No amount of advertising and marketing can change the numbers on the settlement sheet.

Until property taxes come down by 50%, Crime and poverty issues are addressed in a more aggressive manor and public transportation is improved, Baltimore will continue loose residents.

There is just no attraction in the city worth leaving near that justifies the taxes.

I don't care how slick they try to market Baltimore, or how they try to "reverse your psychology!", after have lived in D.C., Baltimore, and now - THANK THE LAWD! DC area again, there is no comparison! Yeah it may be cheaper to live in Baltimore, from a pure housing stand-point, but you pay a price, a dear price. You pay for lack of culture, or a stable middle-class. You pay in fear, and living like a caged animal, always in fear that you forgot to turn your alarm on (and don't forget the alarm registration fee!), you pay with increased auto and home insurance. You pay for diminished night life, You pay with a filthy, ineptly run, and blighted city, where the largest slum lord is the City! You pay with a horrible commute if you have to rely on the MARC...I could go on and on. I would rather live in a box in DC and pay 2k a month for it, than to live in Baltimore for $500!

Trust me, take it from someone who lived there and made it out alive and psychologically intact...Don't fall for the slick marketing, Baltimore is anything but cool, unless you are insane!

Who did the ads for them?

It doesn't matter how they spin it, Baltimore has major issues that need to be addressed and these ads aren't fooling anyone inside or outside of the area.

Taxes need to be lowered!!!! Then people MIGHT come back if they can stomach the terrible crime, lack of entertainment, an awful education system, etc.

Leaving tells us: Until property taxes come down by 50%, Crime and poverty issues are addressed in a more aggressive manor and public transportation is improved, Baltimore will continue loose residents.

The problem with this scenario is that the people who have been doing the leaving, for decades, generally fit the demographic of those the City is attempting to attract from elsewhere.

Cue Alanis Morissette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v9yUVgrmPY

Now if the City had a way of shedding itself of the 100,000 or so druggies and prostitutes, unemployed and unemployable instead... now *that* would be something to crow about.

Heck, a couple of years without that drain on resources and services combined with increased income taxes from the new citizens who work... and the City could afford to halve the tax rate without it being the sort of "hope and pray it works out" operation it will be absent that diaspora happening first.

If wishes were horses...

I feel like these ADs would be really cool in a city that people generally expressed an interest in living in.

Don't get me wrong, I own and live here and like it. But the general outside view is negative, and I don't think these ads will help.

Since it always seems to be the naysayers who post on these things, I'm going to offer my perspective and some responses to what people wrote. I've owned a home in the city for 3 1/2 years (after living just outside DC). My property taxes just got reassessed DOWNWARD by almost 50%, so I'm ecstatic about that. Even with my taxes at their previous level, I couldn't touch a house like mine in DC at a similar cost.

No culture in Baltimore? Just plain false. Art, theatre, music; they're all here. Filthy? No more so than DC. It all depends on where you go. Crime is very low unless you're involved in the drug trade. I'd like to know where Wallace was living where he felt like a caged animal... Denigrating an entire city because of a few neighborhoods is silly. Also, MARC service is very good, especially since the locomotives were replaced. I rarely have a problem, and all you have to do is look at the performance statistics to see that it's not a "horrible commute."

As far as the ads go, I'm not so sure about the "just say 'no'" ad (although I like the other ones). As Peter said, it could turn some people away. Then again, I've used a similar "don't move to Baltimore, so there's more for us" theme when talking to my friends, so honestly, if it turns away the people who aren't going to give the city a real chance anyway, I say job well done. We don't need any more naysayers living here. We need people with pride in the city.

This money spent on creating an illusion is a waste, just as the back room, closed door, hush hush dealings of the BDC are. We pay burdensome taxes for the privilege of living in a badly managed city filled with crime. And one comment is right: The city is the worst land owner of all. Baltimore Housing Department would be laughable if wasn't so pathetic. If my family didn't have overriding commitment to church and helping, I'd never suggest anyone live here. But if you're a bleeding heart liberal, this city offers more lost causes than you could ever hope to find.

All these hater comments are just proving the point. Cooler, more chill people are living in the city, and all the people who can't hack it can sit outside the fence and hate.

Enjoy your back row seat to the rebirth of an amazing place to live, I hope the TGI Fridays in Owings Mills is everything you hoped for.

Brilliant Marketing concept, Live Baltimore! They should put those ingenious messages on that helicopter billboard that I see hovering over I-95 (www.bootcamplights.com).

If Baltimore is so bad and these signs suck and you just hate your life and taxes are too high... why haven't you moved yet?

Thanks Joe and chm3 for your comments. I moved here from NYC two and a half years ago, live in the city, and absolutely love it.

Everyone seems to think that lowering property taxes is what it will take to get people moving back in. Maybe so. But any discussion of that should also include incorporating some sort of commuter tax to make up in part for the revenue shortfall, and to provide added incentive to get people to consider living in the city.

The agency responsible for the campaign is wndr.

www.wndr.us (A new website will be up by Thursday)

Have lived in the city for 29 years, 26 of them in a gorgeous classic Edwardian rowhouse in Charles Village. I love it.

You can't please the naysayers ("living like a caged animal"?? good grief); c'est la vie. They're probably not interested in the abundant cultural amenities anyway. And god bless the MARC, which is a great service (at least until the TSA gets its paws on it).

I have a friend in London who lived in Baltimore for a year and still talks about it; he and his wife and daughter are now looking at property here. In the city.

I'm glad that there are some positive comments here. Reading so much ignorance is bad for the soul. People apparently don't realize all of the positives going on in our city. I've lived in Hampden and Medfield and now I own a house in Bayview. There are so many cool neighborhoods in Baltimore I'd like to have a chance to live in more. This ad campaign is creative and I love the irony.

Excited for these, only because I can scarcely imagine the hilarious parodies this will spark.

Even the Mafia won't live here. Baltimore has taken all their operations and made it their own. Parking your car may cost you thousands of dollars! Don't pay property tax or water bill on time, Baltimore sells your debt to gangsters. Sanitation Nazis scour the area for opportunities to reach in your pocket. In fact the city of Baltimore is constantly looking for ways to reach in the pockets of its victims...I mean citizens. The street criminals are the least of your worries if you move to Baltimore City.
Beware

I LOVE these ads. I think they're smart and engaging. It's nice to see some new and inspiring creativity in Charm City.

This seems targeted more to people saying "please don't leave", rather than to outsiders saying "please come live here".

The people who love living in the city... good for you. Enjoy it.

Just don't keep preaching about what the rest of us are missing. We'll come to the city for work and for fun and then go home to our quiet neighborhoods with a fraction of the taxes and a fraction of the crime.

Grew up in the suburbs. Moved to the city 25 years ago. Love it. I'm walking distance from shopping and a 12 minute drive from downtown in a low-crime neighborhood.

We bought our 2,200 sq ft. house in 1988 for half what the same house would have cost in the county-- if you could find a charming 1926 house in a similar neighborhood in the county and with the help of the tax cap, taxes that were originally high are reasonable now.

And the truth is, I don't care what the taxes are, you couldn't pay me to move elsewhere.

I am from Los Angeles - most people say that's a cool city. I tend to agree. I have lived for months in NYC, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Stockholm and I now live in a designer home in Canton.

Most people who hear that I'm from LA and now live in Baltimore get all bugged out - "why the $*#& would you do that?"
Well, its simple: I came here, it grew on me - I still dig it, so I stay.

In my view the city is an underdog in a constant fight , its fighting for relevance, its fighting for its reputation (thanks to the fantastic show 'The Wire' - most people only know the worst of this place), its fighting to solve difficult problems that are present in almost all major American cities: Crime, poverty, education systems. You think LA or DC CHI town and NYC don't have these same issues? WRONG.

We have a lot going for us too - starting with a freaking great mayor (finally) who is engaged and dedicated. Follow her on twitter to find out just how rad she is: @MayorSRB
We have great homes, universities and hospitals, we have strong communities, we have art, we have water we have lots of great food, we have a startup incubator (@etcbaltimore), we have entrepreneurs, sports, excellent parks, social clubs and the list goes on.

We're not the greatest city in the world but we may just be one of the great cities you'd never thought you would love.

I moved here in '89 and have never regretted a single moment in Baltimore. I pay the taxes (which just decreased) and I get so much out of this place--I play in a park, eat in great restaurants that I can walk to, and yes, go to the farmer markets.

It's either your bag or it's not. It's our city--both wonderful and yes, troubled. He's to rooting for the underdog.

Baltimore DOES need a lot of advertising I'm afraid. And what happened to BELIEVE?

Great, I say this all the time already, because I mean it. Seriously, I moved here from San Francisco for a job,and have had so much miserly in dealing with this city that I'm moving back. It's not about crime, it's about the fact that this is a dying city, a boring place to live with huge divisions along lines of race and class, where I'm totally dependent on my car and have to drive to the mall in Towson when I want to get a pair of socks. Put whatever media spin on it you want, this city has serious structural problems that need to be, and aren't being, addressed, and it will continue to lose population, esp. among younger and less conservative demographics, until it does so. This isn't "hating," this is about a serious look at things like public transportation, civic life, and *why* anyone would want to live in Baltimore in the first place.

I love the people that live in Charles Village, Hampden, Medfield, etc posting how much they love their funky little neighborhoods and how people who don't live in the city are haters.

I grew up in Belair-Edison. Still own a rental there. We have this funky little blue lights on several street corners that flash like a disco. It has a police logo on it, but I pretend that is like the police badge on the guy from the Village People. People put their garbage and all kinds of fun stuff in my backyard instead of taking it to the dump, so that's pretty groovy as well. Not to mention the roads that are either filled with potholes or poorly filled potholes, so driving down the street is like I'm on a roller coaster at Kings Dominion, but for free!

And there's plenty of shopping... We have a Rite Aid 6 blocks away, so who needs a department store or grocery store when I can go there and get a pair of no name socks for $7 a pack or 6 bottles of soda for $9... ooh, and Valentine's candy is 90% off, so there's dinner for the kids!

I'd like to see these city defenders take a walk down Monroe St., Hilton Pkwy, or Clifton Park at about 8 p.m. and then tell us how cool and vibrant the city is.