Tax Broke Filming Locations

For decades, Baltimore has struggled to grow, hamstrung by a property tax rate twice that of the surrounding counties, a lack of affordable housing strategy, and lack of investment in education. The unequal burden has prompted the city to pursue a risky strategy of effectively paying developers to build. Using incentives with innocuous sounding acronyms like TIF and PILOT, new construction in the city has occurred largely at the expense of the city's working class. Meanwhile, despite the promises that these incentives would reverse the city's decline, Baltimore continues to lose population. How did we get here? Why is Baltimore the only jurisdiction in the state that must pay for development? And is there a better way to grow a city? These are just a few of the questions that Tax Broke seeks to answer. The film-five years in the making-explores the history of the city's fraught relationship with artificially imposed boundaries, codified segregation, and, finally, a political economy fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives doled out behind closed doors.