BALTIMORE — There's a new joint effort between Maryland and Baltimore to target the city's thousands of vacant properties.
The "Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Council" - to be led by the heads of the state and city's housing agencies - will hold its first meeting Thursday morning in northeast Baltimore.
Governor Wes Moore created the council last month with an executive order.
The new group of state and local stakeholders will find investments to transform at least 5,000 vacant properties - roughly half of the city's total vacants - into "homeownership or other positive outcomes over the next five years," said the state's Department of Housing and Community Development.
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Baltimore Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy, who will be vice-chair of the council, said in a statement:
The state's commitment to reducing vacant properties and fostering neighborhood renewal will be crucial in mobilizing the investments needed to tackle the crisis of abandoned buildings in our city on a larger scale.
Moore's executive order noted that "the long standing concentration of blighted vacant residential properties and other structures in Baltimore City impedes the public health, safety and quality of life for residents" and "concentrations of vacant properties disproportionately impact lower income communities of color, decrease property values of surrounding property, and gravely lower the potential for residential and business advancement."
