Vacant properties - what progress has been made and what must be done?

It has been a year since three firefighters died when a vacant building collapsed on them, many wondered where we are on eliminating vacant and abandoned properties.

In my letter to Mayor Scott and his 30 Day review of vacants group, I outlined several strategies that should be implemented immediately to address this.

I started with the money, then talk about the systems, then the incentives. Today, let’s talk about the systems and the money.

With the leadership and vision to eliminate vacant properties through rehab or demolition, and reuse vacant lots, we can transform our city in an equitable manner. These strategies I list in this blog have to first be employed in the areas that need it most, with an eye toward ensuring that our legacy residents are not priced out. It is possible. We must do it to help curb violence, ensure that families are not living next to vacant properties, and make sure that our children and families have stable places to live. 

Of the just under 15,000 vacant and abandoned buildings (vacant buildings with Vacant Building Notices), the city only owns about 1,245 of them. The city owns about 7,900 vacant lots (most for redevelopment purposes) and an approximately equal amount are privately owned. The cost to the city to keep vacant properties is over $200million per year according to a recent 21st Century Cities report.  

Baltimore has taken great strides this year, but it’s not fast enough, and more needs to be done. According to the data on the City’s dashboard, while 1366 vacant properties were either rehabbed or demolished through the private market and some City sales, 1105 properties were designated vacant with a Vacant Building Notice. That’s only a net reduction in vacants of 241.

You can read below what has happened in 2022:

Implementing Judicial In Rem:

Judicial in rem is our city’s newest vacant building and vacant lot acquisition tool. When the unpaid liens exceed the assessed value of vacant and abandoned buildings and vacant lots, the city can foreclose immediately. I am proud to have worked with incredible partners to pass In Rem in 2019 in the General Assembly in my former role, and bring it to Baltimore. This spring, we advocated strongly for more lawyers and title attorneys at DHCD to bring title work in-house and to file more In Rem cases. The funds were placed in the FY 2023 budget and hiring is happening. In partnership with DHCD, the Acting City Solicitor, and the Circuit Court, we have a dedicated docket for these cases. There have been two hearings so far for these cases, and so while we are working on the process, we are making great progress.

In addition, we have worked with communities across the City to educate on the power of this new tool and how communities can participate. DHCD has held several meetings with developers and residents, while our office has worked with our colleagues in the Council to bring the messages to communities. People can call 311 and make sure to ask for Housing Inspection - Vacant Building so that the penalty for failure to abate the notice is $1000. 

The City Council passed my legislation to increase the fine for failure to abate a vacant building notice to $1000 and make sure that each day is a new violation. This has helped us increase the citations and liens on properties to make them eligible for In Rem, or have the owner take action finally on the property.

Code enforcement has outperformed to help get the liens higher than the value of the vacant property.  In data provided by DHCD, in 2018 only 838 failure to abate the vacant building notice citations were issued. By the end of 2022, over 4500 failure to abate the notice citations were issued. Residents have been calling, and code enforcement has met the need while also working to be proactive in their inspections. 

To give you an idea of the impact In Rem would have in two neighborhoods in our district, according to data provided to me by the Department of Finance and analyzed through a field study by my office, out of 454 vacant buildings, 28% of the vacant buildings are eligible for in rem, with several more vacant lots. 35% of the total vacant buildings are almost eligible for In Rem. That’s a possibility of almost 65% of the vacant properties in our district acquired by this tool. These percentages are likely similar in other districts. Hopefully soon, the City will have capacity to take 1,000 properties and lots through In Rem a year.

Funding so far:

Mayor Scott announced $100 million in ARPA dollars for housing, $39.5 million of which is for blight elimination and prevention.  Specifically, $15million is for demolition, stabilization and rehab of vacant properties in the first phase of the Impact Investment Areas. (The Impact Investment areas are Coldstream Homestead Montebello in our district, along with Park Heights, Johnston Square, East Baltimore Midway, Broadway East, Southwest Partnership, and Druid Heights/Upton/Penn North). And nearly $2million for eliminating vacant buildings near the 21st Century Schools. 

Another $10million is for home repair and energy efficiency for our older adults aging in place. This is an important vacancy prevention initiative. When residents are able to live in their home and age with dignity, the family is also more likely to take over the home once the elder passes. Cities across the nation are successful in removing vacant properties, but get nowhere if we are not preventing them from happening in the first place. This, coupled with reducing dependence on receivership and tax sale will help ensure that fewer vacancies occur.

The remainder is for other initiatives like Crime Prevention by Environmental Design, Wealth building and other initiatives in Middle Neighborhoods, and technology to help reform the permit office.

You can read below what still must be done.

Accelerate and expand Judicial In Rem: Expand judicial in rem to include liens below the value of the vacant property. Expanding Judicial in rem to tax delinquent vacant and abandoned properties where the liens do not exceed the value of the property will help us take action without waiting for liens to stack up. This also is an alternative to selling these properties in tax sale so we can control the outcome of the property. The General Assembly will take action on this during the upcoming session, and thanks to Mayor Brandon Scott for leading this. 

Reform the Permit Office: I can’t tell you the number of complaints we get about obtaining and reviewing permits at the permit office. Comptroller Henry’s Office of Administrative Audits recently performed an audit of the office and found similar issues. I introduced a resolution for  a hearing on this topic and look forward to a frank discussion about this office. We cannot have developers and individuals rehab properties without an effective permit office. Moreover, in our field study, we came across at least 50 properties that have been rehabbed without proper permits. 

Build Baltimore’s Land Bank to Disperse vacant properties expeditiously: Once Baltimore City owns these vacant properties and lots, we have to quickly disperse them to responsible homeowners and developers whom communities trust to do the work according to neighborhood plans. Dispersing in clusters, and not individual homes in the middle of other vacants, increases our success. In partnership with Councilman Torrence, I have convened a group of stakeholders to create Baltimore’s acquisition and disposition authority called the Baltimore Land Bank. Yes, it will take the acquisition and disposition functions out of DHCD and operate as an Authority with the ability to borrow, provide financing, and also work directly with communities on the outcomes they want. The disposition will be strategic, effective, and quick. The Land Bank will be a short-lived venture - this is an emergency situation, so we need a bold answer for a short time - 15 or 20 years - to address this crisis. This new tool will be introduced in February.

Raise the money. Our vacant property problem is a $3 Billion problem, according to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance and ReBuild Metro. We need this money for demolition of our most dangerous properties, stabilization for now, and then subsidies to ensure these buildings are rehabbed. The city does not have to come up with all of it, but we do need to borrow more in order to leverage additional investment from public and private sources. There are some innovative ideas being shared to help finance the Land Bank and also the work to demolish, provide funding to address the appraisal gap, and subsidy for rehabilitation of properties that will be shared in the coming days and weeks ahead.