Over the past five years, Baltimore has eliminated thousands of unoccupied houses, according to Mayor Brandon Scott, who stated Friday that this should eventually help lower the number of homeless individuals by lowering housing costs through an increase in supply.
In Baltimore, affordability is our top priority, Scott stated during a panel discussion at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference on Friday. As everyone is aware, Baltimore has a vast amount of housing stock, but a significant amount of it is unusable, unoccupied houses spread out over the city.
He stated that the city has decreased the number of unoccupied homes by roughly 3,500 units since he was elected mayor in December 2020. This comes after more than two decades during which the number of unoccupied buildings remained unchanged.
When I started working here, there were 16,000 unoccupied properties. He replied, “We’re down to 12,510 as of 20 minutes before we started today,” to the cheers of the MACo attendees.
