By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]
The city of Baltimore used a study like Jacksonville’s Block by Block market value analysis years ago to transform its blighted areas.
In one neighborhood there, Greenmount West, median home prices have risen from $10,000 in 2002 to $227,500 today.
The city used an array of tools, but Michael Braverman, deputy commissioner for housing, spoke the most about two of them during a Jacksonville presentation in October.
Vacancies to Value is a program that targets certain housing markets for proactive code enforcement.
In the past, Braverman said, code enforcement happened on a reactive basis, with the city addressing complaints as they were received.
Areas that got the most attention were wealthier neighborhoods, especially when council members went to bat for disgruntled residents.
But 10,000 of Baltimore’s 13,000 vacant homes are in distressed housing markets on its Westside. Places where it’s a higher priority to call the city’s 911 line to report “shots fired” than to report a code violation.
City inspectors now proactively patrol streets and alleys in those neighborhoods. It boards up buildings, clears garbage and mows lots where city demolitions have been performed.
The effort stabilizes buildings and it stems crime. Criminals can’t get into abandoned buildings or use piles of garbage to stash drugs.
One thing the city doesn’t do in a distressed neighborhood — take over every abandoned home as part of the lien process.
“It’s the last thing we want to do — own a boarded, vacant and abandoned property,” Braverman said. “Who’s going to buy it?”
But Baltimore does pursue abandoned homes in middle housing markets, he said, places where they will readily sell.
Here, Baltimore streamlined its code enforcement process, so that violations would be addressed quickly. The city updated its ordinances and now issues $900 citations, rather than taking owners to court, for properties that are unsafe, vacant and in an unlivable condition. The process frees up attorneys for more complex receivership cases.
When nuisances aren’t corrected, Baltimore appoints a receiver to sell the property.
In the past several years the city has issued more than 2,000 citations and filed more than 2,000 receivership cases, Braverman said.
In the healthiest housing markets, the process changes again. Here, the city sticks to its old policy — responding reactively to complaints made by neighbors.
“Out here if there’s a problem, people will call,” Braverman said.
In Baltimore’s distressed neighborhoods, vacant properties aren’t just boarded, cleaned and then forgotten.
Through a second program, Community Development Clusters, the city seeks distressed areas that have particular strengths. It targets those pockets for reinvestment, using public-private partnerships.
Baltimore’s Greenmount West neighborhood was one such neighborhood. Just seven years ago it held scores of abandoned homes.
But it also abutted a beautiful historic cemetery on the east side, a strong neighborhood to the west, and Penn Station, a train station that links the city to New York and Washington D.C.
Artists had already started moving into the area.
In this small island amid a larger distressed area, the city partnered with investors who were willing and able to redevelop whole blocks.
The city pursued deadbeat property owners, forcing them to either demolish unsafe buildings or sell them to someone who would address the problems.
If they didn’t, the city litigated to appoint a receiver to auction properties to qualified bidders, mainly investors.
Sometimes, a house didn’t sell at auction if it had too many problems to make it marketable.
In these cases, the city stepped in, abated the problem and then re-auctioned the property.
It’s often better to put in floor joists or a new roof for $25,000, than to demolish a house, Braverman said. Even for a home that will only auction for $5,000.
“That way, I’ve got a homeowner who pays taxes,” he said. “It’s much better than demolishing it for $40,000 and then all I’ve got is a vacant lot.”