 The neighborhood has suffered from extensive urban decay and housing abandonment due to poverty and crime, as well as the after-effects of the Baltimore riot of 1968, and now has a largely poverty-class and working-class African-American majority.The neighborhood was one of the hardest hit in Baltimore, as the white-working class and middle-class African-American tax base left and the area was effected by epidemics of heroin, crack cocaine, and HIV, along with an intensification of gang activity fueled by the drug trade.The predatory practices of lenders, landlords, and property flippers have also contributed to the spiraling cycle of decline and disinvestment.