Baltimore residents say they want affordable housing, community resources

BALTIMORE – While politicians debate how to combat crime in Baltimore, Maryland, local residents who spoke to Fox News Digital advocated for more affordable housing, recreational centers and accessible community resources.

Earlier this month, Gov. Wes Moore and Mayor Brandon Scott deployed the Maryland State Police and the Transportation Authority Police to partner with the Baltimore Police Department after President Donald Trump floated deploying the U.S. National Guard to crackdown on crime. 

“We got so many kids getting into stuff and killing and on drugs, especially down here in this neighborhood on the Penn North,” Tasha, a young mother who spoke to Fox News Digital earlier this month while pushing her baby’s stroller through Baltimore’s Penn-North neighborhood, said. 

Tasha said more kids need access to rec centers because “so many of them are getting hooked on drugs and caught up in things that they don’t got no business getting caught up in, all because they don’t have nothing else out here to do.”

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Fox News Digital spoke to more than a dozen Baltimore residents about how crime is impacting their community. While locals were split on whether Trump deploying the National Guard would curb crime, residents said safety concerns were top of mind. 

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More than two dozen people were hospitalized in a mass drug overdose event in Penn-North in July. Meanwhile, three out of the seven homicides in Baltimore during August were in the nearby Park Heights, according to local reporting. 

Between people selling and using drugs on the corner as one police car was parked just down the street, Tasha said that in Penn-North, “everything is back out here running like it didn’t even happen a month ago.”

A busy street corner in Baltimore’s Penn-North neighborhood (Fox News Digital)

Joseph, a Penn-North resident who spoke to Fox News Digital while a homeless woman slept on his front stoop, said there are abandoned houses and buildings on his street and “all over the place.”

But Trayvon, another Baltimore local, asked, “How can you…