Earlier this month Wendell Pierce, who played detective William “Bunk” Moreland in the seminal HBO television series The Wire, tweeted his excitement about a new block of Baltimore apartments in which he is a major investor.

Arguing that the Nelson Kohl building would bring gentrification without displacement, he celebrated its ribbon-cutting next month as a new step in the city’s development. He also touted the $20m (£14.1m), privately funded project as the new economic engine of the city’s Station North neighbourhood. “Economic Development is the Social Justice Movement of the 21st Century. Development generates revenue,” he tweeted.

Economic Development is the Social Justice Movement of the 21stCentury.Development generates revenue. How that revenue is allocated determines if gentrification has a negative impact or not.That takes political will &engaged advocacy. Demand &Determine how the resources are used — Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) March 9, 2018

The remarks set off a Twitter storm, with participants largely falling into three camps: fans congratulating him on his investment in the city that brought him fame; critics lambasting him for high rents (“Nice gentrification, bro!”); and a flood of memes inquiring as to whether Bunk had become Stringer Bell.



Holy Shit! The Bunk was Stringer all along!! — Hinson Calabrese (@DonnieCalabrese) March 8, 2018

“The Wire is fiction,” Pierce tells me over the phone from LA, as I sit at a dinner table in one of the show apartments of the Nelson Kohl development.

The apartments certainly aren’t something his character in the show would have had much contact with. Touring the unfinished apartments recently, the property manager pointed out spacious bathrooms adorned with succulents and Scandi-chic details, picture windows, an art gallery, a dog run and fitness facility, and a ground-floor cafe-to-be. Built on an empty lot, the all-rental units range from around $1,400 a month for a one-bed to $2,100-plus for a two-bed, making them mostly out of range for residents of Baltimore, where the median income is $41,000 a year.

An artist’s impression of the finished Nelson Kohl building. Photograph: SAA|EVI

The apartments overlook a train station with frequent commuter service to Washington DC, and the district boasts a world-class art school, as well as a yoga studio and stylish restaurants in a building owned by Pierce’s co-investor, Ernst Valery.

Critics have suggested that the new market-rate development amplifies gentrification, plain and simple.

The current form of economic development is not meant to benefit the poor currently living in the area!!! Stop the lies. — King X ♚ (@iOn_ATrill) March 10, 2018

Affordable rent for families making median income in Baltimore would be about $1000/mo. or less. Which of your units is available at that rate? — Angela Snazzbury (@disnazzio) March 9, 2018

Economic development he says! They start at 1400 a month. For a damn studio! — *cries a lot* (@_chelsearedd) March 10, 2018

But Pierce and Valery insist their goal is to create mixed-income and mixed-use neighbourhoods that will ultimately benefit low-income, minority ethnic Baltimoreans. The pair are clearly intent on shaking gentrification’s reputation as a dirty word.

They admit that the prices of the apartments are high, but say it is a wave of gentrification that all Baltimoreans can ride, bringing their own incomes and property values up with it and “mitigating blight,” as Pierce puts it.

As for the comparison to Stringer, it’s clearly silly – but the two do have something in common. “A well-propertied man he was,” Bunk said of Stringer, after he was shot dead on his own construction site. To Stringer’s surprise, his foray into property development ran into bureaucratic hurdles and rejections for federal grants.

Similarly, the complex network of federal, state and local tax breaks, preferential interest rates and loan guarantees that guide affordable housing development in the US is tough to navigate, especially for those considered outsiders in local development, Valery tells me. He says they applied for every federal grant programme going, without success.

Gentrification is displacement of housing and businesses. When you take an empty and abandoned property and bring assets of housing and business to a community is different because you are bringing value to the citizens already there. — Wendell Pierce (@WendellPierce) March 9, 2018

So they raised it all with private equity, meaning the affordable housing quotas that come with public funds do not apply.

Baltimore’s market-rate housing construction may be booming, but the city is also in the grips of an affordable housing crisis. The city’s Inclusionary Housing Law, meant to encourage private developers like Pierce and Valery to fold affordable housing into their projects, is widely regarded as ineffective. From 2009-2015, the mandate saw just 32 affordable homes built across four developments.

Critics have been sceptical that, in a city with approximately 16,000 vacant houses (many of which are being demolished), apartments overlooking a train station that can whisk workers to DC in under an hour are there to meet the housing needs of Baltimore’s current residents.

Despite having about 16,000 vacant houses, Baltimore is in the grip of an affordable housing crisis. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Pierce tells me that some of the units will be reserved for artists who can barter down their rent in exchange for displaying work, though the exact amount is as yet unspecified. The pair have also launched a “developer apprenticeship programme”, which helps people get on the property ladder by restoring Baltimore’s ubiquitous vacant row homes, with Pierce’s team acting as guarantors. The city and local nonprofits similarly offer grants to buyers who take up vacant properties.



But to achieve this broader vision, which goes well beyond the four walls of Nelson Kohl, there must be the political will to make sure development works for all, not just the rich. Pierce says he wants to see police, emergency medical technicians, teachers and firefighters receive 2% mortgages out of community development block grant funds. He wants a mandate for private development revenue to fund workforce housing programmes for those earning under 80% of Baltimore’s median income.

Wendell Pierce, centre, as Detective William ‘Bunk’ Moreland in The Wire. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature

And while he says building community gardens in blighted neighbourhoods is great, he bristles at the idea of temporarily beautifying low-income lots, only for them to be sold on when a developer swoops in. “It’s a bandaid on a gunshot wound,” he says. “And they only do that in underserved communities. I’m not against community gardens, but you never hear of community gardens in Roland Park. In Roland Park, if a house goes down, they say: ‘Rebuild it.’ We haven’t made the political will to go to those neighbourhoods and say we’re going to rebuild it, giving people an economic stake in changing neighbourhoods.”



Pierce has experience in development. After Hurricane Katrina, his nonprofit in New Orleans built affordable solar and geothermal homes in the area where he grew up, Pontchartrain Park, with the help of federal funds. Plans for a new project in Richmond, California include an Innovation Lab funded/supported by Chevron. The team also have plans drawn up for swathes of west Baltimore, and a Real Estate Developer Index, which grades developers based on their community contributions.

All this suggests that Pierce might be inspired by a different Wire character: the ambitious politician Tommy Carcetti. But the “tri-coastal” actor-cum-developer insists he has no political ambitions. “I go from municipality to municipality,” he says. “My role is town crier.”

Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive here