Blocks of vacant houses, many boarded or cinder-blocked to deter squatters, have become a familiar part of Baltimore's landscape, a reminder that urban renewal still has far to go. According to the latest report by the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy of the Brookings Institution, it's a sign of the times.

Vacant-property issues are a result of the city's decline in population, businesses and jobs during the 1990s, according to the Brookings report, which examines the plight and possibilities of Baltimore and Philadelphia - cities with thriving downtown areas, juxtaposed with a substantial overall loss of population and a trend of economic disinvestment.

The past decade hit hard, with Baltimore's population declining 11.5 percent from 736,014 in 1990 to 651,154 by 2000, marking a loss of 84,860 city residents, according to U.S. Bureau of the Census statistics. During that same period, the downtown area managed to add 1,470 residents - a 5.1 percent increase in the city's downtown population. Some are hopeful that the downtown population growth could lead to spillover effects in outlying neighborhoods.

Still, others are concerned that the city's surplus of vacant houses - some owned by city agencies, others by private banks or the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, after loan defaults - could impede those goals if the homes remain off the market.

"Basically, the [housing] code says that you're supposed to repair and make the building habitable, or you're in violation of the law," said JoAnn Copes, development director for the Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development. "And if you own a vacant property, either land or building, you're supposed to keep it in a clean, safe and sanitary condition."

When a private owner fails to keep the property up to code and fails to secure the building, then the responsibility falls on the city's Housing Authority. Ultimately, after giving notice, the Housing Authority is empowered to issue a work order, perform the necessary repairs and place a lien on the property.

In reality, many of the vacant properties, particularly in the city's poorer areas, are public housing structures already owned by the Housing Authority. Thus, years of neglect and lack of prior administrative initiative to maintain the property have added to the current woes.

Not surprisingly, the Brookings report suggests that the city's success in alleviating its vacant-property quandary depends on the ability to improve its own government infrastructure.

According to Brookings, Baltimore must meet the needs for stronger departmental leadership, interdepartmental coordination and more effective staff development. It is a direct challenge for the city's administration.

The mayor's office has begun to make strides, recently instituting Project 5000, which aims to take municipal control of up to 5,000 vacant properties, mainly through pass-fail foreclosure as the primary vehicle for obtaining clear title to the property. Other mechanisms for property transfer include eminent domain and acquisition of Housing Authority buildings.

The Department of Housing and Community Development has a property inventory of about 2,900 parcels, mostly vacant lots acquired for various reasons. The total number of properties under the city's ownership is unavailable, due in part to the nature of the acquisition. Often property acquired through eminent domain is transferred to developers or residential homeowners for improvements. About 1,000 of the Project 5000 properties, predominantly located in East or West Baltimore, are scheduled for specific community development projects.

"We are acquiring a substantial amount of properties in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood," Copes said. "Reservoir Hill is a neighborhood that has experienced a fair amount of disinvestments and population loss, but has a wonderful housing stock, and we think there are opportunities there to get property reoccupied. So we're trying to be strategic.

"The downtown population has increased, through the direct efforts of trying to stimulate the downtown housing market, particularly rental housing. ... We expect people who come and initially reside in the downtown rental market, if there are adequate opportunities and good neighborhoods, will be interested in staying and becoming homeowners in the city. So, I would say that everything we are doing has that underlying theme: How do we stabilize, so we don't continue to have population loss?"

The current administration, according to Copes, is data-driven. "It has pushed very hard for us to be strategic, and I think there has been leadership both here in the department and in the mayor's office," he said.

As to the Brookings report's findings, Copes is optimistic that the current administration will be active in making the necessary changes. "Interdepartmental coordination is always difficult," admitted Copes. "Bureaucracies are difficult; getting them to coordinate and cooperate with one another is a challenge."

But things are changing, she says, attributing the evolution to a stronger administrative initiative. "I think through the CitiStat process [weekly meetings of agency heads, where strategies are developed, managers are held accountable and results are measured], the mayor has fostered a lot of that interdepartmental cooperation, because you have representatives of various agencies around the table focused on a specific issue.

"It is an opportune time to say 'Well, we could do this better if this or that department could help out.' And I've seen that happen numerous times at CitiStat sessions. [In terms of] better staff training, we are focused on getting people better trained to do their jobs and bringing technology to bear so they can do a better job. I think as we become more strategic and focused, staff is better able to see what the overall game plan is. So, instead of just making widgets, they see that making widgets is part of the bigger picture."

Another key agency is the city's Housing Authority, which owns roughly 13,500 properties that are available for occupancy. Add to that number 1,000 more properties that are vacant but awaiting federal approval for demolition. Properly overseeing and attending to those vacant properties is a task that until recently has been overlooked, according to Lyle Schumann, the agency's deputy executive director.

"We are trying to recover from a decade's worth of lack of energy or resources being put into the scattered site program. ... The strategy at that point in time was to not renovate them, not to invest in them, but to have them become vacant and sit there, vacant," Schumann said.

Like Copes, Schumann attributes the latest attention to remedying the problem to the insight of the current administration. The failure of past administrations to act led to years of neglect and in turn an increase in vacant structures, he said.

"Our charge now is to find multiple ways of investing in that property, some with our own money and some with other people's money, to get to a point where we can start to put families into them," he said.

Today, the Housing Authority is seeking to renovate and reoccupy structures that have been long-term vacant properties throughout the city, Schumann said.

"Our intent is to continue to own them, to continue to manage them ourselves or have them privately managed, and to have them continue to operate as public housing. Also, there will be opportunities to partner with developers or neighborhood groups or other nonprofits, where there is a viable plan that has been put together that has a reuse that has some element of affordability in it.

"Our goal is not to simply sell them and remove ourselves from particular neighborhoods. Our goal is to try and partner with developers and communities and put together more comprehensive reuse strategies that include a low-rent component and ideally a lower-income homeownership component."

In the Harlem Park neighborhood, roughly 60 properties had been long-term vacant properties. The Harlem Park Revitalization Corporation put together a reuse strategy that included development of new, affordable housing. Working with the HPRC, the Housing Authority, through fair-market sales, disposed of its own properties that were interfering with the community plan.

"It made perfect sense," explained Schumann, "because it was good for the neighborhood and also included an affordable component, so that residents of public housing and people on our waiting list also had some benefit from that work."

The Housing Authority acknowledges that there will be other opportunities to find ways to have multiple reuse strategies, including some component of private, market-rate ownership.

But, admits Schumann, it is the agency's primary objective to return the properties to a reoccupation status with low-income renters. "We have a tremendous demand for affordable rental property, and we're trying our best to find ways of readying these long-term units and getting them occupied by families as quickly as we can, recognizing we can't do it all ourselves. Because, frankly, we don't have enough resources," he said.