Posted on 04/18/2016 8:44:37 PM PDT by ghosthost
Your picture reinforces the notion that ANY reduction in housing for these folks is a good move. Whether a forced reduction of Baltimore’s population is good for the surrounding communities is an entirely different question.
I tend to agree....old buildings go, old residents stay, and the ghetto continues on....version 2.0.
The only place that I’ve ever seen this NOT work is DC. As various neighborhoods were in a blighted condition....oddly, about a decade ago....upper class minority folks (rich yuppie kids who had $100k jobs in DC)....bought the old brick buildings, renovated them and are converting block after block into their new neighborhood. It may take thirty years but I think DC will be some yuppie paradise by 2050.
You could stick a giant open-air drug market and illegal weapons bazaar on all that vacant land. Yes, that will do it!
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
I’m humming a certain 5FDP song.
Can you guess what it is?
Last year, I went to a row house a couple blocks from where the riots happened, to rescue an Argentine Boa Constrictor.
Any lesser crusade could not have gotten me to go there.
Getting in and out of the city was the longest hour of my entire life.
I also know now, how long I can “hold it”.
You’d have to be out of your mind to go fiddling around the ruins looking for “treasure” in a place where everyone else is just waiting to rob you of it.
:)
I'd add a moat.
I see “used bricks”. :)
Historical used bricks.
Even better.
Sell ‘em to Yuppies for pavers.
:)
BTMFD
;D
Baltimore under Mayor Schaefer started the “urban Homesteading” program. You could buy these houses for next to nothing. You had to renovate them and hold for 5 years. They were sold to individuals. That program revitalized huge sections of Baltimore, while preserving the neighborhood . What they are tearing down will be replaced by ugly high rise crap.
In Detroit the emergency responders pressed to “shrink” the city (whereby blocks with only a couple of inhabitants would be abandoned, with those people being re-located to more central clusters). They described driving through so many largely abandoned blocks to respond to calls; it effected the level of service/response time they could provide. Just maintaining the streets and sidewalks makes no sense; they want it to just return to nature.
In Newark NJ they demolished some of the projects and replaced them with “low-rises”; they are easier to police, and hold less people than the towering projects. They’ve also created some where the people buy them with subsidized mortgages; those seem to be better-maintained than the rest.
IMHO this just concentrates the worst people (who can’t get into either of those arrangements) in certain areas deeper in the cities (away from the struggling business districts); this helps keep other areas relatively “clean”. Newark’s small downtown, for instance, has little housing and therefore isn’t in danger from riots and such.
Some problems have simple answers.
The solution to “Taxation Destroys”
is “Destroy Taxation”.
Hey, whaddya mean?....I bet there's all sorts of developers who can't wait to build businesses and factories in areas with high crime and a poorly educated workforce. /s
Actually, I think the city's fathers (and mothers) are hoping for some sort of gentrification.
It is not like Maryland has strong laws favoring concealed carry and self defense, like castle laws and stand your ground laws. Until they do, I don’t see the situation improving in Baltimer.
How about a nice large cleared area as a no fault zone for gang bangers to settle disputes? There could be an area off to the side reserved as grave sites for the vanquished.
My description is absolutely correct. I worked for a firm that was trying to work out the demolition and re-building of the Lake Forest Plaza mall *before* the hurricane. I saw the demographic studies that the project paid for and the very frank comments of the investors who repeatedly backed out of the deal (the project was going to remove the old mall and build clusters of outdoor strip shops on the corners of the property, moving the parking to the center of the property).
The place had turned into a Section 8 apartment ghetto, an extension of the public housing projects. Nobody was interested in putting serious money into the area, Katrina just nailed down the coffin lid. In place of a modern retail development with lots of shops, New Orleans East got a Walgreens and (because of the home repairs that were ongoing) a Lowes and Home Depot.
Even today, NOLA.com articles about economic development elsewhere in the area are peppered with "How come this isn't happening in The East?" comments. There has been improvement since Katrina because some of the apartments were bulldozed, but still the developers avoid the area.
I grew up there, I saw it change. It's a shame - once it was among the safest, most modern parts of the city. The good times there ended thirty years ago.
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