BALTIMORE — When you travel through Baltimore, you will see blocks full of vacant houses.
It's estimated that there are roughly 13,000 vacant homes in Baltimore.
A new council was recently formed to tackle the problem head on.
The Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Council (BVRC) is working to bring that number down.
Calvin Alston, 79, is a Baltimore man who remembers what the city looked like back in the 1950's.
"You didn't see abandoned houses back then. The neighborhoods, they were close. It was just different. You could just walk the streets," said Alston.
However, Alston says about 30-years-ago is when he started to see his hometown start to decline.
"It's a blight. It really bothers me. I began seeing the vacant houses, the boarded up houses around the late 80's, early 90's," said Alston.
But there's now a push to change things.
Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order to create the BVRC
The 16 member council is made up of local and state stakeholders.
Jake Day is the Secretary for Housing and Community Development for the state of Maryland.
He believes the vacant housing problem can create other problems down the line.
"Every vacant house has an affect on the neighboring house and the next house over, the whole street. It has an affect from the rodents, to the bad things that might happen over there," said Day.
Day says the council had its first meeting last month.
One of their top priorities is to first determine what neighborhoods have the most vacant houses.
The ultimate goal for the council is to have more homeowners in the city, while also creating more affordable houses.
Day says this is a problem they will have to address block by block.
He recognizes that this isn't something that can happen overnight.
The BVRC meets again on December 12th.
At this meeting, they will take a closer look at the data.