Baltimore City council takes on bills aimed at imposing additional penalties for unkempt vacant buildings
BALTIMORE -- City council is taking on a series of bills aimed at tackling Baltmore's vacant property crisis.
This package of bills is designed to put further pressure on vacant building owners who let their properties sit vacant, and, in some cases, draw emergency response.
Rayshawn Davis is surrounded by vacant property on Castle Street and North Avenue in East Baltimore.
"This is the house right next door to mine I'm concerned about because it's falling," Davis told WJZ. "There's a lot of vacant houses around this area."
Unlike the majority of Baltimore's vacant buildings, the city has owned the property next to Davis for the past 12 years.
"They're abandoned, Davis said. "So, then they use them as a place to go in and do drugs."
"The homeless people ain't got nowhere else to go," Baltimore resident Rock Benny said. "So, they're doing what they want to do in houses like this."
Baltimore City Council on Tuesday heard three bills designed to impose additional fees and fines against property owners for nuisance abatement and emergency response.
Two years ago, three Baltimore City firefighters were killed, and another was injured, while fighting a vacant building fire on Stricker Street.
"We've lost firefighters," Davis said. "We've lost civilians—countless civilians."
Fire officials say they don't have a reliable way to track how many of the department's responses are to vacant buildings.
Councilman Robert Stokes is concerned the city has too many fees, which will hinder development.
"We always putting fees on the constituents here," Stokes said. "I'm looking at all three. We got a penalty here, penalty there, fee there."
However, Councilwoman Odette Ramos says the intent is not to collect fees, which she says many owners won't pay.
"So that we can then foreclose on the property because the liens get higher than the value of the property," Ramos said.
"Once you penalize them, they have no choice but to get them fixed up," Benny said.
Baltimore City has made significant progress on vacant buildings within the past five years with a nearly 20% decline in vacant building notices.
Still, there are more than 13,000 vacant buildings in Baltimore. Fewer than 900 of them are owned by the city which tracks them on a dashboard.
Davis says he's open to further fees on delinquent owners.
"Do something with it or sell it," Davis said. "They have to either enforce type kind of restrictions now on the ones not taking care of their properties. I think they should do something."
There is some opposition, even from city agencies.
The fire department, for instance, cites the difficulty in calculating costs associated with each incident which causes a "serious administrative burden."
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