There is not enough money to support all of the city neighborhoods with big improvements. Instead of spreading investment across the entire city, or focusing money on blighted neighborhoods the city is improving some areas and letting other fall into disrepair. The mismanagement of city funds takes a toll, and mass improvement in certain small areas has a negative impact.

Money.

The govt had already purchased the houses due to the planned I95 highway through the area. When that was stopped, all of the empty houses remained so the dollar house plan was created.

I do suppose there would be a legal cost to seizure even if the owners are utterly absent and have a lien on the property.

I did not know that! I'm very glad I-95 didn't go through Federal Hill - that would have been awful.

The Dollar house program worked because there was federal guarantees to the lending institutions that they would get their loans paid. Lending institutions generally will not loan you money for a run down building. There were, and may still be some private non profits which will aid you in getting a loan for the property and a 2nd mortgage for renovations. I bought my first house going through Neighborhood Housing. (That was in 1986)

I do not know all the details about Federal Hill. Though I do remember hearing chatter in the White Coffee Pot, (1970s) in SoBo, that at least some of what took place in Fed Hill was some back room deal making and possibly with some developers. The were two factions. One group wanted more to be bulldozed and they had no problem with I-395 gashing its way into the city, nor the FED bank which takes a huge chunk of property. Then there were the true preservationists who want loans for people to make quality repairs and not house flippers gobbling up fed & State funding, while doing shoddy work.

Costs and time and effort to rehabilitate homes that are not wanted or needed.

Old pipes and foundations have to be redone and that's immensely expensive. Not to mention the demolition.

This is the answer. Redlining was really the government limiting access to loans and capital in certain areas. The dollar home program showed how a blighted neighborhood could quickly turn around when given access to loans and grants.

Redlining has gone away, but there are still plenty of ways we are keeping capital away from these neighborhoods.

Edit: You might consider reading Not In My Neighborhood for some of the history. You could also read The Color of Law to see how zoning plays a big part.

The national dollar house program turned into the Urban Homestead program in the 90’s or 00’s. The city can still sell or lease any vacant property they already own for $1, the new owner has to make repairs to being the house up to code. Once the house is up to code after a few years the city officially gives the house to the new owner. The city owns thousands of vacant properties they could sell or lease for $1. The problem is those properties are in blighted neighborhoods where the city won’t spend money on infrastructure, new streets, new pipes and all that.

There was a case recently where a man bought a house to rehab on North Avenue, the city didn’t do any repairs to the streets or the pipes, then the street collapsed and the man lost everything. The city won’t pay for the repairs or the losses. But in other areas like around the UM Technology Corridor, the city invested money to improve the roads and infrastructure.

The difference in level of services makes it hard for individual investors who are not well connected to someone in control in the city. No one wants to invest in a property of the infrastructure is broken.

https://www.wmar2news.com/homepage-showcase/homeowners-forced-to-pay-a-mortgage-for-homes-that-were-torn-down-from-a-sinkhole

I know some people who won the dollar house lottery and still live in their fixed up houses. One had no roof when they bought it! I've heard some interesting stories about how all that played out; the process wasn't without it's tribulations.

You expect common sense from the Baltimore city government now that is funny

Shitty leadership.

They won’t do anything without the slumlords approval.

Love the question!

I know vacants cost average $20-30K each to knock down. Pricey for 15,000 vacants.

Another issue I’d add is the city needs enough buyers that 1) have access to $50-100K for repairs, and 2) think the neighborhoods the houses for sale are in are cool.

One of the reasons why the dollar houses in Federal Hill, Ridgely's Delight, Otterbein, and Barre Circle were so successful was because the city had condemned them en masse to build a highway. When the highway didn't materialize, the city had contiguous blocks of vacant houses to sell at the same time. The density and continuity of the vacants was hugely advantageous for building healthy neighborhoods. Individual house-buyers could be confident that every other house on the block was being renovated to a similar standard and that every future neighbor was committed to living in the neighborhood for several years after renovations were finished. A completely renovated block surrounded by completely renovated blocks, all with a high rate of owner-occupancy, is a fantastic way to develop and maintain neighborhood stability.

Today, unfortunately, the city-owned vacants are scattered all over the place. You might see one or two (or several) on a block, but it's basically unheard of for the city to own every house or lot on a block. Large numbers of vacant properties in the city are in private hands - some are owned by speculators, others by out-of-towners, still others by owners who have died without a known heir. If tomorrow the city listed every vacant property it owns for $1, and somehow made financing available and affordable, you'd be helping on average one or two houses on a block - which, while a good thing, wouldn't be enough to create the completely renovated blocks surrounded by completely renovated blocks with high rates of homeownership throughout that are the markers of a healthy neighborhood.

To bring back the dollar house program and make it as successful as it was in the '70s, the city would need to figure out how to condemn entire neighborhoods at once while navigating a whole host of thorny, expensive problems that will make a lot of people very angry. I just don't see how that happens today.

> mass improvement in certain small areas has a negative impact

This phrase doesn't make any sense. How can there be mass improvement in small areas? Also, how is this negative? Are you insinuating that improvement to these small areas is negatively affecting other areas? But how so?

I wasn’t implying, I wrote it. Putting large amounts of money into a small area while neglecting the rest of the city is bad for the rest of the city. It may be good for that one small part of the city but the rest of the city suffers.

The city does have a legal department focused on foreclosing on vacants with liens against them: https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/housing/vacant-housing-crisis-judicial-foreclosure-5CGX2JGTR5DI3M2NYFIUUXS724/

Well said!

Baltimore has had a tax surplus for years and books in the black. What mismanagement of funds? Audits are available to the public and done annually. Stop using nonsensical talking points and do research.

Fair points

Thanks, guess if the taxes are paid the city can't do anything at all (and maybe even can't do anything even if they're not). Very good points on it being an all at once kind.of situation.

Cheers, hope it yields fruit

The 1970s was the first and last time the fed gov was throwing money at Baltimore. Many many great buildings, in West Balt were demolished and replaced with civic or social buildings. Rather than re-purposing the old, developers wanted a clean slate onto which they could lift their leg and leave their mark.

What about the areas where they've torn down entire blocks? Do you think they could do a dollar vacant lot program instead? That might be a way to rebuild.

Usually those are not just vacant but structurally dangerous and beyond repair. That’s about what it takes for the city to actually evict anyone living there in order to condemn a whole block. And again, if you look at where that tends to happen you’d be placing one improved block amidst a blighted neighborhood. It can be a struggle in those cases because, while the buyers intention may be good, they’re usually greeted with hostility by the community. If the program has a time commitment for private purchasers they’ve just tied themselves to a house in an area typically struggling with crime, lack of services, poor school options, and limited resale opportunities for investment. Professional investors face the same hurdles if they buy the whole block, plus typically community protest for attempting to gentrify or change the neighborhood. I did kind of the opposite, purchasing a house in bad condition in an at the time struggling neighborhood which has since improved immensely. We dealt with break ins and thefts, people using our closed yard as a cut through, random people coming to the door demanding that we rent to them because we were somehow listed as a partial HUD rental and hostility from some of the older neighbors because restoring a truly damaged home while living in it is a slow and painful process. We also noticed that once the city sees you as a target for citations they tend to hit you for everything possible adding $100s if not $1000s to the cost of improvement. It makes me feel like as a home owner here I’m being slowly bled while houses that are literally falling down have nothing happen because there’s no money in threatening someone with no money.

The abandoned house issue is actually close to the #1 problem with the city.

To add to all the great answers here the Maryland Curiosity Bureau did an episode on this topic last year and may shed some more light on the subject.

https://www.wypr.org/2021-10-18/whatever-happened-to-baltimores-dollar-house-program

Thanks, will have to read when I've got some time!