You don't seem to understand that the tables have turned and you are still stuck thinking like this is 1950 something. The demographic shifts of the next couple decades indicated massive and unprcedented demand for smaller multifamily units and townhouses in walkable urban locations with fixed-rail access and mixed-use zoning (retail and residentail together). The US will never be able to build enough to keep up with demand, and we will never be able to demolish enough suburban houses to prop up their declining value.

It totally insane to demolish houses in Baltimore. The city needs to put as many renovators on city payroll as possible and renovate every propety that is still structurally sound. And extend the subway system in all directions in one-segment increments. And get a bicycle-share system networked with it like they are starting to do in DC. Focus on subsidizing the heathcare and buisness services industry. And stop using aspault for paving - stick with brick pavers suitable for automotive applications - they will last 100 years with no re-paving and look nicer too, and keep cars slow enough to prevent pedestrians from dying when they are hit. Also subsidize districuted energy systems like they are doing in vermont - put a microturbine natural gas generator on ever block to power the block independently, and supplement with solar panels on flat roofs. And consolidate vacant areas with some more public parks - invest in public parks! And get some streetcars running and beg for true high-speed rail, and better freight-rail handling at the port for roll-off from freight to rail - this will bring a lot of jobs too.

I'm a life-long resident of Baltimore City and recently spent a few days visiting Detroit with a friend from Baltimore who grew up in the Detroit area. I hoped to gain new perspective on my native town and definitely didn't come back empty-handed. While Detroit is better and worse than you think it is, the bad I saw was horrible and hideous, frequently moving me to tears and nausea, particularly multiple examples of a single occupied house on a block where you can't decide if it's better everything else is gone or everything else is in total collapse.

From 2006-2007, I was employed by Baltimore Housing and routinely fielded calls from some of the 900+ homeowners who lived next door to city-owned vacant houses, some in swaths of the city that were all but left for dead in the years following the riots. I wondered what made some people stay on blocks like that, particularly those with the means to move, but most said it was familiarity and faith in the future, which looked so promising as houses were scooped up by investors. I wonder how many of those long-suffering homeowners gave up in the past three years.

Bundle the titles for entire city blocks.
Raze nearly every one of them.
Cart off all the debris.
Plan rerouting of pipes and streets.
Keep 50% (or more) as grassy and parky.
---
Auction off the rest to developer types...
carefully and s l o w l y as each successive (and successful) project will make the next auction price higher.
---
Set the (any?) property tax at a fixed and modest level for twenty years. (hint: income taxes from actually employed citizens is the goal)
---
The market will take care of the rest.

How would I attack the vacancy problem? Take a more methodical approach to revitalizing neighborhoods. The current hodgepodge approach to revitalization is a bad idea and will never result in a mass movement of people into the city. The city should focus on one whole neighborhood at a time. Washington Village would be great place to start. This may not be the politically correct thing to say but you've got to move out a lot of the current residents out and tear down most of the crumbling housing stock – "eminent domain". Then plan a community with parks, shopping and with a mixture of home types (townhouse, condos, and single family detached homes with plenty of parking) that will attract people with middle class incomes (60-150K incomes); possibly a gated community. The area should be designated as a revitalization area and the property tax rate should be reduced by 50% for at least 10 years.

I think Washington Village is a great place to start because of its location to the Inner harbor, U of MD, the stadiums and it close proximity to mass transit and major highways (95, 295). The key to this is that you have to address the whole neighborhood at once not just certain blocks.

I travel daily into Baltimore by train, and the blight in that part of town is terrible. The city needs to demonish a few blocks and build new housing, and then move the people living in the single houses surrounded by crap into the new ones, opening up whole blocks for demolition and reuse.

I think only the most structurally unsound or most severely blighted blocks need to be razed.... What needs to be done is a LOT of retrofitting of the existing houses and infrastructure; creation of "mini-neighborhoods"; put more of a focus on improving and creating additional public transportation; taking vacant lots and creating big community gardens to prevent "food deserts"; and continue pushing financial incentives for OWNER/OCCUPANTS (not investors) to purchase and renovate vacant houses.... There are a lot steps that can be taken that would help Baltimore immensely - short of just destroying whole blocks.

If you have interest - - read this - - : http://www.huduser.org/publications/pdf/def.pdf - - Baltimore needs more Defensible Space!! Although I think it would only help areas that aren't primarily vacant - - but the ideas could help foster some stability and responsibility in particular neighborhoods, and reduce crime as a result.

Baltimore just needs money (biggest obstacle), a smart City planning and development team, and participation from some of its citizens (which I realize is another big obstacle - - it seems that there are a small number of people that are really passionate about improving Bmore, more people that are apathetic, even more that just LOVE to complain about Baltimore but do nothing to help improve their neighborhoods; and then unfortunately an even bigger number that contibute to crime and destitution...).

I live in Pigtown (I will never call it Washington Village), it was part of the revitalization project that died when the housing market went, i would like to see the project finished, and I have seen work already starting. My house is one of them. Property values have gone up in Pigtown.
Tearing down some of vacant properties is a great idea, making them Dog Parks is an even better idea! See todays article about the lack of dog parks, Make two adjacent vacant plots a dog park! The ones that are in shape to be sold do need some kind of minimum like $20K, with the contigency that the property be renovated w/in three years. This helps Do away with companies that sit on blocks of properties for years.
At the same time the city needs to become MORE BUSINESS FRIENDLY! Then business will come in, most companies are headquarted in the counties, why? Because the city is not friendly to companies. With the tearing down of blocks of vacant houses, the companies will have a place to build their new headquarters. Oh yeah since the brac reallignment has already started the city might want to jump on this and get the government contracting jobs/Private sector, thatis a lot of money the city could benefit from.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, quit lying about the unemployment numbers government and put people back to work, you will be surprised, they will buy and keep houses AND PAY FOR THEIR OWN HEALTHCARE...........

if you are on welfare handouts (unemployment) you aren't going to fix or buy anything........we are working backasswards here.....

No discussion on Bmore's housing market failure is complete without mentioning the widespread use and frequency of Section 8. This is a wealth transfer from the public to the hands of real estate investors. It hurts the very people it is aimed at helping by creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop of rents and sales prices that are too high for many incomes to afford. Pull the plug on the program and prices and rents fall to a level that low incomes can afford.

The entire renovation process, even on a non-city owned property, is one bureaucratic nightmare. If we believe in private property rights, we believe in the right to renovate property we own without the government micromanaging the process with multiple permit and licensing requirements. Every permit and every license required is a government imposed barrier to making a home livable.

RE: Squatters. They are the natural result of properties that no longer have any economic value. Would it be better for people to freeze outside on the streets and have usable structures get no use at all?

The key issue is SAFETY.

No one wants to live in a neighborhood that even looks unsafe, let alone actually hear gunfire each night.

The problem of vacant properties in Baltimore (and probably other similar cities) cannot be truly solved until the underlying problems that caused people to leave the city are addressed.

Though there are a host of reasons that Baltimore finds itself with so many vacant and abandoned properties, in my estimation the three most destructive causes are:

1. Drug prohibition (aka the “war on drugs”).
As long as there is a demand for drugs (which is to say always) and they are illegal, the most fundamental economic principles guarantee that the lure of huge profits will drive some people to take the risks involved in the supply side of the equation.

No matter how many people are killed or jailed, others will be eager take their place.

Drug prohibition devastates inner cities most of all as it generates a variety of crimes including robbery, prostitution, bribery, and of course, homicide.

Money and lives are wasted as the negative effects are felt around the globe--from the local street gang employing kids as lookouts and couriers to Mexico’s “narco war” killing tens of thousands and Afghanistan’s poppy fields funding the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.

2. The current welfare system (which includes Section 8 vouchers).
As it is now constituted, the system promotes dysfunctional families (which lead to failed school systems) and multi-generational dependence on government money that consists of transfers from the more productive sectors of society to those that primarily consume.

This can only continue for a limited period of time before the system collapses in some fashion.

My personal opinion is that it takes about 75 years to reach the end of the line and we are very close to that point

3. High (property) taxes.

This topic has been covered so well on this blog, that it’s easier to let the experts make their cases below:

http://bit.ly/9EfLvG

http://bit.ly/1ZkMXR

Those governing Baltimore seem not to have the understanding that the taxes are driving out the people that the city most needs to be stable while ensuring that more properties will be abandoned or given over to those on welfare.

Unfortunately, the three elements above are so intertwined, that changing any one will not be sufficient to fully resuscitate Baltimore.

However, the first and easiest step would be to lower the property tax rates. This might create some higher demand for city living which would temporarily drive up housing prices and thus motivate investors to renovate existing shells or raze them and redevelop neighborhoods that now have little or no economic value.

The city will benefit because even though the tax rate is lower, there will be more properties to tax and probably at higher values. This will not happen overnight, but it's taken 50-60 years to get here and you have to start somewhere.

I have to add a disclaimer that though I am the president of Mid-Atlantic Real Estate Investors Association (MAREIA), the opinions expressed above are entirely mine and do not necessarily represent those of MAREIA, its members or its supporters.

Well I am from Detroit (originally) and lived in Baltimore (briefly)...

Having experience with both areas, I can tell you it will take a multifaceted approach.

First, you have to do something about the drugs in Baltimore. Homeowners who decide to live in these communities are sitting ducks (they have to go to work, and junkies know their schedules)...Since most of the work is outside of Baltimore, they have time to "work" on getting into your home, and by the time you get home, they have pretty much had a shopping spree.

Next, you have to tear down many of the vacants. They are not practical for todays furniture, or technology to be greener homes (retrofitting costs too much), and the green space would be more attractive than living in all that concrete.

The schools...Fin~

Services - Where I lived, though it was convenient to commute to D.C., there were no services, especially for professionals (no dry cleaners, coffee shops, decent grocery stores, banks, etc.) It was totally chicken boxes and liquor stores (which is also very unappealing!)

I don't know if jobs will do anything, because the way the country is moving, the level of education you will need to get a job isn't possible with the level of skills the people there have (it is a mismatch; low skilled workers - high skill/technological based jobs)...You can put all the jobs you want in Baltimore right now, many of the residents still wouldn't be able to get them, because they don't possess the skills.

You have to create an incentive for people to consider taking a chance in these depressed neighborhoods...Create pockets of entire blocks where new resident/owners can have a buddy system or something, someway to watch out for one another...Being the first one, or the only one is too hard and stressing. Baltimore people don't "snitch" so they will watch your home being burgled and won't say one word (trust me, it happened to me!).

The city also needs to lower the property taxes. If you want to get homeowners into those areas, why not give them a tax holiday so they can take the money to fix their homes? Why can't the city actually help secure financing for some of the 203K loans, or even hire citizens to assist in rehabbing them? I am sure they could create measures to ensure that the home is owner occupied if the owner is getting a good deal...

But like Detroit, I saw people get old holding onto hope that things would change...they got worse. I kinda got that same feeling in Baltimore. The city doesn't have a major industry that can sustain the type of growth it needs to lure new homeowners there, particularly those with kids. They will have to do something dramatic, and I just think they lack the vision to do what is necessary.

There are a lot of good comments on this page... Obviously there isn't one cure-all solution.... But all of it seems like it would take MAJOR policy changes from Bmore city gov't... I wonder if anyone from the city gov't reads this blog?? (PS - I liked the dog park idea until I realized that no one is going to take their dogs to frolic in Sandtown! ha.)

The city does need to do something about the permit issues! The running joke is you can't hammer a nail in the wall without a permit, its such a headache. The Red tape for the permits is just as bad as the process for buying them. No wonder the city has so many issues with lack of permits, you should have seen the lack of permit issues with my house when I bought it.

Somebody should ask the mayor why this program is just being launched now when her deputy housing commissioner personally told me that it was going to start on July 1st.

Where is the best place to borrow money in B'mo to do a rehab for someone with collateral and excellent credit? Any good decent banks in the city participating in the rehab process?

Mickey,

Try Healthy Neighborhoods. They offer below-market interest rate financing if you rehab a house on one of their targeted blocks. They also offer partial loans that are forgivable depending on how long you live in the house.

http://www.healthyneighborhoods.org/

@Mickey
Try the livebaltimore website
www.livebaltimore.com
they have a list of grant programs and banks that work with the grant programs and all that good stuff. Don't go into the offices though, they tend to be volunteers who work for the people who advertise on the website.

Thanks for not requiring registration! Maybe more people will comment if their personal information is secure.

City-Owned Bidding Program
--------------------------
About 2 years ago, I tried to purchase some City property using their "Bidding" program and I was rejected. I simply wanted to buy a vacant lot and plant it with native trees and plants. I guess the city would rather have kept the lot.

There was a lot of paperwork involved, so I wasn't happy, and I was also surprised that the city said NO. I was willing to take on the cost (over 1K not including plantings, fencing etc), the danger of trying to plant shrubs and trees while dodging bullets in the scary location where the lot was situated and risk (robbery, taxation, destruction of property...). It was ridiculous to me that the city rejected my application, unless they had plans for the lot or another buyer. It's probably STILL vacant and NOT on the tax rolls to this day. The taxes would probably have been a few hundred dollars a year, but that's currently a few hundred dollars that Baltimore isn't getting...while holding out for a big developer, I suppose...

I am a landlord of a city property, and I lived in fabulous Mount Vernon (yay) for several years. The majority of buildings in BAD shape that I saw were CITY-OWNED. So please don't blame private owners.

Project Scope
-------------
The housing department had apparently decided that it was more important to try to NITPICK who could buy the properties than it was to put them into the hands of owners. PERIOD. A GREAT example is the SCOPE program.

On the surface, it looked like a way to disposition property, but the rules were so restrictive that I would be surprised if ANY of the houses are inhabited today.

In some cases, the SCOPE program required people to buy vacant city-owned properties in crime-ridden, or semi-crime-ridden areas for FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS and UP and then get a loan for upwards of 200K for the estimated renovations which had to be done in approximately ONE YEAR.

Jamie, I don't know about you, but fifty thousand dollars is a LOT of money to me, especially for a vacant shell.

The program also stipulated that buyers also had to be OWNER-OCCUPIERS. Yeah, right. It seemed like the city really wanted to KEEP the properties.

There was also an investor with me who wanted to pay cash, but the city would not accept CASH for the program. You were required to get a loan through some special "program."

Anyway, there was a couple from DC, and I think they bought one of the houses in Station North. Two or three years later it doesn't look like they managed to finish the renovations. I think the house is currently for sale. If that nice couple's in trouble, I blame Project SCOPE. The house should have been sold for a dollar and the owner given an estimate to renovate. Period. "Hey, do you know that it will cost over 150K to renovate this gutted 5000 square foot, century-old home?"

The owners should also be allowed to use the house as an apartment building! What's wrong with being a landlord? TONS of people are looking for apartments in that area, and the owners would have additional income as the project will probably cost MORE than planned.

As apartments, the Staton North house is worth over 400K, but NOT as a SFH. Not during the boom, not now, and probably not ever.

YES to owners and YES to Investors
-------------------------

I'm glad to see Baltimore is being serious about selling the vacant properties AND for CHEAP and hopefully with FEW restrictions.

If the new investors don't fix up the houses etc, they will at least PAY TAXES and the CITY can FINE them based on existing regulations if they break any laws. WOW more money for the ailing city in any case.

BUT SURPRISE! Even with the high crime and high percentage of uneducated, horrible people who have taken over many areas of what is still a beautiful port city, TONS of people still want to live and invest IN BALTIMORE. But they need incentives...IE CHEAP HOME PRICES.

There are lots of people who love the older homes in the city, who love the proximity to transportation, and there is a BIG pool of renters and still NOT ENOUGH rental property in BALTIMORE at the low and mid price ranges. While I do NOT SUPPORT section-8, people who pay their own rents still want affordable rents (not freebies etc like Section-8.) So, guess what, if the initial investment is LOW, I bet the majority of the houses sold IF they're cheap enough will be inhabited in a few years.

BTW, for some of the rowhouses, did you know that the house can be fixed up PROPERLY with quality materials for under 100K!?

Roof, framing, floor, windows, security, plumbing, electric...All are definitely do-able for EVEN SMALL owners and/or investors of a rowhouse. I APPLAUD the mayor for realizing it's time to stop trying to "Plan" the neighborhoods and "regulate" renovation and let the properties go to owners who can take on the risks of buying them.

I just hope it's not too late...

If they can get a construction loan, a lot of (especially ADVENTUROUS) homeowners can have great houses for mortgages of UNDER $700 PER month! IF the city sells these houses for $1 and the renovation costs $90K, for example. A fairly LOW mortgage for MD even with the city's ridiculous tax rate.

An landlord may also be attracted to some of the houses if it would be possible to rebuild it to include apartments. You at $300 a pop for a 1BR, the apartments would be affordable for unsubsidized tenants willing to live in the areas where the houses probably are, and the landlord or owner-occupier may still make a small profit.

Personally, I think that would be GREAT.

I lived in a great area, but the city still has MORE than it's fair share of human flotsam (thieves, under educated ppl, vandals).

On the other hand, I also know SEVERAL people who would risk their lives/sanity etc to move into a place like West Baltimore near the Amtrak Station (if that area's not UNDERUTILIZED...) if they could buy a house for $1 and if they didn't have restrictions on HOW (Other than the existing zoning and safety rules) to finish the house, and HOW SOON they needed to finish their renovations.

Yay Mayor Rawlings. It's about time! XD

BTW, jaded and Digger, I think you guys are WAY off the mark. "The city should..." "The government should..."

Those statements mean that "I should." Since I and other unsubsidized property owners pay the bulk of the property taxes in Baltimore, I personally say the government Should Not. Baltimore's done a GREAT job on some programs such as 311, trash collection etc, but I think that housing is an area where private citizens can definitely make a difference for the BETTER.

The fact is that the government in Baltimore cannot afford yet ANOTHER micro-managed, over-designed, over-planned program. Who would administer the program? Some of the furloughed employees on the payrolls now? Please get real.

As a taxpayer who contributes almost TEN GRAND a year--that I assure I cannot spare--to Baltimore city, I can tell you that I DEFINITELY cannot afford the approaches you're mentioning.

In areas like Bolton Hill and Mount Vernon, the property owners are the ones who make sure our neighborhoods are clean, safe and beautiful. The government has not been able to do that for ANY neighborhood, NOR should they be expected to.

PRIVATE organizations also make sure that our park is beautiful and well planted and that even building facades are renovated. There's something about freebies from the government that seems to breed slackness in people.

I think changes work best if the residents are invested themselves.

Based on conversations with my representative, NOBODY in the city council will vote to lower the property tax rate any time in the near future. I also get the feeling that a lot of current residents are lower income, so many of the constituents simply do not care HOW high property taxes are, since their housing and taxes are nonexistent or heavily subsidized. Sad fact about Charm city, so don't hold your breath for lower taxes.

I think that making the up-front costs to purchase city property LOWER is the answer.

And as far as creating green space from unused properties. There are land trusts and Parks and People and similar organizations ALL over our City and State.

We can all definitely get together to help create and consolidate green space WITHOUT more restrictive and expensive programs that the city cannot afford to properly manage.

Baltimore ran a demolition derby during the Schmoke administration, led by then HCD Commissioner, Dan Henson. Then, as now, the better use of available funding would be to use it for renovation. The best chance many inner city resident have to live in decent houses in their neighborhoods and communities, as opposed to relocation, is if existing houses are rehabilitated. The demolition funds could be made available as grants to help keep the renovated housing affordable for current residents. For homeowners in at risk neighborhoods whose properties need work I would consider allowing a flat payment in lieu of taxes of an amount less than their current taxes on the condition that the savings be spent on the needed repairs. I would expand the new buyer credit to all purchasers, not just teachers and police. As has been proven over and over again, simply rolling back the tax rate will do little to maintain or grow home ownership among current residents. Of course, the issue of affordable housing has to be tackled from both sides, something must be done to increase incomes in addition to helping to control the costs of the housing.

Past programs, except the $1 houses, have all relied on the developers, who will not risk going into an area of mostly vacant houses. Yes, they'll buy the houses, but only to sit on them until things change, which then becomes a catch 22.
The fastest way to get depressed areas redeveloped, is to allow the sale of ANY boarded up house to anyone who will make the house habitable within a specified period of time... example, one year. There's an army of skilled pioneers, myself included, who would love to get in one of these houses and turn it into a home, and are willing to be in a not so great neighborhood.
I don't remember all the rules of the $1 house program, but I think they were not so demanding of money if you had the skills and experience to do the work .
These kind of rules would permit many who have suffered at the hands of banks to rebuild their esteem as well as help the city rebuild itself.

Hi Jamie,

I hope I'm not spamming your blog, but I like the post above. B J Egeli YAY!

At any rate, the portal is UP to unload the vacant houses at www.baltimorehousing.org, but I visited and was disappointed.

Only a SMALL subset of the 16K(?) available houses and vacant lots are listed, and most of them are the pricier items, or SCOPE houses. IE, the lots are 2K and up and the houses seem to be 20K and up.

I emailed the city to ask them to post the spreadsheet that just has all of the properties, and they are working on getting all the properties on the site.

I also tried to find out buyers could bid what they wanted, or if they had to bid the listed price. I think the original plan is to allow buyers to bid whatever they want to pay. Renovation etc is going to be costly, anyway.

I didn't get a response about that.

Is someone in the City trying to put a monkey wrench in the program? Why aren't all the properties there, and why are the prices so high? :(

Juanita, comment all you want -- the conversation among readers is at least half the fun here.

I'll see if the city can answer those questions, since you're surely not the only person who wonders.

By the way, as amused as I am by your creative made-up email addresses, I encourage you (and everyone else) to put in an actual address when you comment. It gives me a way of contacting you if I find an answer a few days later to a question you asked, or if there's a problem with a comment that prevents me from approving it as-is. Don't worry -- I don't share the addresses, ever. I hate spam, too.

Hmmmm...seemsevry1 on this blog understands alleviation....resolution...soultion...rationale...but alllllllllllll the folks @ city hall have no idea? Hmmmm...hmmmm...hmmmmmmmm...this is the real question...and I guess I am not sssssooo bright 4 I hav no answer 2 this real question...hmmmmmm...