Vacant Properties

Housing officials have sold more of the city's vacant homes in the first seven months of the budget year than in all of the previous year — but the sales still represent fewer than 3 percent of the 4,000 empty houses owned by the city. As housing advocates, community leaders and developers gather today for a day-long summit on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's "Vacants to Value" program, data from the city housing department indicate that despite incremental gains, officials are far from making a dent in the city's 30,000 vacant properties.

Six Baltimore community groups filed an $8 million lawsuit Tuesday against a Texas man whose companies own dozens of properties in the city, alleging that he failed to improve rundown homes after purchasing them at tax sales and allowed them to become a danger. "The lawsuit challenges the practice of purchasing vacant properties at tax sale and leaving them for dead with unaddressed city code violations," said Kristine Dunkerton, executive director of the Community Law Center Inc., a nonprofit based in Baltimore that represents the community associations.

Baltimore officials moved Tuesday to take back undeserved tax breaks from owners of vacant properties who are profiting from a program intended for primary residences. The effort followed a Baltimore Sun report that the owners of 465 empty homes - cited by the city as unsafe or uninhabitable - had their city property tax bills reduced by a total of $325,000, thanks to homestead property tax credits meant for owner-occupiers. Challengers to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in the Democratic primary next month were quick to pounce on what they described as a symptom of insufficient oversight.

Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake has received a $1 million grant from The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, of Owings Mills, that will go toward building and rehabbing homes in Baltimore. “We are proud to receive support from the Weinberg Foundation to assist the financially disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals and families in our homeownership program,” said Habitat Chesapeake CEO Mike Posko. The grant will go toward rehabilitating 56 vacant properties over two years, Posko said in a statement.

Baltimore officials will have broad power to sell city-owned property and acquire new lots under a bill signed into law yesterday by Gov. Martin O'Malley intended to address the city's vast collection of vacant property. The land bank, a long-standing priority for Mayor Sheila Dixon's administration, will speed the sale and, Baltimore officials hope, the redevelopment of thousands of vacant properties by clearing hurdles the city typically faces with land sales. "We need something that's going to do something in a more massive, aggressive way to streamline the process," Dixon said after the bill was signed in Annapolis.

As affordable-housing advocates await Baltimore's appointment and first meeting of the Land Bank Task Force this month, we have concerns about the creation of the proposed Land Bank Authority as authorized by recent state legislation. While we welcome the city's efforts to address vacancies, its land bank plan, released in October 2007, called for several steps to take place before the creation of an authority would even be considered. An authority would bypass traditional checks and balances to which other city agencies and programs are accountable.

A nonprofit legal services agency has been awarded a $627,500 grant to begin a push by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to rehabilitate or demolish nearly 700 vacant properties in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood.The work by the Community Law Center kicks off a pledge made by Mr. Schmoke in March that every vacant and boarded house in the Sandtown-Winchester area will be either renovated or demolished within one year.The Board of Estimates awarded the grant earlier this week. The city Department of Housing and Community Development will use the money to place 350 properties in receivership and for title work on 250 properties the city wants to acquire.

Baltimore's auction of vacant and abandoned houses yesterday drew hundreds of people who packed a meeting room at the Convention Center pursuing dreams of property ownership -- or profit.The bidders included potential homebuyers looking for their first bargain-basement houses, prospective entrepreneurs hoping to turn a quick buck and seasoned real estate executives trying to expand their holdings.There were so many bidders that only about a quarter of the 1,500 available properties were auctioned yesterday.

Seeking to realize Reservoir Hill's potential to become a premier residential neighborhood, city officials announced yesterday plans to offer about 300 vacant properties in the North Baltimore community for redevelopment to individuals and developers. The plans involve nearly 100 vacant rowhouses and parcels owned by the city and its public housing agency that are in the neighborhood between Druid Hill Park and Bolton Hill, and about twice that many being acquired by the city through the Project 5000 initiative, which takes control of abandoned properties.

Saying that "we need to take a substantial bite out of blight" in Baltimore neighborhoods, Mayor Martin O'Malley is launching an initiative to take control of thousands of abandoned houses throughout the city within the next two years. As many as 5,000 vacant properties will be targeted for acquisition through foreclosure or condemnation - more than 10 times the number of houses the city seized last year, and more than a third of the houses the city has identified as uninhabitable. The acquisitions would include entire blocks, some of which would eventually be cleared and offered to private companies for residential and commercial redevelopment or designed as attractive open space.

The local branch of Habitat for Humanity has already received several properties as part of a nationwide commitment by Bank of America to donate 2,000 vacant homes to the affordable housing organization. “These donations can make a dramatic difference for so many Habitat affiliates, increasing their suitable property inventory,” said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, in a statement this week. Habitat's outposts across the U.S. are receiving the homes from Bank of America on a case-by-case basis, as they become available.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Tuesday announced an expansion of her signature urban revitalization program, Vacants to Value. The Baltimore Housing Department has set a goal of tearing down 1,500 vacant properties and renovating another 1,500 in the 36-month period that begins in January, Rawlings-Blake said. The Clinton Global Initiative designated the ambitious plan as one of its “Commitments to Action,” the mayor said at an event marking the two-year anniversary of Vacants to Value.

Baltimore's effort to recover millions of dollars in lost revenue stemming from the wave of home foreclosures that followed the collapse of the housing market in 2007 was vindicated Thursday when Wells Fargo Bank, the nation's largest mortgage lender, agreed to pay at least $175 million to settle claims that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers by steering them into high-cost, subprime mortgage loans. Baltimore will receive $7.5 million, and seven other communities - Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington - will benefit as well The Justice Department, which announced the agreement, said it is the second largest fair-lending settlement in its history.

The city health officials who plan to strip non-conforming liquor stores of their licenses because of a Johns Hopkins University study linking them to violent crime may be confusing correlation with causation ("City targets liquor stores", June 18). The distinction is important, because if the liquor stores aren't what's causing the crime, then closing them won't cause it to drop and could even exacerbate the problem. Vacant properties, for example, also correlate with violent crime.

Baltimore is getting $10 million from the national mortgage settlement, and city officials intend to use almost all of it to demolish vacant homes -- about 700 in total. That's a snippet in the story about the state attorney general announcing how the state-controlled $60 million from the settlement will be spent . But it's interesting, and I thought you might like to know more. Julie Day, deputy commissioner for land resources at Baltimore's housing agency, said city officials have been working on a demolition strategy in the past few months and are delighted to be handed millions of dollars for anti-blight work.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake hopes to attract 10,000 families to Baltimore in the next decade — which would reverse more than a half-century of population decline — and would like to serve at least one more term beyond the one she begins Tuesday. "If Baltimore is to have a future, the leadership in the city has to focus on making the city a vibrant, growing city," Rawlings-Blake said in an interview Monday. "If you're not focused on growing it, you're resigned to a slow death.

When Chad Wright first saw the three-story, 19th-century rowhouse on Madison Avenue in Reservoir Hill, he fell in love with it, even though it was infested with termites and had a tree growing through the back wall. The house had been vacant for years, but that didn't dissuade him. "I saw the potential," said Wright, 26, who bought the rowhouse for $25,000. His settlement was in April 2004, and he began work on the house the next weekend. Almost a year and $200,000 later, he is in the final stages of the rehabilitation, which he has done mostly in his spare time while he worked by day designing sprinkler systems for Livingston Fire Protection.

Six Baltimore community groups filed an $8 million lawsuit Tuesday against a Texas man whose companies own dozens of properties in the city, alleging that he failed to improve rundown homes after purchasing them at tax sales and allowed them to become a danger. "The lawsuit challenges the practice of purchasing vacant properties at tax sale and leaving them for dead with unaddressed city code violations," said Kristine Dunkerton, executive director of the Community Law Center Inc., a nonprofit based in Baltimore that represents the community associations.

The vacant rowhouse at 825 N. Caroline St. has long been an open-and-shut case for the city. Opened up by somebody — vandals, junkies, homeless people, whoever — and then shut by public works crews. Then opened up again. It was inside this home that police say a 13-year-old girl was raped Oct. 17, after being yanked into the unsecured building and thrown into the dusty basement. A 48-year-old man was charged last month in the attack. The city has made several attempts over the years to keep people out of the East Baltimore property: A crew from the Department of Public Works boarded up the house in July 2008, when it was city-owned.

Comedian Bill Cosby joked with seniors, marched through Mondawmin Mall and dropped by Northeast Baltimore homes Wednesday to stump for mayoral candidate Otis Rolley. "So how many of you know anything about this young man?" Cosby asked a crowd of about two dozen gathered in meeting room at St. James Place apartments. Cosby braved Wednesday's heavy rains to campaign for Rolley less than a week before the Sept. 13 Democratic primary. At a news conference before a Rolley rally at Coppin State University, Cosby said he was impressed with Rolley.