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Baltimore Has Decided Some Neighborhoods Just Aren’t Worth Saving
Business Insider ^
| 02/24/2012
| Yepoka Yeebo
Posted on 02/24/2012 6:35:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Yepoka Yeebo / Business Insider |
In Baltimore the wrecks stretch for blocks in every direction. Shattered windows, buckling walls, sometimes just a façade, propped up by the houses on either side.
The vacant streets are punctuated by the odd meticulously-kept home; a living city slowly turning into a ghost town.
Baltimore has tried to deal with the tens of thousands of abandoned houses that mar the city. They’ve been refurbished. They’ve been raffled for $1. They’ve been demolished. But the number of vacant houses keeps growing.
There were radical efforts to seize abandoned homes and sell off city-owned property. In the nineties, $100 million was poured into some of the most troubled areas. Now the city is trying another approach: jump-starting the housing markets in healthier neighborhoods.
As Baltimore faces a $52 million budget shortfall, there is a more urgent need than ever to deal with the vacant homes, which still require public services like fire and police patrol.
47,000 vacant properties.
The numbers vary depending on who's counting, but the highest estimates suggest there are 46,800 vacant houses and lots in Baltimore —
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: baltimore
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To: SeekAndFind
Ahh! The scourge of racist democrats running a city into the crapper has spread from Detroit to Baltimore. Our National Socialist Democrat Party is very adept at destroying everything in their paths.
FUBO & FAD
2
posted on
02/24/2012 6:40:18 AM PST
by
RJS1950
(The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
To: SeekAndFind
BALTIMORE RIVALS DETROIT.
To: SeekAndFind
Welcome to America in 20 years after the economic collapse.
4
posted on
02/24/2012 6:42:11 AM PST
by
bigdirty
To: SeekAndFind
Some bricks just need recycling.
5
posted on
02/24/2012 6:45:36 AM PST
by
Paladin2
To: SeekAndFind
At least they have Dish Network in that first pic.
To: SeekAndFind
Why would anyone stay in Baltimore City if they could get out? The property taxes are exorbitant, yet the schools are horrible. It’s a GD crime what has happened to the city.
7
posted on
02/24/2012 6:47:12 AM PST
by
Rummyfan
(Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
To: SeekAndFind
Lots of cities have the same.
8
posted on
02/24/2012 6:50:16 AM PST
by
cripplecreek
(What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
To: SeekAndFind
As the number of empty souls increases, so does the number of empty houses.
9
posted on
02/24/2012 6:52:42 AM PST
by
blueunicorn6
("A crack shot and a good dancer")
To: Rummyfan
The property taxes are exorbitant, yet the schools are horrible. The property taxes are exorbitant because so few people pay taxes.
The schools are horrible because of the students. Any school which has significant numbers of children of welfare moms will be horrible.
The only solution for Baltimore would be to abolish welfare, but that won't happen in a Dem-controlled state.
10
posted on
02/24/2012 6:53:53 AM PST
by
PapaBear3625
(In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell)
To: blueunicorn6
"I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice."
-Thomas Jefferson.
11
posted on
02/24/2012 6:56:42 AM PST
by
cripplecreek
(What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?)
To: SeekAndFind
“And they hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
Because the city is dying
And they don't know why”
Baltimore - Randy Newman - Performed by Nina Simone
Beat-up little seagull
On a marble stair
Tryin’ to find the ocean
Lookin’ everywhere
Hard times in the city
In a hard town by the sea
Ain't nowhere to run to
There ain't nothin’ here for free
Hooker on the corner
Waitin’ for a train
Drunk lyin’ on the sidewalk
Sleepin’ in the rain
And they hide their faces
And they hide their eyes
‘Cause the city's dyin’
And they don't know why
Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live
Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live, just to live
Get my sister Sandy
And my little brother Ray
Buy a big old wagon
Gonna haul us all away
Livin’ in the country
Where the mountain's high
Never comin’ back here
‘Til the day I die
Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live
Oh, Baltimore
Man, it's hard just to live, just to live
12
posted on
02/24/2012 6:58:54 AM PST
by
allmendream
(Tea Party did not send the GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism.)
To: SeekAndFind
Some experts are skeptical that the same market forces that destroyed neighborhoods in Baltimore can be trusted to salvage others. Theres this obsession that the invisible hand of the market can cure all ills, said city policy expert Kildee. Anybody whos spent any time in Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Flint, can see what the market has done to those neighborhoods. Its destroyed them.
As if the "market" were a thing with a single will. Of course, if he'd said that people acting in their own best interests had destroyed them, it just wouldn't have the same big-government ring.
13
posted on
02/24/2012 7:00:11 AM PST
by
BfloGuy
(The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.)
To: blueunicorn6
14
posted on
02/24/2012 7:01:14 AM PST
by
patton
("Je pense donc je suis," - My Horse.)
To: SeekAndFind
They just laid off a whole bunch more people in my town, eventually the socialists will win, many people will be living in government housing living on handouts. The only problem with that is who shall pay the taxes. At this rate America will become just a story told to children amongst the ruins and the fields of weeds.
To: SeekAndFind
16
posted on
02/24/2012 7:04:09 AM PST
by
knarf
(I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)
To: SeekAndFind
Buffalo’s inner-city liberals always wanted to emulate Baltimore (Inner Harbor), Pittsburgh (neighborhood revitalization), and Cleveland (the Flats). When I would point out to them that those cities were losing population even faster than Buffalo despite those big projects, they feigned deafness.
17
posted on
02/24/2012 7:04:43 AM PST
by
BfloGuy
(The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.)
To: allmendream
Pity. They have such great crab cakes...
To: RJS1950
And I’m sure all the former residents are still “voting” and these addresses to.
19
posted on
02/24/2012 7:11:54 AM PST
by
RightGeek
(FUBO and the donkey you rode in on)
To: SeekAndFind
Twenty years ago I walked up N. Charles St. from the Amtrak station to Johns Hopkins at about two in the afternoon, thinking that such a main street at such a time was safe. Reasonably clean and prosperous and absolutely deserted - the eeriest cityscape I ever saw - scarcely a car passed me in a mile and a half. My brother told me I was crazy. He and his wife lived in the most securely gated apartment I’ve yet seen.
My daughter is at Loyola - there is a bus just for students at the different universities so they don’t have to ride public transportation. If a student is arrested for less than a major felony (not an issue for her) the city police turn the student over to campus police so the student won’t be assaulted in the city jail. For her safety I had to tell her that one out of three young black men in Baltimore is currently under supervision of the justice system and that means there are yet more criminals: the uncaught, and those who’ve served their sentence, and the first timers. So don’t think it’s racist to be cautious of all black men, or black girls and women. Keep your long hair tied up. She didn’t want to listen to me - it took a only a couple months of local news, of older students’ warnings, to open her eyes, although none of them ever put it as baldly as I did.
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