How Redlining is Disproportionately Killing Baltimore Citizens
- Safora Noor
- Nov 22
- 3 min read
Written By: Marcus Amo
This summer, Maryland suffered 34 heat-related deaths—7 of which from Baltimore—breaking records as the most dangerous summer in a decade. The heat season, described from April to October, last exceeded 30 people in 2012, where there were a record of 46 fatalities. The standout in 2012 came in response to a dangerous sporadic heatwave and strong July storm, resulting in mass-power outages. However, 2025’s summer stood out in deaths rather due to consistent high temperatures. The Maryland Department of Health stated that daily heat indices “exceeded 100 degrees with some areas exceeding 110 degrees.” Modeling climate destabilization’s fatal effects, however this intense summer also demonstrates how worsening climate is disproportionate in who it affects.
Ordinance 610, a historical piece of Baltimore’s legislation, is commonly known to be the first example of redlining. Redlining has come to detail historical racism and prejudice demonstrated in housing—the etymology behind such originated from government-illustrated maps that marked primarily black neighborhoods in red, creating a thick red line of “risky investments.” Keeping black individuals in their segregated communities became a major goal of previous Mayor Barry Mahool for which he rationalized in order to limit civil disobedience, prevent the spread of disease, and protect property values. Ex-Mayor Mahool’s ignorant thinking manifested through legislation, leaving lasting, rippled impacts to contemporary Baltimore.
The Fair Housing Act of 1986 seemingly ended the practice of redlining in Baltimore, however the equality between black and white neighborhoods—if even—struggled to be equitable. Accumulating investments, wealth, and school funding lasted in the white neighborhoods, whereas its antithesis of poverty, injustice, and underfunded school systems further dug struggling black communities into worsening conditions, Rather it be medical mistreatment, such as where black citizens of Baltimore died at a disproportionately higher rate than their white counterparts during covid-19, or a history of police brutality, the lasting impacts of redlining have polarized giving black communities warranted distrust in the systems meant to protect them. Redlining alignment with poverty, incarceration, and unemployment have obvious linkages to medicinal, residential, and educational health, however redlining too has lasting environmental impacts.
Measuring tree coverage in Baltimore city seems trivial, even then, the recorded pattern of previously red-lined communities having fewer trees is oftentimes overlooked. Urban heat islands describe a phenomenon demonstrated in cities like Baltimore where—in comparison to nearby forestry—the cities experience high-heat due to concrete and blacktop coverage. However, in comparison to asphalt roads, greenery properly reflects the sun’s rays, limiting those areas from experiencing the same heatwaves that cities experience. So, when redlining property owners and the Baltimore government chose to limit planting trees in black neighborhoods they—whether indirectly or not—contributed to increasing the amount of heat-related deaths in black communities disproportionately. Even thereafter, trees planted in black neighborhoods in Baltimore were almost all Red Maple, contrary to their white neighborhood counterparts for which had a plethora of diverse species. Meaning, a monoculture of trees in a city environment makes the tree populations more susceptible for being wiped out by diseases and invasive pests.
As Baltimore City displays the most heat-related deaths this past summer in all of Maryland, with a significant linkage to racial redlining limited tree coverage leading to urban heating, it becomes clear that a racist past of Baltimore legislation has directly led to modern rippling of increased heat deaths specifically in Black populations. Moving forward, there exist a number of initiatives to change the tree composition of the city, with plans to increase coverage to 40% by 2037. But, alongside this change requires increasing education and advocacy commenting on the historical reasoning behind these heat-related deaths, exposing the problematic past of Baltimore.
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