After Aberdeen Proving Ground, the emptiest census tracts in the Baltimore region lie in East Baltimore neighborhoods such as Oliver and Broadway East, the data show. Those highly vacant areas include the blocks around the former American Brewery, a Victorian landmark on Gay Street just south of North Avenue that has been restored by a Columbia-based nonprofit that plans to occupy the site. The blighted blocks around the brewery were featured in a series of articles in The Baltimore Sun in 2006 showing the decline of a neighborhood struggling with crime and high vacancies that had lost more than half its population over three decades.
An area bounded by Sinclair Lane, Federal Street, Chester Street and Edison Highway had 455 vacant homes out of 1,184 homes in the first three months of the year, a 38.4 percent vacancy rate. In adjacent blocks, just south of Federal Street, more than a quarter of the homes - nearly 300 out of 1,119 - were vacant, the analysis showed.
Baltimore's housing commissioner, Paul T. Graziano, said he had not seen the report, but said it appears to reflect "the vacant property challenge we are faced with every day."
"Baltimore suffered over 50 years of disinvestment, which took its toll on our neighborhoods," he said in an e-mailed statement. "Despite our best efforts, it is clear that additional tools are required."
Graziano said he is hopeful that the City Council will approve legislation to establish a Land Bank Authority, an agency proposed by Mayor Sheila Dixon that would streamline the sale of city-owned vacant property.
Nationally, the AP analysis found that the nation's emptiest neighborhoods are clustered in places hit during the 1980s recession, such as Flint, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Indianapolis, rather than in the parts of the nation hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis, such as middle class, suburban Sun Belt neighborhoods.
The number of abandoned homes scattered throughout the nation's 65,000 neighborhoods could prevent the economy from recovering, federal officials fear.
Sun reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
