That’s a shame. Many of these homes could have been rehabilitated and provide much needed work and homes to people. Nice brick facades, old fashioned streetscaping, could have been a lovely place.
I wonder why gentrification did not take place?
If they had given these homes and land away free and property tax free for 10 years to people who committed to renovating them they could have had a much better (and cheaper) result.
Very short sighted. Now some awful atrocity will be built there.
2008 happened.
Although I live near Baltimore now, I haven’t spent much time in row homes.
I lived near Detroit for nearly 50 years and for a while worked in welfare homes.
That was 30 years ago. The homes had been neglected for decades but could have probably been re-habilitated. 30 years later, any real hope of saving these homes is futile.
It can be done. The builder can shore up the façade and completely rebuild the interior, removing even the floor joists and wall studs. It’s incredibly time consuming and expensive.
Better off with complete demo and possible future re-build.
It’s the same with these cheaper row homes.
I know nothing about Baltimore. But I believe people like Spike Lee strongly opposed gentrification in places in Brooklyn. They saw gentrification as: a bunch of white people moving in, fixing the place up, raising the property values, and -- you know -- just destroying the neighborhood and chasing black folks out.
Can't be having that.
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..
Risk of serious injury or being murdered is one reason. Many of the remaining denizens would kill you as quickly as look at you.
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?
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.
It is a shame to see these beauties go. Why haven’t they been renovated as you suggested? Part of it is the regs about lead abatement, as some have suggested.
Another large factor is the fact that Baltimore has been governed by a long succession of DemocRats whose corruption and ineffective policies have allowed crime to flourish.
I know of stories of individuals who have bought homes to rehab — some for flipping and some for personal dwellings — in such neighborhoods only to be plagued by break-ins, robbery, and muggings.
Baltimore’s government has ruined so many chances to broaden its tax base.