How Baltimore's Mayor Is Fighting the City's Vacant Housing Crisis
5/4/202649 min
Since Mayor Brandon Scott took office in 2020, he's fixated on a very visible problem in Baltimore: the tens of thousands of vacant homes that dot the city. It's hard to build new houses when there are so many that sit empty and unused. And the process of tracking down owners, convincing them to sell their vacant properties, and then converting those homes into usable housing supply is a tall task. In the last few years, the number of vacant homes in Baltimore has dropped from 16,000 to just over 11,800. On this episode — recorded in Madrid while we attended the Bloomberg CityLab conference — we speak to Mayor Scott about deindustrialization, redlining, and gun violence's historical effects on the current housing crisis, how his government identifies, block-by-block, redevelopment opportunities and matches projects with publicly-minded developers, and why Baltimore natives aren't huge fans of The Wire.
Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter
Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
[upbeat music] Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. [upbeat music] [keyboard clicking] Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
Tracy Alloway· Host0:35
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:49
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
Tracy Alloway· Host0:51
So Joe, we are here in Madrid as part of Bloomberg City Lab.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:55
Tough, tough assignment- I know ... for us.
Tracy Alloway· Host0:57
I know.
Joe Weisenthal· Host0:58
Coming to a- A real hardship posting. Yeah, a real hardship posting, but willing to do it.
Tracy Alloway· Host1:01
Yeah. So there are mayors from all over the world here all talking about the challenges and opportunities facing cities, and we're about to speak to one of them in particular, and it's actually a really interesting test case of, I think, a lot of themes that kind of touch on the, the Odd Lots oohv, let's say.
Joe Weisenthal· Host1:21
Well, one of the things that comes up all the time, obviously, on Odd Lots over the years is housing, right?
Tracy Alloway· Host1:26
Mm-hmm.
Joe Weisenthal· Host1:26
And one of the things that we've discovered, I would say, is,