A bill that would help Baltimore housing officials seize and demolish the city's abandoned buildings won the support of the House of Delegates yesterday.
City officials say they are counting on the bill, which awaits approval in the Senate, to help them free up acres of inner-city land for redevelopment into parks and retail centers.
"This is an important step forward in addressing one of the city's biggest problems," said Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, the Baltimore Democrat who sponsored the legislation. "It's a responsible effort to address the problem of abandonment in a way that isn't piecemeal."
The proposed legislation, which passed on a 135-1 vote, would speed up a long, complex process that lets the city take ownership of vacant houses. About 40,000 exist citywide. Once the city holds title to the houses, the Department of Housing and Community Development would demolish them and prepare the land for future development.
As important, supporters said yesterday, is the ability to clear away rows of empty houses that have become dens for drug dealers and other criminal activity.
Rosenberg said the legislation was prompted by a Feb. 14 article in The Sun that described how drug dealers and other felons have bought blocks of slum housing in East Baltimore. The story charted the rise of George A. Dangerfield Jr., a 29-year-old convicted drug dealer who bought more than 120 rundown rental dwellings on his way to being named one of the city's 10 worst scofflaw landlords.
At the heart of the bill are provisions that would declare any house abandoned if the owner has failed to pay taxes for more than two years and the property has been deemed uninhabitable by inspectors.
While bankers and property owners joined the list of those supporting the measure, the American Civil Liberties Union objected to a portion of the bill that would allow the city to seize occupied homes on blocks that are more than 70 percent abandoned.
At a legislative hearing last week, Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III said that language would enable the city to knock down entire blocks, rather than attempt to untangle a row of abandoned houses from one or two that are occupied. The bill provides that residents would be relocated, he said.
If the bill passes, Henson said his department would immediately begin confiscating 11,000 of the city's worst buildings, with 1,100 slated for demolition next year.
In a decades-long process, the city would knock down buildings at a pace of roughly 2,000 a year. Henson envisions the creation of a "land bank." Run by a consortium of city agencies and nonprofit civic groups, it would preserve property for use as parks, parking lots and building sites.
Pub Date: 3/26/99