IN THE CLIFTON-BEREA section of East Baltimore, nearly half the homes are either vacant or in violation of city housing codes.

In Greater Rosemont on the west side, more than one call per month was made to the city last year to tow away an abandoned car.

In Patterson Park in the southeast, almost 250 permits were issued for substantial residential rehabs, about as many as in Fells Point and behind only Canton and Federal Hill.

These are just a sampling of the thousands of figures in a fascinating new report from the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance titled "Vital Signs for Baltimore Neighborhoods" and subtitled "Measuring Baltimore's progress towards strong neighborhoods and a vital city."

Scheduled to be released Monday, the report draws on statistics from a variety of sources -- including the U.S. Census Bureau and the city police and housing departments -- to create a baseline for charting what is happening in Baltimore neighborhoods in such key areas as family health, housing and safety.

"The report is just a first report," said Odette T. Ramos, director of the alliance. "The purpose of the project is to track trends over time for neighborhood outcomes."

Although it's natural and inevitable to use the report's data to compare one part of the city to another, the report merely lays out the information about neighborhoods, shunning top 10-style lists.

Ramos said the point isn't to rate one community against another.

"This isn't about ranking the neighborhoods," she said. "It's about overall conditions in neighborhoods. It's a common yardstick by which we can measure progress and a way to create a dialogue about what's going on in Baltimore."

As future reports are issued, she added, "People can come together and say, 'Our trends aren't going in the right direction. What can we do about it?'"

The nonprofit alliance, a consortium of organizations dedicated to disseminating information to be used to improve city neighborhoods, began the "Vital Signs" project last spring. The alliance asked residents and community leaders to suggest specific measures that, over time, would indicate whether neighborhoods were improving.

Some of the data have previously been available from sources such as the Census Bureau and the alliance's Web site. What makes the report so interesting and important is that it integrates more widely known numbers such as median household income with more obscure ones, such as police emergency calls for domestic violence. It collates them on the community level and puts them all in one place.

The data, analyzed by professional number-crunchers, are presented for 55 of what the alliance calls Community Statistical Areas -- clusters of the city's 260 neighborhoods -- to better conform with census tracts.

And so, for example, the area called Washington Village in the southwest takes in that neighborhood as well as Barre Circle, Mill Hill, Morrell Park and others.

That area had nearly 25 substantiated cases of abuse and neglect per 1,000 children -- nearly twice the citywide average -- in one of the alliance's measures of family health and well-being. The point is, having pinpointed child abuse as a community problem, will that number change over time? And if so, how?

For now, the data offer some intriguing community snapshots. How safe are Baltimore's safest neighborhoods? Greater Roland Park/Poplar Hill, Cross Country/Cheswolde and Mount Washington/Coldspring all had 10 or fewer reported instances of violent crime last year, although each had several hundred property crimes, including burglaries and auto thefts.

By contrast -- remember, comparisons are natural and inevitable -- the Southwest Baltimore cluster that takes in such neighborhoods as Franklin Square and Boyd-Booth had more than 600 instances of violent crimes.

The area with the highest median house price last year was Greater Roland Park/Poplar Hill, at $215,460; the one with the lowest was Perkins/Middle East, an area north of the Johns Hopkins medical complex that is slated for redevelopment centered on a biotech park, at $10,200.

"Vital Signs" notes that there are no firm data on one of the biggest problems facing Baltimore: drug abuse. But the report offers a breakdown -- not by neighborhood, but by ZIP code -- of the nearly 18,000 people served by some type of drug treatment program in the city last year.

The largest number, more than 2,100, was from an area that includes Harlem Park, Upton and Penn North, followed by an area encompassing Pimlico and Southern Park Heights, with more than 1,900.

In the short run, the report points out, these numbers should increase as more slots for treatment become available and more addicts seek help. But eventually, the figures should decline as more people kick their addiction.

"Vital Signs for Baltimore Neighborhoods" should be available next week on the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance Web site, www.bnia.org.