Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on Monday directed all city agencies over the next 30 days to review their current policies for addressing vacant houses and develop new ideas for reducing blight, after three Baltimore firefighters were killed and one other was injured last week in a structural collapse while they were battling a blaze at a vacant house.
Lt. Paul Butrim, Lt. Kelsey Sadler, and firefighter and paramedic Kenny Lacayo died as a result of the building collapse at a vacant row home fire on Jan. 24 in the 200 block of South Stricker Street in Southwest Baltimore. Firefighter John McMaster was injured in the building collapse, but was released from the hospital Thursday.
“He is doing well and his spirit is good,” Baltimore Fire Chief Niles Ford said of McMaster.
There are more than 15,000 vacant properties in Baltimore City, Scott said. Of those, about 90% are privately owned.
About one-third of vacant buildings are in the process of being rehabilitated by a private owner, are part of a larger redevelopment plan, are being considered in court, are being prepared to be demolished, or are a Baltimore City-owned vacant property available for immediate sale to be rehabbed.
But Scott said the city “must do more to address this issue.”
“We know that these vacant properties reduce property values, increase blight, attract crime and pose a nuisance to neighboring properties,” he said.
The city’s Department Housing and Community Development has been working to acquire and convert, stabilize or demolish vacant houses. But Scott said he hopes his directive to city agencies will “accelerate, expand and enhance these processes.”
City Administrator Chris Shorter will lead the agency police review.
After 30 days, Scott said the city will develop a comprehensive plan to reduce the number of existing vacant properties and prevent more properties from becoming vacant.
That plan will include reforming the city’s tax sale process, bolstering the Vacants to Values program, reforming the disposition process, and bridging the appraisal gap on vacant properties, Scott said.
Scott added that the city plans to announce the use of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to address vacant properties, however he was unable to say Monday how much money would be committed to those efforts and what the initiatives would entail.
The city will also look at legislative and procedural changes, but Scott did not say what those changes would involve.
Baltimore, which was once the sixth largest city in the country, has been reduced to about 600,000 residents, Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy said.
“As people left, this created a growing inventory of vacant and abandoned homes,” she said. “Coupled with decades of disinvestment in our neighborhoods, rooted in redlining and racist housing policies, complications from tangled title issues, long held properties by nonresponsive investors – all of these things exacerbate the vacancy situation in our city and makes it quite complicated in some ways to address.”
The city last year began rolling out the use of QR codes on vacant properties, which neighbors can scan to learn more about the property owner.
Code enforcement, private acquisition, property donation, condemnation, receivership, tax lien foreclosure, in rem tax lien foreclosure, stabilization, and demolition have all been “tools in our toolbox to combat vacancy,” Kennedy said.
This fiscal year, about 250 to 265 properties have been identified for demolition, she said.
“Together, we have begun to unlock the potential in many neighborhoods, and we are on the brink of having the lowest number of vacant properties in the city in decades,” Kennedy said.
Despite that progress, Kennedy said there is much work left to do.
“The time is now, under Mayor Scott’s leadership, to act further, to leave no stone unturned as we do this work,” she said.
In addition to addressing properties that are vacant already, Kennedy said it is also important to prevent other homes from becoming vacant by supporting homeowners.
Ford said the fire department is working with other agencies to prevent another tragedy like the one that happened last week from reoccurring.
“Our goal is to make sure that we never, never, ever have the same circumstance that happened this past week happen again,” he said. “Not just in our career and in our tenure, but as our sons and daughters follow us in taking on the jobs that we have, that they won’t have the same circumstances that we have.”
An inspector looked at the Stricker Street property on Jan. 4, about three weeks before the fire, and found it “clean and boarded,” Scott said.
Kenendy said the city’s code enforcement team conduct routine inspections as part of their daily routes, including evaluating the front and rear of vacant buildings to look for any openings or parts of the structure that need to be inspected.
People who see a property that needs to be inspected can call 311 and report the address, she said.
Scott said there is no update on the person of interest whom authorities are seeking in connection with the Stricker Street vacant house fire.
Officials are offering a $100,000 for information that leads to identification of the person of interest. People with information about the case can call ATF at 888-ATF-TIPS (888-283-847) or contact them by email at ATFtips@atf.gov. They can also call the State Fire Marshal at 1-800-492-7529 or email them at msp.osfm@maryland.gov.
