By Cari Crabtree
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Little Africa, Baltimore
“I can’t even talk about it. Talk to Brother John. The program, it’s not working… it’s… it’s just crap,” the vice president of Little Africa’s Community Office said emotionally. “Just look at this. This is what you get,” motioning to the two houses with caved in roofs and floors, a chunk back wall missing, and a fallen tree for a backyard.
Brother John, president of the Little Africa Community organization, and his vice president battled with the city to purchase all of the thirteen vacant homes and the one vacant lot about a decade ago.
But the city sold the lots to a large-scale developer. After an effort to rebuild many of the homes, the developer had to stop and left the community in a more dilapidated state than ever before.
The house at 733 Dolphin St. has signs of new construction efforts. A wall in the back has been removed and a new support structure of wood has been installed in preparation for rebuilding that part.
But piles of crumbling bricks, cement blocks, construction buckets, doors, neon orange plastic construction fencing, and heaps of home belongings such as VHS tapes and pots and pans litter the backyards of the thirteen homes.
An old, large fallen tree and its mess of branches take up the entire backyard of two of the homes and the piles of torn-down walls and roofs are visible through many of the windows of these homes.
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- The yards of vacants are also in disrepair. Without owners, this yard was not maintained after a tree fell in it.
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- Signs of construction efforts can be found in Little Africa. These projects were abandoned.
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- Efforts to rehabilitation these homes were abandoned.
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- Litter and trash are found on many of Baltimore City’s vacant properties.
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- The backside of Baltimore’s vacant homes illustrates severe dilapidation.
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- The evidence of owners can be found in piles of garbage near or inside of several of Baltimore City’s vacant houses.
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- An assortment of trash in between two vacant houses.
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- The building at 745 is one of four Baltimore City abandoned homes that has been awarded through the Vacants to Value initiative.
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- A close-up of a rat outside of a vacant house.
“We had a population of nearly a million people and now over the past several decades we’ve declined to about 600,220” said Ryan O’Doherty, the mayor’s director of policy and communications. “So there’s a glut of aged housing stock that people don’t use anymore because they don’t live here.”
The impact of urban blight on community
John Bullock, a professor of political science and an expert in city planning, discusses the sad way that this environment wears on those residents who are left.
“Those people who live in those largely vacant areas, they have limited services, we’re talking about street cleaning. They live in proximity to abandoned housing and so with all the issues in terms of rodents and vermin, but also of crime. And so if you happen to live in one of those communities that are close to, or have a large degree of abandoned housing, then you’re likely to be living in a dangerous and violent environment.”
Ryan O’Doherty expresses compassion for those residents who still remain in areas of severe abandonment.
“This neighborhood is not what you deserve as a citizen of this city and it’s gonna be a while before new investment comes in or we don’t think it’s feasible that scattered houses around you are going to individually going to turn over and become viable again” O’Doherty says about these types of residents.
The Vacants to Value program seeks to move these individual property owners from places of serious disinvestment to those blocks with a few vacants. They want to offer a cost-free way to fill vacant homes in areas with hope while also helping out those Baltimore residents who have loyalty to the city and want to stick it out.
Replacing complete housing disinvestment
These areas of completely vacant blocks will be replaced with uses other than housing.
Ryan O’Doherty calls it “large scale redevelopment.”
“We’re looking at community green space” O’Doherty said. “We’re looking at urban farming. We’re looking at all sorts of creative re-uses for these vacant lots because the reality is that when you have a million people living here in 1950 and now you have 620,000 it’s unrealistic to assume that we’re gonna immediately have that type of demand back now.”
While the program seeks to help those left behind in largely vacant areas and they hope to switch individual property owners from one neighborhood to another with ease, not everyone feels optimistic.
“Some would say that there are some neighborhoods that are just being abandoned, that are being left to die as opposed to being assisted” Bullock said. “So you do have those areas that, you know, have not seen any sort of assistance in quite some time and it’s quite unlikely that they will receive assistance.”
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Stories
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SELLING VACANT BALTIMORE PROPERTIES TO REVERSE DECAY OF DYING NEIGHBORHOODS
Baltimore, like most cities, experienced population decline that left properties vastly abandoned. Vacancy lends itself to disrepair and public safety hazards and issues of crime and vagrancy. Reversing the dilapidation and blight of Baltimore is important to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. MORE
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BALTIMORE’S VACANTS TO VALUE SOLD TWELVE HOMES AND AWARDED SEVEN MORE
The Vacants to Value program is successfully selling homes through its Website. With community partners like One House at a Time and Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors, the current Baltimore City government is making a dent in the numbers of vacant homes. MORE
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Multimedia
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Baltimore has a significant number of vacant homes. A large portion of them will not be rehabilitated because they are in areas that are not marketable for housing. These infographics give a visual representation of the vacancy issue in Baltimore City.
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As of March 4, this is the map displaying the Vacants to Value properties. This includes the few that have been awarded, pending and sold. This map gives a good idea of the concentration of vacant properties that Baltimore Housing has deemed salvageable.
The house at 914 Whitelock Street was one scheduled for auction on April 5. No bids were offered for this shell that sits between another vacant and a row of newly renovated townhomes. This gallery of photographs illustrate a transitional neighborhood with scattered vacants.
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A lot of the vacants are in a state of serious disrepair. They are missing roofs, floors, walls, doors and more. The structure is compromised and the ammeneties are non-existent. This short video clip gives you an idea of the state of some of the vacant homes for sale through Vacants to Value.
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