After she relocated from Brooklyn in 2017, Dr. Daa’iyah Cooper made Baltimore her home.
But the emergency medicine physician wasn’t only thinking about her own house. She owns multiple properties and put down roots in her Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.
It shows how movement into the city can build wealth.
Dr. Cooper also moved to the city at a time when there was a trend toward moving out. According to U.S. Census data released this summer, Baltimore’s population in 2020 was 585,708, as compared to 611,576 in 2010. It’s the only city in the Northeast corridor to lose people over the last decade.
That doesn’t tell the whole story.
Over that decade, a Technical.ly data analysis shows that Baltimore gained wealth among its majority-Black population. There was an increase in the percentage of Black people making $200,000 — the income needed to become an accredited angel investor — in Baltimore, from .1% to .37%. In real numbers, that means, in 2009, there were 412 Black people fitting the definition of high-earner. In 2019, that number was 1,399 people.
