Baltimore’s next mayor will have a lot of challenges but one of the biggest is housing: most especially the city’s thousands of vacant homes.
Ahead of the May 14th Democratic primary election, the two top candidates — incumbent mayor Brandon Scott and former mayor Sheila Dixon — laid out their plans for tackling that problem during a Tuesday night forum hosted by BUILD. In the spirit of dialogue, the forum was not a debate but rather a chance for each candidate to separately take the stage and share their plans to reduce vacancy without creating wealth-gaps and displacing legacy residents.
The coalition decided only to host candidates who were polling in the double-digits in independent third-party polls: that decision excluded candidate Bob Wallace, although he and his supporters were in attendance.
“I wanna know who will lead the city? You ought to say, ‘we will lead the city!’” roared the Reverend Brent Brown of the Greater Harvest Baptist Church. He put the question to the candidates and the hundreds of people gathered inside the St. Frances Academy basketball auditorium.
BUILD, which stands for Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, is an interfaith and multiracial coalition that works on facilitating community-led change to economically improve the lives of city residents. A recent report sponsored by BUILD found that tackling vacancy is a $7.5 billion dollar problem that will need approximately $2.5 billion in public money to solve.
Mayor Scott says he’s already doing BUILD’s “whole blocks approach” — which means not going house by house, but focusing on strategies to save the whole block from vacancy.
“The entire vacancy strategy that we laid out is based on a whole block approach, working in geographical areas like our impact investment areas,” said Scott, noting that Johnston Square, where the event was held, is one such area. Many of those neighborhoods have been impacted by redlining, systemic disinvestment and are now eligible for new city investment programs.
Scott’s housing plan was created with BUILD and the Greater Baltimore Committee. It calls for using TIFS, or tax increment financing, to pay for $300 million dollars of bonds that will be invested throughout the city– and not just in one contiguous area as is traditionally done, like in the Harbor East redevelopment. As Scott explains, those bonds can be used for buildings with vacant notices.
“We’re talking about allowing Baltimore to have the capital to do what we’ve always had the ability to do,” said Scott.
That proposal plan involves nearly a billion dollars of currently unsecured state funding too. It will be implemented over the course of 15 years.
Dixon’s plan also includes the use of TIFs for communities that have faced decades of disenfranchisement.
“My plan is in line with what BUILD is trying to do,” said the former mayor.
BUILD has called for a “special entity” to raise private funds, in addition to the $2.5 billion public funding, to finance the projected $7.5 billion vacants problem.
“I want to create a quasi-public private entity: a neighborhood authority,” said Dixon.
Part of that authority for Dixon includes a landbank. Land banks are semi-public agencies that can take over vacant properties, clear up debts and titles, and then sell them to developers in-line with the city and communities goals.
“Not only do I see that being that special entity, but also building upon the strength of the Stadium Authority,” she said, which as she noted, has stepped in to take over other city construction projects like some school buildings.
Dixon also said she sees the need for more people in the city’s housing department to accomplish the ambitious long-term goals of addressing vacancy. She also called for higher taxes on blighted homes owned by people that “sit on that property, waiting for that area to be developed. They need to be paying into this.”
When pressed on whether he would use a “special entity”, Mayor Scott says he wants to bring back an old program called the Industrial Development Authority, which his administration says can bring $150 million in investment over 15 years.
“We have this IDA that has been only used for industrial, but it doesn't have to be. We can take that, use it throughout the city of Baltimore to do exactly what we all want to do,” he said. “What we're going to be doing this summer is we're going to have $150 million that we're going to do in TIF and another $150 million that we're going to use in bonds through the IDA to start this process.”
Scott described the process of using bonds to tackle vacancy as one “we all know needs to happen.”
Both candidates noted the importance of creating plans that will have longevity beyond their administrations.
As the crowd filed out, they promised to cast their votes at the polls and then they offered up a rousing version of “This Little Light of Mine '' as a song of hope for the future of the city.
The Maryland primary election is May 14th.
