BALTIMORE — Thousands of homes across Baltimore have no one living in them, marked by red signs and boarded up windows.
The lack of occupants create a hazard for the local community.
The empty buildings are targets for arsonists, threatening other homes nearby and putting firefighters in harms way.
"We would like to see the city tear down the vacants, I mean that just gives the arsonist wood for the fire so to speak, it gives them a place to burn," said Matthew Coster, President of the Baltimore Firefighters Union.
The issue goes beyond firefighters, as a whole, the thousands of vacant homes and blight contribute to the economic issues Baltimore faces -- like a downward trend in population.
"When companies are making decisions, or when banks are making investment decisions for businesses they're choosing to invest in, or when people are looking at a market at a hyper level, if you have population decline and blight, you're already disadvantaged," said Mark Anthony Thomas, President and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee.
BGE is tasked with combining businesses and government to grow the city. Part of the organization's multi-year agenda is to deal with the vacant homes across Baltimore.
"You have places like Detroit, Philadelphia, others who have created new tools to free up properties so there's a lot of different ways and there's been a movement really in the last ten years to tackle this in rural and urban America," said Thomas.
The organization is still developing an exact plan to address the issue.
Still, Thomas considers it one of the most important issues in the multi-year agenda.
"For us to actually see an inclusive economy we need to address the issues at every level," said Thomas.
Over the last few years, Baltimore has made progress on the vacant home issue, dropping by 3,000 since 2016.
