Baltimore’s latest count of vacant houses stands at 11,388. That’s the lowest in decades, and not just because of demolitions. Demolitions are down, rehabbed properties up, according to city data. I think we’re allowed to take this as a sign that the long-delayed Second Baltimore Renaissance is underway.
For years, the number of vacants stagnated between 15,000 and 16,000. Despite city efforts to seize and sell vacants, new abandonments kept pace with, or surpassed, restorations; someone walked away from a rowhouse in West Baltimore even as someone in East Baltimore fixed one up. As recently as 2023, a report from the Abell Foundation said the city had “nearly 15,000 houses with vacant building notices.” That level of vacancy, the report said, represented about $200 million in lost property tax revenue year after year.
Whenever I heard people decry the depressing number of vacants and hold it as evidence of urban dysfunction, I reminded them about white flight and the staggering loss of population. Sixty years ago, there were more than 900,000 Baltimore residents; today there are just below 600,000. No one should have been shocked that whole blocks of rowhouses were abandoned; no one should wonder why recovery would take so long.
On Thursday, I walked along Biddle Street to the Johnston Square neighborhood and the 700 block of Mura Street. That’s between Greenmount Avenue and Homewood Avenue. I was last there in April 2025. At the time, the 700 block suffered from big cavities — the kind of gaping holes in rowhouse neighborhoods we’ve seen for decades in Baltimore. I took some photographs to go with a story for Baltimore Brew.
Eighteen months later, I have a couple of new photographs to go with this column for Fishbowl.
The 700 block of Mura Street looks amazing.
ReBUILD Metro worked with architect Twopoint Studios and Clipper Construction to combine 16 of 18 rowhouses into eight new double-wides. They did this while preserving the rowhouses of Mura Street’s longtime residents. People who lived there — with crumbling vacants on both sides — still live there.
ReBUILD Metro’s work in Johnston Square has cut the number of vacants by half since 2023. The nonprofit says the neighborhood’s vacancy rate has fallen to just 10%. Seven of the eight double-wides on Mura Street have been sold or are under contract.
This is the hard sweat of bringing neglected parts of the city back to life. It has been happening block by block for years, with government agencies, nonprofits, community groups and private developers working against the narrative of what The New York Times in 2019 called “the tragedy of Baltimore.” It has been working, quietly and steadily, against the constant coloring of Baltimore as a “city in crisis” by Fox 45 and other media voices.
If there’s a second Baltimore Renaissance, it will be owing to people like Regina Hammond, executive director of Rebuild Johnston Square Neighborhood Organization, and Sean Closkey, president of ReBUILD Metro. Their collaboration, augmented by government funding, has created more than 230 new or rebuilt homes in Johnston Square since 2018. Another 22 abandoned houses are being rehabbed.
ReBUILD Metro’s reach has extended into Greenmount West and the Oliver and Broadway East neighborhoods; as a result, the populations in those areas have grown.
For a time during my years at The Sun, I started to see evidence of a new, generational commitment to rebuild the city. I referred to The Next Baltimore, optimistic that like-minded, progressive adults would start to stay in the city or move here, far less hindered by the prejudices and fears that sent earlier generations away. I stopped using that phrase about 10 years ago, when things started to look grim again. It was hard to be optimistic. I decided to refer to my adopted hometown as Our City of Perpetual Recovery.
That’s still an apt description, and there are more days than not when recovery seems real.
About the Mura Street Homes, four city leaders made remarks. I note that each of them were born in the early 1980s, during the first Baltimore Renaissance, after Harborplace and the National Aquarium opened: Cory McCray, a state senator, 43 years old; Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, 42; City Councilman Jermaine Jones, 42; City Council President Zeke Cohen, also 42.
“To tackle a generational challenge like vacant housing, we can’t just rehabilitate one house at a time,” said Scott. “We have to think bigger and look at entire blocks and neighborhoods. The miracle on Mura Street was possible because the people of Johnston Square came together, set clear goals and worked with city and state leaders to change their community for the better..”
Said Cohen: “This street is the exemplar of what the Baltimore Renaissance can look like. This is a transformation that truly centers community and proves that growth and development without displacement is possible.”
Said Jones: “This project took the hard path of preserving the history of this block while keeping our current residents here and building for the future.”
Said McCray: “We are writing the story for our next generation.”
Dan Rodricks writes weekly for the Fishbowl. He can be reached via danrodricks.com
