Scoring The Effectiveness Of Baltimore's Vacants To Value Program

In 2010, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake introduced, with great fanfare, a program called Vacants to Value, which is intended to eliminate blight, and encourage individual homeowners and developers to renovate unoccupied homes and revitalize distressed neighborhoods.  Next week, the city will host a Vacants to Value Summit at the Baltimore Convention Center, with tours of neighborhoods for potential investors, and workshops on  financing and buying city-owned properties.  A couple of days ago, the Abell Foundation published a report that is the first attempt to thoroughly assess the effectiveness of this program.  The author of that report is Joan Jacobson, who spent months evaluating the Vacants to Value initiative.