The emptiest neighborhood in the Baltimore region is not an area hit by foreclosures or years of decline. It's a U.S. Army base, and the nearly 39 percent vacancy rate at Aberdeen Proving Ground is part of a trend of fewer soldiers living there.
But the rest of the top five vacant areas in the region, measured in an Associated Press study by census tract, all are in East Baltimore neighborhoods that have weathered declines for decades.
"It's a continuation of what has been a long, sad story," said John McIlwain, a senior resident fellow for housing at the Washington-based Urban Land Institute. "These old, inner city areas ... have been flat on their back for decades. Nobody's quite figured out how to turn this around."
A Baltimore Sun analysis of areas with 1,000 or more homes, based on the AP data released this week, showed the top vacancy rate in both the state and the Baltimore region to be for a census tract in Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County. Four hundred of the Proving Ground's 1,035 housing units were vacant in the first three months of the year, a 16 percent increase in vacancies compared with the first quarter of 2008, according to the data, which AP collected from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Postal Service.
The housing, which includes stone residences with views of the Chesapeake Bay as well as outdated, two-bedroom homes, some in disrepair, is reserved for soldiers and their families.
"Over the years, the number of soldiers here has decreased," as civilians do more jobs once reserved for military personnel, said Proving Ground spokesman George Mercer. The base will be losing many soldiers beginning in 2010 and 2011, when the base school that trains mechanics moves to Fort Lee, Va., as a result of base restructuring that will also bring new civilian jobs to Aberdeen. "A lot of the soldiers in housing won't be here."
The Army has turned over management of the housing to Picerne Military Housing, a Rhode Island-based developer, which will either raze or renovate existing housing and develop new homes. The new homes, probably a mix of about 350 single-family and attached homes, will be built during the next four to five years, Mercer said.
