Women’s History Month Spotlight
Happy Women's History Month! For March, we'll be spotlighting different women across both Rising and the larger Waterbottle Co-op ecosystem.
Today, we spotlight Rising’s Community Property Manager, Karmen Smith IX.
Smith calls herself a Northeast #Baltimore girl. She refers to the neighborhood she grew up in, Morgan Park, as “a well-kept secret in Baltimore.”
“It was created for the professors and the folks from Morgan State University, so it's a historically African-American neighborhood,” Smith said. “The president of Morgan used to live in my neighborhood until we got Dr. Wilson.”
Smith also shared that from 1939 to 1950, W.E.B. Dubois lived in Morgan Park. His house is still standing, and it is a historic landmark. Today, the Morgan Park neighborhood is also recognized as a National Historic Community.
To Smith, the renaissance of West Baltimore and Rising’s work in elevating and restoring communities hits close to home. As a child, she would visit her father’s office at 1657 West North Avenue.
“My father was one of the early realtists of Baltimore,” Smith said. “He was a real estate broker, a member of National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB), because we couldn't be realtors; it was segregated.”
Founded in 1947, NAREB is the oldest minority real estate trade association in the United States. The bylaws of many local realtor organizations excluded Black members and blocked them from professional resources like listing services. For more than 70 years, NAREB has been committed to increasing Black homeownership, democracy in housing, and fighting the housing disparities that still exist today.
Smith believes that homeownership stabilizes neighborhoods and is hoping that Rising and the larger Waterbottle Co-op ecosystem steers in that direction.
“Yes, we have tenants,” she said. “Hopefully, eventually they can become homeowners, whether or not they are home owners of the real estate portfolio, or if they want to transition to purchase their own homes by cashing in their shares for a down payment for a home.”
