Black Women Build-Baltimore is tackling the city’s housing crisis with a targeted solution: empowering Black women to buy, renovate, and live in once-abandoned homes. The nonprofit has already helped nearly 20 women become homeowners in West Baltimore and is scaling up with dozens more properties and a growing community effort behind it, according to an exclusive report by The 19 News. 

After graduating college and moving into her first East Baltimore apartment in 2021, Saj Dillard quickly realized that her rent payments weren’t helping her build anything lasting. She wanted more than temporary shelter—she wanted ownership and a chance to grow wealth.

To measure her progress, she created a unique milestone: once her beloved monstera plant, Big Birtha, became too big to haul up the apartment stairs, it would be time to buy a house.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’m just giving these people money and I’ll have nothing to show for it when I leave,’” Dillard told the outlet.

Two years later, that vision became a reality. Dillard connected with Tonika Garibaldi, program director at Black Women Build-Baltimore, which is dedicated to helping Black women purchase and renovate homes on the city’s west side. Within a month, Dillard previewed a home, made a savings plan, and was under contract. By October 2023, she had moved into a brownstone in Upton—a historically Black neighborhood rich in culture but marked by vacant, deteriorating buildings.

Dillard was the fifth woman to purchase a home thanks to the help from the program. Since then, 17 women have taken up residence in Upton, Druid Heights, and Poppleton—three communities where Black Women Build has renovated 21 homes since its founding in 2019.

“It’s hard to acquire houses if you don’t have the funding and the capital to back it up in the intermediate,” Dillard told the outlet. “I think that Black Women Build is bridging that gap between what city officials feel is necessary or needed for the Black community versus what is actually needed for this community.”

The nonprofit was founded by Shelley Halstead, a carpenter and lawyer who moved to West Baltimore in 2015. As she explored her neighborhood, she saw firsthand the devastation caused by redlining and failed redevelopment projects. The areas were blighted. But Halstead saw potential.

She launched Black Women Build in 2017 with a mission to purchase, rehab, and resell homes—at or below market rate—to Black women. Her vision wasn’t just about shelter; it was about equity, autonomy, and rebuilding communities.

“We really strive to make these houses affordable and that’s whether there’s incentives, subsidies or some kind of support, so that you own a house, you have equity and you can think about your next step,” she said.  “It becomes something. Black women don’t always have something to fall back on.”