Baltimore City has over 30,000 vacant homes. These empty houses serve as tangible barriers to the recovery of blighted neighborhoods who have been set upon by drug dealers and prostitutes who often use the houses as impromtu brothels or stash houses. Residents are driven out of the city by the rising crime problem, and the problem worsens as more vacants appear. Absentee landlords buy up the properties, and let them rot as they wait for the opportunity to flip the houses when the neighborhood turns around, which, of course, it never does. As the city’s population decreases, so does its tax base, which is critical to the city’s economic health.
Mike Miller, CEO of the Chesapeake region’s arm of Habitat for Humanity, appeared on the Baltimore Rapport podcast last week to discuss how the city’s surplus of vacant housing is more than a problem of aesthetics, and how his organization is trying to connect working people to these empty homes. When people are able to own their own homes in these kinds of neighborhoods they can build wealth, the community can stabilize, and there are actual stakeholders in the viability of that community. People that own their own homes care more deeply about what’s going on in their neighborhoods than renters, or squatters, or whoever is haunting the vacant rowhouses of countless Baltimore neighborhoods. Mitchell also mentioned that when the ownership rate in a neighborhood increases, things like crime and education are also positively impacted. He blamed the market of speculators that are passing off the deeds to these vacants to one another, never occupying or improving them, holding out for a payday. The segment was a fascinating reminder that the more visible consequences of an unhealthy city – crime, low-performing schools, homelessness – begin with things like vacant rowhomes. Listen to the full podcast.
Another site, Baltimore Slumlord Watch, documents absentee landlords who have allowed their properties to fall into disrepair. The site features updates on landlords facing legal proceedings for various violations, as well as photos of their properties. A great resource.
There is also a remarkable website called Rebuilding Madison, about a man who purchased a former crack house in West Baltimore, rehabbed it, and turned a back room into a police substation/break room in an effort to combat the rampant drug dealing in the area. Sadly, the crime and the city’s lack of support in fighting it became too much for him, and he gave up the fight, selling the house and reluctantly closing the substation with it. The site is a heartbreaking narrative of an idealist slowly worn down by the bureaucracy and broken promises of the Baltimore City government. It’s an important read, because not much has changed and these problems continue to plague the city.
