Baltimore fights blight with demolition effort

BALTIMORE – Thousands of vacant buildings in Baltimore will be demolished over the next four years, city and state officials announced Tuesday, starting in the neighborhood where Freddie Gray was arrested and fatally injured in police custody, prompting civil unrest that highlighted the urban decay.

Gov. Larry Hogan and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the new open space and state-subsidized financing will stimulate private investment in new homes, retail stores and other businesses to revive impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhoods.

“Fixing what is broken in Baltimore requires that we address the sea of abandoned, dilapidated buildings that are infecting entire neighborhoods,” the first-term Republican governor told a news conference. “They aren’t just unsightly; they’re also unsafe, unhealthy and a hotbed for crime.”

But as a bright yellow excavator tore into the first row house, some urban redevelopment experts and community activists said the program lacks a clear vision and plan for creating job opportunities. Other large-scale demolition efforts, including those in Detroit, Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio, have had mixed results, leading researchers to conclude that demolition may not be the best solution, said Katie Wells, a visiting scholar in George Washington University’s geography department.

“Demolition is just a baby step in a larger process toward a rehabilitated area,” she said. “How does demolition fit into a larger vision of, ‘What does a healthy city look like? What does a good neighborhood look like?’”

The Baltimore plan includes $75 million in state funding to demolish blocks of abandoned buildings to create space for affordable housing, businesses and parks. The city will provide nearly $19 million worth of administrative services, and the state will offer more than $600 million in financing opportunities for private-sector development.

The city of 620,000 people has about 17,000 vacant houses, concentrated in neighborhoods that saw rioting, looting and arson after Gray’s death in April. In block after block in poor neighborhoods, former homes have doors and windows covered in plywood. Some of the boards are marked with signs about controlling the rat population, others with posters about the violence that took the lives of 344 people last year. The empty, brick row houses are often vandalized and sometimes catch fire.