How Baltimore's Mayor Is Fighting the City's Vacant Housing Crisis

What It Covers

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott details his administration's strategy to reduce the city's 16,000 vacant properties — a number unchanged for 20 years — through block-by-block planning, a 15-year cross-sector funding coalition, innovative TIF financing, and a parallel violence reduction effort that cut homicides from 300+ to 133 annually.

Key Questions Answered

• •15-Year Vacancy Strategy: Baltimore reduced vacant properties from 16,000 to 11,806 by committing to a timeline that exceeds any single mayoral term. Prior administrations failed not from lack of strategy but lack of capital and multi-administration continuity. Securing $50 million annually from Maryland's governor was the structural breakthrough that made sustained progress possible.
• •Non-Contiguous TIF Financing: Baltimore pioneered using Tax Increment Financing across scattered, non-contiguous vacant properties citywide rather than limiting it to single development zones. When the city offered $28 million in TIF financing tied to vacant building notices, it received $380 million in applications — proving demand exists when the financing mechanism matches the problem's geography.
• •Targeted Violence Deterrence Over Mass Arrests: Baltimore cut homicides nearly 60% while reducing arrests from 91,000 to 17,000 annually. The Group Violence Reduction Strategy uses data to identify individuals most likely to be involved in gun violence, then delivers direct mayoral letters offering housing, job training, and relocation — with over 90% of participants not reoffending after accepting intervention.
• •Block-Level Planning Before Developer Engagement: Baltimore assigns demolish-or-renovate decisions at the block level before issuing RFPs to developers. Each block is assessed for neighborhood aesthetic fit, housing type need, and developer capacity — matching small developers to smaller clusters and larger CDCs to complex sites — preventing speculative land-holding and ensuring community-aligned outcomes.
• •Vacancy Tax Requires State Authorization: Cities seeking to impose higher tax rates on vacant properties must first secure state legislative approval. Baltimore obtained this authority after demonstrating that vacant properties drain state revenue as much as city revenue — a framing that recast the issue as a shared fiscal problem rather than a local administrative one, accelerating political support.