Posted on 06/05/2017 9:55:21 AM PDT by C19fan
A dilapidated block of homes in Baltimore has been demolished as part of a $94million project to tear down a chunk of the 17,000 abandoned homes in the neighborhood. More than 800 crumbling homes have already been razed and this section of Herbert Street in West Baltimore is the latest to be reduced to rubble. The homes - many of which are riddled with asbestos and lead paint - have come to symbolize the deep social divide in Baltimore. Roofs have caved in on the abandoned rowhomes, boards are fastened to the doors and window frames and the streets are littered with garbage.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Philly has a lot of row houses that are being gentrified...but you know, "gentrification" is a bad word for the BGI....it means somebody's taken initiative to actually improve the rundown homes that minorities used to own..
The story is lead abatement law in MD making these houses worthless and ultimately abandoned. I thought about buying several houses in Baltimore about 12-13 years ago. They were very cheap for the return on rent. Fortunately the wife wasn’t into it. I later found it was very expensive to get a lead abatement certificate for a legal rental unit.
I remember taking a cab from Towson to Johns Hopkins 30 years ago and coming down N Broadway it looked like photos of Berlin after the war
” Where are these people going to live when all the houses and neighborhoods they destroyed are torn down? “
They’re already living in public housing projects.
The doors and windows were all broken by the snow, wind and rain. The garbage just grew there on its own.
Risk of serious injury or being murdered is one reason. Many of the remaining denizens would kill you as quickly as look at you.
Baltimore City under mayor Schaefer had one of the most successful urban homesteading programs ever. Thousands of homes were renovated and put back in service. Trust the current government to forget that success.
I was in East Berlin when I was 12 years old 14 years after the end of WWII. I moved to Baltimore in the mid ‘70’s. There are differences. The people in Berlin were all white and below the County line to the Green Zone around the Inner Harbor, Fells Point and Canton, they are mostly black with some hispanics. Despite its moslems, Berlin is rebuilt. Until the inner city is de-populated, Baltimore will not be rebuilt.
Detroit on the Patapsco.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
As documented by the TTV shows;
Homicide, Life On The Street
&
The Wire
In the early ‘90’s I was involved in the appraisal of such rowhouses that were collateral for a loan. The lender was my client. The rowhouses were in east Baltimore near Hopkins Hospital and they were worth around $10,000 each as if lead-free. The estimated cost to abate and enscapsulate the lead-containing building materials was $12,500 each. Smart lender not to have required lead certifications during underwriting.
Two weeks after I moved to Maryland, I was in a seminar at a tower building at the end of Baltimore Ave. Maybe the tenth floor.
During a break, I was standing next to an older black gentleman. We didn’t know each other nor had we ever spoken a word to each other.
He looked down and said “I won’t even go down that street.”
Great post-——we just can’t win.
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Homes for our enemies who are still coming into the country? Ragheads who won't work and won't assimilate and relish the opportunity to murder the infidel? That kind of atrocity?
Why not let BLM thugs come in and destroy to their heart’s content.
How much is that going to cost the taxpayers who are already strapped and over taxed?
25 years ago I watched row houses being rehabbed in the Bronx, NY. The facades were left up and modular, pre-manufactured interiors were dropped in by crane....4 modules/floor.
That sounds pretty cool. Very specialized work just keeping the facades standing.
Since I’ve been here, several row homes have just collapsed.
It was some kind of government run program to allow the poor to own homes. I was talking to one fellow who worked for Con-Ed. His mother was on welfare and with some help from him, was able to buy the home. The mortgage was paid by him in the form of his “rent” to her. Basically, he bought the house at the bargain, gov’t. subsidised rate.
Wish I had paid more attention to the technical details of how those homes were re-habbed, but I had my own work to do in that neighborhood. It *did* look pretty cool though, watching a whole kitchen, pipes and wiring hanging below, flying over the facade to be lowered into place.
AFAIK a big factor is lead & asbestos removal. Costs of regulating repairs & disposal are prohibitive, beyond any fair market profit. Since it’s a fair enactment of a fair prohibition, taxpayers are fairly on the hook for cleanup costs - lest the legislation leave a literal wasteland.
Methinks there is a place for government to break traps that some markets fall into: sometimes bad behavior becomes systemic, as it is prohibitively uncompetitive to do the right thing without all other players shaping up simultaneously. Enacting appropriate prohibitions is appropriate, but resolution may require taxpayer funding if taxpayers want the deadlock fixed.
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