‘Saving Etting Street’ offers an inspiring look inside a vital Baltimore organization

As a millennial, this critic has long considered even the abstract concept of home ownership to be analogous to acquiring the gift of flight through the use of a jetpack. To this generation, and the ones who have come after, homes aren’t something to own. They’re something to rent, to share, or simply to pine for. But the new documentary “Saving Etting Street” presents them as something you create yourself, with your bare hands. 

Co-directed by Dena Fisher and Amy Scott, the film focuses on Black Women Build – Baltimore, an organization that has spent the last five years renovating and restoring vacant houses in the city to create first-time ownership opportunities. The nonprofit is not, however, strictly charity. Applicants to its Homeownership Program are taught the necessary trade skills to rebuild these dilapidated houses themselves, developing a tool set they can utilize vocationally. At the end of the course, they are aided in securing loans to purchase the houses they themselves have made into homes.

Unpacking the details of the project itself initially feels like the main intrigue in the film. There’s a strange sort of establishment Democrat urge to mentally means test the structural logistics and financial particulars of the way the program functions. But the way the doc tells this story leapfrogs those kinds of quibbles by centering its narrative on the people — the members of the program, the creators of the program, and the Etting Street residents who inspired it in the first place.

BWBB founder Shelley Halstead is a transplant to the city who, having grown up in a home owned by her family, understands the importance of ownership and the financial leg up it provides, of having fertile roots from which to grow. Being a queer woman working in the predominantly male field of contracting, she also knows that to plant those roots, you have to water them yourself. Her drive to see more Black women owning homes and experiencing the economic empowerment of learning a trade powers the organization and its mission. Developing those skills and learning crucial financial literacy allows the applicants to better more than just themselves, but puts them in a more advantageous position to have children and set them up for generational wealth.

But there’s a beautiful moment in the film that highlights the elders who already live in the neighborhood. Halstead speaks about why she chose Etting Street to stage this endeavor and how seeing home gardens tended to by the existing inhabitants made her believe in the block. She saw that things could grow here and that there was already ample energy and love, making it fertile ground for new neighbors. Some of the film’s most moving moments come from the interviews with the women who watch over the neighborhood, sweeping the streets themselves and acting as stewards and custodians of an area the city seems to have forgotten. BWBB reinforces a standard they have already set.

In this life, the things most worth having are seldom acquired with ease. The doc finds the bulk of its drama in exploring the inherent difficulty and adjustment the program’s applicants face. There is a benevolence to Halstead’s goals, but the day-to-day grind of teaching a group of young women how to be carpenters, electricians, and plumbers is not without its challenges. 

Halstead herself is sometimes frustrated with a lack of buy-in from the participants. Some fixate too much on the work to be done in the houses they know are going to be “theirs” and not enough on the days they’re expected to work on a house meant for one of their colleagues. She is putting so much of herself into this and the feeling that the requisite reciprocity isn’t always returned appears to weigh heavily on her. That, coupled with the resistance from some locals toward a woman from outside the city working on this project and trying to build a communal workspace on top of it, makes what is already an uphill battle feel more like climbing a cliff face with no ropes.

But for the program participants, doing the work of BWBB is closer to juggling a full-time job and college at the same time. The physical labor is strenuous and the mental task of learning all these new skills is taxing, but for them to secure the houses in the end, they have to reach a $2,500 minimum threshold in their savings. In some cases, the faster they work on finishing a house, the less time they have to save the money, so watching some participants work outside the program, while also butting heads with Halstead creates doubt in the viewer whether some will make it work in the end. 

It’s not difficult to imagine a more exploitative filmmaker setting aside the nobility and grace that fuels the project in an effort to wring maximum drama from the doc’s subjects. Just picture a TLC series blending the tones of “Bad Girls Club” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”, racking up tawdry views, messy memes, and schadenfreude engagement for the masses. 

Luckily, the filmmakers are more concerned with compassion and empathy than reality show theatrics. Of all the compelling moments in this documentary, the scenes where Halstead and the participants are able to reconcile their conflicts and keep the energy focused on the work prove the most cathartic. There is a scene where Halstead is sharing childhood memories and she speaks of how her mother used to rub her back every night to lull her to sleep. There’s profound weight in her delivery, the affirming sense knowing that level of love powered her through learning to thrive in spaces that were not set up for her to succeed in. 

Back in November, BWBB published their five-year report on the program’s progress. With non-profits, external materials will often show the end results and the successes, but seldom will you get a view into the conflicts and struggles that made those wins possible. “Saving Etting Street” allows a unique and intimate portrait of what it takes to enact real change, both for the larger community and the individuals within it.

Shandria Robertson, one of the participants, speaks about how the sense of camaraderie and support within the program moved her. “I’ve never been in a position where I’ve been around a lot of powerful Black women,” she says. “So, for me, this is a big deal.” Turning abandoned houses into homes is half the battle, but watching Black women empower one another, equip one another with what they need to prosper — that’s more like winning the war.

“Saving Etting Street” will next be screened at the Maryland Film Festival at The Parkway on April 9. More details here: https://snfparkway.org/mdff/special-events/

For more information on Black Women Build visit blackwomenbuild.org