The residents of Poppleton’s Center/West apartments may be the only ones who can hold Dan Bythewood accountable

In a neighborhood where compact brick homes lean against one another in rows — a familiar image of a Baltimore block — the Center/West apartments’ 262 units are out of place. 

The building looms over the 100 block of North Schroeder street, flanked by empty lots. The watchful eyes of Hazel Williams, a long-term resident on the adjacent West Fayette Street, keep track of this new development, hoping for something more. She says her greatest dream for the neighborhood would be more homeowners and playgrounds for the community. But nearby churches shuttered their doors long ago. The Center/West facade is a contrasting flat, gray expanse against the rich character of nearby historic buildings. At street level, peeling acrylic window signs are cracked and faded with age. Though the display is deteriorating, passersby can make out faint images of fruit and produce, a reminder of the failed promise of a grocery store in the building’s main floor. Like other fresh starts promised by developer, La Cité, the grocery never came. 

The New York developer responsible for the building, Dan Bythewood, has deftly avoided accountability for years. A lawsuit alleging unconstitutional seizure of 13.8 acres in Poppleton was brought against him and political supporters, only to be dismissed by U.S. District Judge Adam B. Abelson in June. The plaintiffs compiled evidence showing the vast disparity between Bythewood’s original agreement with the city in 2006 and the amount of construction actually completed since then, claiming that defendants owe almost one million dollars in damages to the neighborhood after displacing hundreds of its families and leaving entire blocks vacant and unkempt for decades. Following the lawsuit’s dismissal, Bythewood’s parasitic presence in the Poppleton neighborhood remains unchecked. The only ones who may be able to hold him accountable are the current residents of the single apartment complex he did build in the neighborhood, and which he still owns –— Center/West. 

While the building completed construction and gained its occupancy permits in 2021, its history since is riddled with housing code violations, garnering multiple citations from the Department of Housing and Community Development for non-operational plumbing, electrical, and appliances. Residents say these citations wouldn’t happen if the property managers were responsive to maintenance requests. Baltimore Beat spoke with several residents of Center/West’s Avra building, who asked to remain anonymous fearing retaliatory action from management. Residents report that dishwashers, sinks, and stoves in their units haven’t been functional for months. With the front door call box and resident key cards often not working, residents regularly find themselves locked out when the security guard is away from the front desk, where they are usually posted and open the door for residents and guests. The exercise room has been unusable since 2022, when its HVAC system broke. 

Avra’s problems, say its residents, don’t extend to its sister building, Cirro, sitting just across the courtyard. 

Cirro is Center/West’s “boutique” building, branded as a luxury apartment targeting nearby University of Maryland staff and students. Meanwhile Avra’s adjacent units, where the state of Maryland subsidizes many low-income units by giving Bythewood tax credits, are neglected. 

While public record confirms that Center/West currently owes the city $520,667 in outstanding water bills, with the last bill paid in 2022, residents confirm that they have been paying water utility bills to the company through June 2024. Some have even used utility vouchers from the city to pay the building, with the expectation that Center/West was completing the payments to the city. Where is the money going if the bill remains unpaid? One tenant-organizer raises an urgent question: who will account for this misappropriation of public funding? Who will account for the grief?

Poppleton Now, the community association, reports that 500 homes were taken by the city through eminent domain to enable La Cité’s failed project. 

“You’re talking about a loss that cannot be quantified and that’s painful. We see this happening in Black and brown communities, Latino communities in NY, in DC and we just try to fight, we try to fight. It’s been happening all over the country and it’s not by chance. At what point do elected officials step in to minimize harm and identify grifters? How can we be more proactive in protecting our communities from this?” the organizer said. 

The Beat directed these questions to multiple city agencies tasked with managing housing and community development but received no answers.

Bythewood declined to comment entirely when the Beat reached out about the outstanding water bill, or where the money tenants are paying toward it has been going since the last payment in 2022. 

The tenants’ abiding commitment to organizing their neighbors has an undeniably gravitational pull. Bythewood’s refusal to acknowledge conditions in the building is a fight against this force of nature.

Residents of Center/West take care of each other, working together to challenge the most infamous developer in Poppleton from within the District Court system. At least nine cases against Center/West management have been filed in the last three years. More and more tenants are holding their ground, even though many have moved out.

One tenant, a mother of three, says she is waiting for enough failed inspections to qualify to move her housing voucher to another apartment. She reports that the property manager has done nothing to remediate the mold growing in her sink. But for many, leaving Center/West isn’t so straightforward — failed inspections come with the possibility of losing your housing voucher, potentially punishing residents for the negligence of the property owner. These tenants juggle precarity in one hand and the need for dignity in the other. 

In June 2023, tenants began receiving letters from the property management company, GRC Management, declaring that they had overdue rent and suddenly billing them for thousands of dollars. For tenants whose rent was subsidized by city housing vouchers, these outstanding amounts didn’t add up. While some tenants were able to get these inaccurate charges resolved by reaching out to the management company directly, others are still fighting to get false outstanding balances cleared, a process slowed to a stop under current management. 

With outstanding balances for rent due, even inaccurate ones, tenants aren’t able to apply for new apartments. “This feels like a prison,” one tenant, age 70 and on palliative care, huffs, showing me the letters from the management company demanding over $3,000 in overdue rent. She tells me that she can’t apply to a new apartment with this kind of balance, but that her rent is paid with a housing voucher. There’s nothing overdue about it. 

During a conversation with this reporter to discuss the living conditions, her neighbor’s two-year-old son comes by the apartment. She giggles as the boy effortlessly climbs her walker, cooing as he reaches toward her leaking sink. 

As conditions worsened, housing support group Baltimore Renters United joined tenant organizing efforts in 2024 to fortify the power tenants had been developing in direct confrontations with management. BRU confirmed that tenants have reported acts of intimidation, with the property manager refusing access to certain parts of the building, refusing to discuss rent payments with tenants directly, and using family members and friends who reside in the building to intimidate tenants. One resident working with BRU reports that the property manager, Keesha Howard, raised the rent for them and other residents, insisting that despite the terms of their active lease, if they did not pay extra fees each month they would be evicted. Others report being punished for not paying Howard additional fees by having their keycard access revoked to free building amenities like the gym, pool, and courtyard spaces.

While the maintenance of the property creates its own system of entrapment for low-income residents, Howard has contributed to a climate of fear amongst tenants. Residents whisper in hallways and common spaces, looking over their shoulders in anticipation of being surveilled. All tenants interviewed requested anonymity, fearing specific retaliation by the property manager. Howard has gained a reputation for bullying residents, illegally entering apartments without prior notice, and even theft of personal property. With Howard living in the building alongside other residents, the sense that she could be around any corner pervades the community. With Bythewood as absentee landlord, there is no accountability for building management. Instead, residents organize to halt evictions, challenge her citations for overdue rent, and resist her verbal and financial harassment. 

When the Beat reached out to the property management office to speak to Howard, she refused to comment on the slew of tenant concerns. Instead, she shared that Bythewood does not allow staff to make media statements before unleashing a series of criticisms of Poppleton as a “broken” neighborhood, suggesting that developers like Bythewood are helping to uplift the area. Her tirade did not spare the organizers of Poppleton Now, who she believes only represent the interests of homeowners in the neighborhood. 

“I don’t think [Bythewood] knows, because he’s not engaged right now. He spends most of his time galavanting and fighting all these lawsuits. She’s pretty much given full control,” said one tenant-organizer.

As residents continue to take Bythewood and his property manager to court for peace orders and civil claims, the struggle to envision a healthy future for Poppleton continues. Local community dinners convene renters and homeowners alike to recall each other’s humanity in the face of enduring colonialism. The Poppleton Recreation Center opening in mid-June was cause for celebration for neighborhood heroes like Sonia Eaddy and others who have long seen the need for recreational space as tied to the safety and cohesion of blocks in the area that are dark and vacant. Wherever residents gather there is a pulse of resistance that fills the air, a beating drum to fight back against those who extract from Poppleton instead of seeking to invest in what residents are asking for — regenerative solutions like community land trusts, improved recreational spaces, and access to affordable, fresh food.

Their success will be a result of tireless neighborhood level organizing, a moment where homeowners and renters are able to collectively end a cycle of extraction perpetuated by a major developer. The possibility of more equitable, non-displacing development in Baltimore is not a far-fetched vision, but a reality in other historically Black Baltimore neighborhoods — so for Poppleton, healing from the last several decades of extractive development is still possible. Center/West’s tenant organizers have a unique vantage point into that speculative future, one that cannot be underestimated.

“What have we learned from this? How are we going to make decisions differently?” one tenant asked. “Having ownership of where we live has to be part of the equation.”