Dis-placia: Vacant in the Village [White Paper]

A blighted Baltimore is a Bleeding Baltimore. It's a broke one, too.  Living with blight can be as traumatic as being shot with a bullet.

What is blight it? When you hear blight, you might think about the disease that affects potatoes and has caused famine. But in this context blight refers to the condition of real property as vacant, abandoned, dilapidated, misused or underutilized properties. The City of Baltimore’s Article 13 Housing and Urban Renewal defines blight as:

(i) a preponderance of the structures or the dwelling units therein is detrimental to the public health, safety, or general welfare by reason of age, dilapidation, depreciation, overcrowding, excessive land coverage, faulty arrangement, lack of ventilation or sanitary facilities, failure to conform with the provisions of the ordinances or regulatory codes of the City of Baltimore relating to buildings, housing, or sanitation, neighborhood obsolescence or deterioration, {or}inadequate open space, parking, or access to transportation; or

(ii) there is a preponderance of defective or inadequate street layouts, or of faulty lot layouts in relation to size, adequacy, accessibility or usefulness, or of unsanitary or unsafe conditions, or of deteriorated or inadequate site improvements or community facilities, or of conditions which endanger life or property by fire or other cause or which retard development of the area, or any combination of these factors; or

(iii) the land is suitable for development but has not been developed to an appreciable extent because of obsolete platting, diversity of ownership, deterioration of structures or site improvements, a high rate of tax delinquency or mortgage foreclosures, or spoiling of the land as a result of excavation or usage, or any combination of these factors.

This is a very technical way of saying blight “designates a critical stage in the functional or social depreciation for real property beyond which its existing condition or use is unacceptable to community” (Breger). Click here to read the entire paper.