On August 10, 2022, once again for the 3rd time in less than a decade, immigrant families in Berwyn Heights experienced trauma and loss due to massive flashflooding along their street on 59th Ave.  Sadly much like in 2014, emergency response and immediate relief was ignored by town management, the mayor, and county life-safety agencies.  

INCbh contacted the Red Cross to assess the damage and provide assistance to the families.  We set up a fundraiser and coordinated efforts with BHPD, to provide safe shelter and supplies to families with children who were displaced and experienced entire loss of their belongings. 

Since then, for now 12 weeks and ongoing INCbh has been advocating to non-responsive councilmembers, including the mayor and the negligent town manager to re-allocate and utilize ($175k) ARPA funds to provide Flood Relief and Resilient Recovery measures to all directly impacted Berwyn Heights residents.  Sadly three elected council leaders have been intentionally delaying and blocking efforts to deploy funds.

We thank the only two councilmembers, Shinita Hemby and Jason Papanikolas, for actively voicing for the political pandering to end so that funds and relief programing can be provided to all impacted residents, including 4 immigrant families.

We thank councilwoman Hemby for leading a resident flood impact survey, which the town manager (Laura Allen) has yet to provide a report on.      

INCbh submitted a letter of community support, regarding the proposed partnership request and agreement brought forward by the University of Maryland School of Public Health, to develop a community needs assessment. 

On March 28, 2022, we presented the towns diversity gains in racial/ethnic population and proposed a solution to increase its diverse representation across its institutions. Among the findings from 2020 ACS census data, the Town has a majority Hispanic/Latino population (42%), a combined non-white population of 65%), and 48% speaks a language other than English.

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