right (no one does everything right) and you have to reclaim your home through the courts. You’ve got to protect your job, the label, the city, in your moves and in your responses to property taxpayers like my husband. I see you. I am not mad at you, but this is my tough love letter to you.
Today, given what I know the divine has ordered and many know to be true about the tax sale problem, I am hoping you see the need for a full sweep of systems that consistently lend to people experiencing the frustrations that my family has experienced. I am hoping you see the need to halt any and all tax sale lien foreclosure moments and what our abusive system has done to lend itself to this nightmare for not just us, but for many. The city must stop accepting bill payments to the same address as those processed for everything else. You’re our people but you work for a system that will allow you to be yelled at and accused of harming fellow Baltimoreans.
In the case of my husband, he has been beaten down by historic subjugation that has him thinking he has done something wrong because some “supposed” investor and someone downtown said so. All he did wrong is think he did not have support from our village and thought that a city that he’s known and loved for his entire existence (nearly 55 years) would love him right back. Baltimore we have a serious family problem. Stop, cease and end tax sales now.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.