If I drove around Baltimore long enough, I probably could find enough discarded wrapping blowing along the streets to wrap all our family's holiday gifts. In the best-case scenario, all this trash came out of someone's uncovered recycling bin; in the worst case, it's from someone unwrapping presents in a car or outside their home and throwing it in the street.
In Baltimore, either of these is a possibility, and because of this and other uninviting features of city it will be hard to add 10,000 new residents over any period of time.
If you want middle-class people to move back in, provide an appealing middle class environment. If you don't, the city will just die. Under the existing circumstances, the mayor's wishful thinking about growing the city's population is just that — wishful.
Joseph Costa, Baltimore