Baltimore residents in largely vacant blocks to be uprooted
“With plans to demolish 1,500 vacant houses in the next three years, Baltimore officials and the few remaining residents in largely vacant blocks are beginning the early stages of the most delicate of relationships.
About 80 residents — each of them representing the last one or two households living in blocks that are otherwise entirely vacant — are to be uprooted this year, the city to take their homes by eminent domain, demolish the structures and establish community gardens.
James Crockett, a real estate broker who says he’s struggled to convince people to move to the city, recalled former Mayor William Donald Schaefer’s program in which vacant houses were sold for $1. That could work again he said, but the city needs to fix the schools, lower taxes and fight crime before it will reverse a decades-long decline in population.
“You don’t have a housing problem in Baltimore, you have a population problem,” Crockett said.”
Wells, Carrie. Baltimore Sun 21 May 2013.