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If only this thread was in the Urban Planning Forum...
In San Diego, "old" houses - 1900 to pre-WWII command a 20% - 40% premium, but they are not rowhouses. That never developed here. Old houses in neighborhoods which are still intact single family neighborhoods are the most prized.
In some cities there appears to be a growing preference for city center living over the suburbs: NYC, SF, DC. In other cities, the stigma of the city center is starting to dissipate: San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago - this last grouping is just a guess.
640TAG, when I looked at your Baltimore example, I immediately said, "what that street needs is to be made One-way, the sidewalks widened and street trees planted." It would make all the difference aesthetically. Without greenery, it looks pretty grim. If they had the money, what could be accomplished if they demolished a central block of rowhouses, turned it into a green space, and then rehabilitated the remaining blocks which surrounded the new park. It would avoid the "missing teeth" problem of demolishing one vacant rowhouse, reduce the amount of unused housing, create green space and by doing so upgrade the neighborhood.
To address the point of finding buyers for Baltimore rowhouses, I wonder if the rowhouse neighborhoods could be connected to higher speed mass transit to DC. Maybe some of the housing pressure in the DC area could find an outlet in Baltimore. The new residents, earning DC pay, but living in Baltimore, could buy goods and services from businesses near the homes. This would be After Work meals and weekend spending mostly, but it would bring cash back to Baltimore.
For a bit of a correction, the first list should be SF, NYC, DC, Seattle, Portland, and Boston. All command high prices in the city center, and Boston and Seattle this was the case before DC. DC and Portland were the fastest gentrifying cities in the last decade.
Chicago and Philidelphia I would put in the early stages, but those cities are so large, gentrification process could take several decades. The smaller footprint of DC for example made the process happen faster.
In terms of vacants, tearing many down will likely be necessary. Refurbishment should be done when the location makes sense for it to be the case. Those further from the edge should be given limited priority. Homesteading should be done where it can be ascertained it would be beneficial and closer to the city center. Believe it or not this takes planning.
As someone who has to deal with the rehab vs. demolish dilemma for a living, (I'm not a city employee) I can tell you that the tradeoffs can be worked into a relatively simple formula. While the formula is pretty simple, the whole process needs money to make it go. And money is in short supply.
I'm curious where yor experience has been because I see some big holes in your suggestions. Is it in the Northeast U.S.? Because I don't see some of the issues that come up over and over addressed.
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Here are a few numbers: Cost to demolish a rowhouse - $15K-$20K; cost to build support wall for remaining house next door - $10K+ (each side); Cost to reroof a collapsed house - $35K+ (including interior demo); Cost to relocate a renter on a block to be demolished - $25K each (plus the market value of the remain real estate (10K?)); Cost to relocate an existing homeowner - $175K (average).
I'm curious where those numbers come from. I don't think the lead and asbestos remudiation involved in demolition could be done for $15-20k. Also I believe the way to do it is to demolish entire blocks at a time not one house at a time. And how do you handle the homeowner or renter that doesn't want to relocate? Forcing them out will raise the cost (and time) greatly as you go through eviction or forced sale procedures.
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First for the relatively easy part - it is assumed that more than 1/4 of Baltimore's vacants are fully viable are rehab projects if they can be brought onto the market. Vacant house receivership (or the threat of it) is a good tool force sale. Some structurally unsound houses in marginal neighborhoods need to have structural work done in order to create a house with market value. Demolishing individual houses in mostly intact rows doesn't make financial sense for the city because the costs of demolition plus the new side walls are higher than stabilizing the structure (and the city can recover some of its costs after the work is done.)
Again where do you get your numbers. And how do you expect the city to 'recover some of its costs after work is done?
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Some neighborhoods could be dealt with by giving low subsidy rehab grants to developers. An input of $20k-$30k per house will do the trick in many situations. This would work best for houses with decent structural soundness in low market value neighborhoods.
I think this has been tried multiple times with varying success but I believe always at a much higher cost than was expected. $20-30k per house??? Again Lead and asbestos remediation would be higher than that. I think that the number would be at least an order of magnitude higher.
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Dealing with rows with a high levels of vacancy is even more expensive. If the city were to try to demolish 5,000 houses on very high vacancy blocks, the cost per house would probably be around $40K each ($20K for demo and sidewalls + an allocation of relocation costs of $20K per house) for a total of $200 million. This would be money well spent if it could be raised somehow. If I were the mayor (or we had a mayor that had any initiative at all) I would be in DC with my hat in hand asking the Republican congress for that $200 million. All they can do is say no.
You don't think funds have been requested from Washington many times already?? 'All they can do is say no' They have, over and over and over. And Baltimore is one city among many. Like Detroit, Birminghan, Cleveland, Memphis, ...
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Anyway, if you gave me a budget of $400 million, I could cut the number of vacant house in Baltimore from 16,500 to 6,500 in a decade. Considering that the budget for the Red Line is $2.9 billion, I think a mass demolition project would be a lot better deal for the taxpayer.
Put a proposal together and present it. You wont even set up the program for $400 Million. I'm guessing the legal costs of tracking down the owners and getting control of the properties will cost many times more than that. But please prove me wrong. Put together a business proposal and present it to the Public. Take it to the Mayor, or a TV station
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By the way, the high vacancy neighborhoods where most of the mass demolition would take place cover about 11% of the city. Also, even the weakest neighborhoods wouldn't be totally demolished by a demolition surge. Overall, the city wouldn't look wouldn't look like a fundamentally different place when the project was complete. But it would look better.
The big problem is that there isn't enough demand for most of the houses that would be redeveloped. The population has declined so there isn't the need for the number of houses that exist. Without the need there is no market force driving the rehab. That is why I think the best solution would be to tear not only entire blocks but multiples of blocks so that large scale re-use could be considered. Hopefully that re-use would create jobs which would stimulate demand for more housing.
Last edited by MidValleyDad; 05-24-2015 at 07:52 PM..
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Originally Posted by pwduvall As someone who has to deal with the rehab vs. demolish dilemma for a living, (I'm not a city employee) I can tell you that the tradeoffs can be worked into a relatively simple formula. While the formula is pretty simple, the whole process needs money to make it go. And money is in short supply.
MVD I'm curious where your experience has been because I see some big holes in your suggestions. Is it in the Northeast U.S.? Because I don't see some of the issues that come up over and over addressed.
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Here are a few numbers: Cost to demolish a rowhouse - $15K-$20K; cost to build support wall for remaining house next door - $10K+ (each side); Cost to reroof a collapsed house - $35K+ (including interior demo); Cost to relocate a renter on a block to be demolished - $25K each (plus the market value of the remain real estate (10K?)); Cost to relocate an existing homeowner - $175K (average).
MVD I'm curious where those numbers come from. I don't think the lead and asbestos remudiation involved in demolition could be done for $15-20k. Also I believe the way to do it is to demolish entire blocks at a time not one house at a time. And how do you handle the homeowner or renter that doesn't want to relocate? Forcing them out will raise the cost (and time) greatly as you go through eviction or forced sale procedures.
pwduvall Most of the numbers are from a report given (verbally) by a housing department official a couple of weeks ago. I also have been working on gap analysis for a couple of projects. The costs of demo and roofing are from a project in production right now. The homeowners that don't want to leave are relocated (at great cost.) That is why it doesn't pay to demolish rows that have over 10% homeowners. If a substantial block of vacant houses can be put together, the city can put up a side wall when it gets to a homeowner house. This wouldn't look too good but it would be a lot cheaper.
It is true that doing demolition and redevelopment on city owned property demands subsidies that are much higher than the numbers quoted. The city needs to avoid owning property and also forcing state and federal contracting requirements and building standards on developers if it wants to keep costs to a minimum. What I have proposed is a program that deals with vacancy and not much else. The cost of other niceties would have to be costed out and factored in separately. It is interesting that Baltimore is constantly slammed for its vacant houses but any solutions that deal only with vacancy are criticized for not doing enough. It is clear that the city doesn’t have the money for a robust anti-vacancy program, much less to deal with all of the problems that led to the vacancy in the first place. An anti-vacancy program that also deals with all of the problem is the city’s distressed neighborhoods is obviously too expensive to even contemplate.
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First for the relatively easy part - it is assumed that more than 1/4 of Baltimore's vacants are fully viable are rehab projects if they can be brought onto the market. Vacant house receivership (or the threat of it) is a good tool force sale. Some structurally unsound houses in marginal neighborhoods need to have structural work done in order to create a house with market value. Demolishing individual houses in mostly intact rows doesn't make financial sense for the city because the costs of demolition plus the new side walls are higher than stabilizing the structure (and the city can recover some of its costs after the work is done.)
MVD Again where do you get your numbers. And how do you expect the city to 'recover some of its costs after work is done?
pwduvall The city can recover some of the stabilization costs by forcing sale of the property through receivership. Pretty crappy properties regularly sell for surprisingly high prices in receivership auctions. Any amount above $5K can go to pay the lien for stabilization work. Full cost recovery is extremely unlikely, but partial recovery is possible if the property value wasn’t too far underwater in the first place. Stabilization is crucial to allowing the neighboring houses to stay occupied.
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Some neighborhoods could be dealt with by giving low subsidy rehab grants to developers. An input of $20k-$30k per house will do the trick in many situations. This would work best for houses with decent structural soundness in low market value neighborhoods.
MVD I think this has been tried multiple times with varying success but I believe always at a much higher cost than was expected. $20-30k per house??? Again Lead and asbestos remediation would be higher than that. I think that the number would be at least an order of magnitude higher.
pwduvall The grant would only cover the gap – not the entire renovation cost. Again, this only works if the property value isn’t too far underwater to start with.
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Dealing with rows with a high levels of vacancy is even more expensive. If the city were to try to demolish 5,000 houses on very high vacancy blocks, the cost per house would probably be around $40K each ($20K for demo and sidewalls + an allocation of relocation costs of $20K per house) for a total of $200 million. This would be money well spent if it could be raised somehow. If I were the mayor (or we had a mayor that had any initiative at all) I would be in DC with my hat in hand asking the Republican congress for that $200 million. All they can do is say no.
MVD You don't think funds have been requested from Washington many times already?? 'All they can do is say no' They have, over and over and over. And Baltimore is one city among many. Like Detroit, Birminghan, Cleveland, Memphis, ...
pwduvall There is no reason not to ask. In the unlikely event that a project of this type actually gets somewhere in congress, I’m sure other cities would be involved.
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Anyway, if you gave me a budget of $400 million, I could cut the number of vacant house in Baltimore from 16,500 to 6,500 in a decade. Considering that the budget for the Red Line is $2.9 billion, I think a mass demolition project would be a lot better deal for the taxpayer.
MVD Put a proposal together and present it. You wont even set up the program for $400 Million. I'm guessing the legal costs of tracking down the owners and getting control of the properties will cost many times more than that. But please prove me wrong. Put together a business proposal and present it to the Public. Take it to the Mayor, or a TV station
pwduvallRemember, the city doesn’t have to acquire the property in order to demolish the vacant house. The cost of demolition is attached as a lien on the property record. If for some reason the city wants to actually acquire the land at some point, they can foreclose on the lien. The property owner isn’t going to want to pay off a lien of at least $30K in order to keep control of a tiny vacant lot. The city wouldn’t bother to do the foreclosure unless the land is likely to have some future value. Owning a vacant house in Baltimore is a Misdemeanor. Therefore, any aggressive assertion of property rights can generate pretty serious pushback from the city. By the way, only obviously unlivable houses are defined as “vacant” by the city. Other empty houses are defined as “unoccupied.”
What do you mean “wont even set up the program for $400 Million.”? This would be a dramatic scale up of what the city is already doing along with a few modest policy changes. Why would scaling up cost $400 million just for administrative costs?
The mayor is famously unapproachable and unreceptive to other people ideas. She also isn’t interested in any kind of bold initiatives. I’m told that she is a pretty good detail person. She sees her job as managing the city bureaucracy and nothing more.
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By the way, the high vacancy neighborhoods where most of the mass demolition would take place cover about 11% of the city. Also, even the weakest neighborhoods wouldn't be totally demolished by a demolition surge. Overall, the city wouldn't look wouldn't look like a fundamentally different place when the project was complete. But it would look better.
MVD The big problem is that there isn't enough demand for most of the houses that would be redeveloped. The population has declined so there isn't the need for the number of houses that exist. Without the need there is no market force driving the rehab. That is why I think the best solution would be to tear not only entire blocks but multiples of blocks so that large scale re-use could be considered. Hopefully that re-use would create jobs which would stimulate demand for more housing.
pwduvall Judging by the surprisingly high cost of vacant shells in Baltimore, there must be some demand. It is hard to know what effect additional supply would have on the price but there is no reason not to try to find out. Baltimore is has been adding households over the past few years. Population gains are hard to come by because household size is dropping very rapidly. Remember, units translate into households (not population.) The city needs to add 2,000 households per year just to keep its population from dropping.
Location: East Central Pennsylvania/ Chicago for 6yrs.
2,535 posts, read 3,281,063 times
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Originally Posted by DistrictSonic
For a bit of a correction, the first list should be SF, NYC, DC, Seattle, Portland, and Boston. All command high prices in the city center, and Boston and Seattle this was the case before DC. DC and Portland were the fastest gentrifying cities in the last decade.
Chicago and Philadelphia I would put in the early stages, but those cities are so large, gentrification process could take several decades. The smaller footprint of DC for example made the process happen faster.
In terms of vacant, tearing many down will likely be necessary. Refurbishment should be done when the location makes sense for it to be the case. Those further from the edge should be given limited priority. Homesteading should be done where it can be ascertained it would be beneficial and closer to the city center. Believe it or not this takes planning.
Randomly finding this thread, and reading through. I agree with posters saying save the BEST of the old and most intact viable blocks and Architecturally most desirable . But demolish those neglected the most and in states of most not worth it in a block.
I am not from Baltimore of very familiar with the city short of numerous driving through the city to the Harbor Area. A great asset for you. Living in East Central PA. I surely know of Row homes. Probably as a whole State. PA has the most Row Home old stock towns and 2-Half homes Attached or Half-doubles as called here. I am NOT FOND of tight Rows plain and no frontage to streets. Philly has a lot that way.
But does not mean I totally would want all demolished. It is a reasonable assessing of the quality and structural integrity of the blocks of Rows. That can have decisions made.
I lived in Chicago for 6 years also. I would place CHICAGO on the higher list of gentrification. From its Booming downtown for living now. To gentrified neighborhoods around it. Top fully gentrified and least in need were Lincoln Park and Lakeview. Others Gentrified would be Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village Bucktown and others. With movement into others. It ends where Chicago's Bungalow Belt begins. As them areas stayed vibrant.
The difference between Chicago and Baltimore, also Philly? Is Degree of city that are Row Homes. We know Philly and Baltimore are Row home Capitals of the US. But Chicago chose few Rows. I know of NO Blocks there? The WHOLE Block is Rows. Just saw some oldest areas might have a section with some here and there. So basically in housing, the opposite.
But most know Chicago had its notorious Failed Housing Projects of the 60s with once housing 200,000 people and became Vertical ghettos. Well they are re ALL GONE NOW and demolished. As for other parts of its notorious Southside area known as the ghetto. There are still those poor mainly Black neighborhoods there.
But Single homes still ruled in Chicago. So blocks of Rows Home Ghetto areas DO NOT EXIST there. What the city did though the previous 20 years is.... Block by Block, CHICAGO DEMOLISHED THE MOST DILAPIDATED AND COLLASPED HOMES in the blocks. But there most needed no additional wall support if a neighboring home was gone.
So what they have now is SECTIONS of BLOCKS and WHOLE BLOCKS now Grassland, RETURNED TO PRAIRIE. Few if any yet resemble a bombed out war zone. As once some did.
These are a couple examples of a few existing singles with large swaths now grassland. Not looking like in a Big city. It does provide land for a new city to rise eventually.
This area of wood-frames I found that you can see with no trees blocking. Has the first in the streetview red porch home on the left a original, the 1-story home and blue home on the right. Dating late 1800s to 1900. The rest were added in the 2000s. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9571...Zg1nWZ2-Yg!2e0
I REALIZE THIS IS A ....."BALTIMORE" ......THREAD. BUT CHICAGO DID DO A LOT OF REMOVING OF THE WORST BLIGHT. I KNOW ALL ROW HOME BLOCKS HAVE ADDED ISSUES. BUT IT CAN BE DONE OVER A DECADE AND MORE.....TO THE WORST. SADLY WITH PHILLY? THEY HAD ISSUES NEEDING TO BUY THE WHOLE BLOCK. NOT SURE HOW MARYLAND LAWS CAN ALLOW FOR TAKING ABANDONMENT AND NOT JUST CONDEMN. BUT RIP DOWN.
I REALIZE THIS IS A ....."BALTIMORE" ......THREAD. BUT CHICAGO DID DO A LOT OF REMOVING OF THE WORST BLIGHT. I KNOW ALL ROW HOME BLOCKS HAVE ADDED ISSUES. BUT IT CAN BE DONE OVER A DECADE AND MORE.....TO THE WORST. SADLY WITH PHILLY? THEY HAD ISSUES NEEDING TO BUY THE WHOLE BLOCK. NOT SURE HOW MARYLAND LAWS CAN ALLOW FOR TAKING ABANDONMENT AND NOT JUST CONDEMN. BUT RIP DOWN.
The owner gets to keep the (valueless) land. Anyway, the owner also had the option of making the house livable or demolishing it himself if he wants to avoid a city demolition. Having the city do the demo removes the owner from those costs. The owner is theoretically liable for the demo lien; but there is an understanding that the lien will be written off some day. Vacant houses are considered nuisances under the law (because they are nuisances.) Also, as I said in another post, owning a vacant is actually a criminal offense.
I think it's the plethora of row houses that fascinate me so much about Baltimore and why the city has been added to my bucket list (and will be done on my next NYC trip, which won't be far off).
Needless to say, I walk around on Streetview and I wonder what the future holds for the seemingly endless amount of vacants. In some parts there seems to be so many - completely or very nearly uninhabited streets - that I wonder if they will ever be brought back to life. If there is no hope, would it be better to level them completely or would that just create a more compact Detroit situation? I love them (though ironically, after a lifetime of living in mid terraces, we're just about to complete on a modest detached which is setting me back $1.6M - a sum that only buys a mid terrace in many parts) and my heart jumps when I come across beautifully restored examples on blocks where there are still many boarded up and in apparently pretty sketchy neighbourhoods, during my virtual wanderings of your city. It seems pretty random, and I would be fascinated if someone could explain why and how and on what rationale.
The smart neighbourhoods are just exquisite and remind me of areas of London like Islington and parts of the East End which once were very rough but now very gentrified. The area around Columbia Rd used to be dead rough (and it's still surrounded by grim council housing - what you call projects) - now these tiny houses fetch crazy money.
I do believe this architectural heritage is the jewel in Baltimore's crown if only some sort of creeping refurbishment could be achieved. I appreciate it's a naive view point from someone who knows nothing, but are these houses generally valued there or seen as a millstone? If enough people could be attracted back into the city, then the pressure on housing ought to deal with the situation organically. I guess there's a big difference between European and American cities. Here people want to be as near to the centre of town as possible, and that pressure has gentrified many a previously sketchy inner city neighbourhood, and not only in London. In the main, British cities have improved enormously over the past 4 decades, despite mercurial economic circumstances. In the day folk fled to the burbs, but that has been reversed by making the centres safer and lively.
Do people pay more for "period" homes there? Here, nice Victorian always fetches a premium over new build or late 20th century. You pay a fortune for Georgian, if you can find one.
You are sadly misinformed on property values and living areas in baltimore. London is comparable to NYC, not baltimore. Some of the most beautiful historic homes are falling apart and will have to be demolished if for no other reason then safety. To repair some of these homes would cost over 500K. These homes are next door to 150k homes. Nobody is going to want to spend 1 Million dollars with 0 ROI.
You are sadly misinformed on property values and living areas in baltimore. London is comparable to NYC, not baltimore. Some of the most beautiful historic homes are falling apart and will have to be demolished if for no other reason then safety. To repair some of these homes would cost over 500K. These homes are next door to 150k homes. Nobody is going to want to spend 1 Million dollars with 0 ROI.
Well, I'm naive for sure and as "misinformed" as anyone from this distance is bound to be.
And for sure, NYC is probably the nearest equivalent to London, though I don't think even London's hotspots can quite compete with those in Manhattan.
There isn't really a direct comparative here that I can use to calibrate. Some of the Welsh ex-mining towns are pretty terrible, but they're way smaller in size and whilst the row/terrace houses are mean and poorly maintained, very few would be abandoned. I've mentioned Sheffield, and it has a lot of similarities with Baltimore. Close in population, blue collar city which built itself on steel manufacture and processing - almost all of which has gone. One of the few things of quality we had in our poor, working class household when I was a child was an elegant, Swedish inspired cutlery set made from Sheffield Steel. That was in the 60s, and I still have the set, in it's original boxes, and it comes out for dinner parties. The city has higher than average unemployment, some drug issues, and a fair amount of poverty. It has also attracted new commerce, tech companies, has great universities and a very large student population. I don't recall ever seeing any boarded up houses. Chance of being a victim of violent crime is 1% and the city suffered 8 homicides last year.
I've written at length of my appreciation of Baltimore's architectural vernacular and my desire to see it preserved no doubt overwhelms my appreciation of the economic situation. It must be a very difficult issue to manage for all the reasons others have mentioned. How it is far better to demolish blocks rather than piecemeal. The only answer has to be to shrink the areas to suit the size of the likely population, otherwise it's like a guy who has lost 100lbs still wearing his old clothes. It's never going to be a good look. Far better to have a smaller area of better maintained, more occupied row houses even if means losing many on the periphery. How to get from here to there, however, is very tricky to envisage.
It's tragic that Baltimore hasn't managed to attract more of the modern economy to replace the blue collar jobs it's lost over the decades. This huge population shrink is a phenomenon we have not experienced here to anything like this degree - even in post industrial areas.
Well, I'm naive for sure and as "misinformed" as anyone from this distance is bound to be.
And for sure, NYC is probably the nearest equivalent to London, though I don't think even London's hotspots can quite compete with those in Manhattan.
There isn't really a direct comparative here that I can use to calibrate. Some of the Welsh ex-mining towns are pretty terrible, but they're way smaller in size and whilst the row/terrace houses are mean and poorly maintained, very few would be abandoned. I've mentioned Sheffield, and it has a lot of similarities with Baltimore. Close in population, blue collar city which built itself on steel manufacture and processing - almost all of which has gone. One of the few things of quality we had in our poor, working class household when I was a child was an elegant, Swedish inspired cutlery set made from Sheffield Steel. That was in the 60s, and I still have the set, in it's original boxes, and it comes out for dinner parties. The city has higher than average unemployment, some drug issues, and a fair amount of poverty. It has also attracted new commerce, tech companies, has great universities and a very large student population. I don't recall ever seeing any boarded up houses. Chance of being a victim of violent crime is 1% and the city suffered 8 homicides last year.
I've written at length of my appreciation of Baltimore's architectural vernacular and my desire to see it preserved no doubt overwhelms my appreciation of the economic situation. It must be a very difficult issue to manage for all the reasons others have mentioned. How it is far better to demolish blocks rather than piecemeal. The only answer has to be to shrink the areas to suit the size of the likely population, otherwise it's like a guy who has lost 100lbs still wearing his old clothes. It's never going to be a good look. Far better to have a smaller area of better maintained, more occupied row houses even if means losing many on the periphery. How to get from here to there, however, is very tricky to envisage.
It's tragic that Baltimore hasn't managed to attract more of the modern economy to replace the blue collar jobs it's lost over the decades. This huge population shrink is a phenomenon we have not experienced here to anything like this degree - even in post industrial areas.
One factor that you seem to be leaving out is that vacant houses, given enough time, demolish themselves. They need to stabalized before they get to be too far gone.
As someone who has to deal with the rehab vs. demolish dilemma for a living, (I'm not a city employee) I can tell you that the tradeoffs can be worked into a relatively simple formula. While the formula is pretty simple, the whole process needs money to make it go. And money is in short supply.
Here are a few numbers: Cost to demolish a rowhouse - $15K-$20K; cost to build support wall for remaining house next door - $10K+ (each side); Cost to reroof a collapsed house - $35K+ (including interior demo); Cost to relocate a renter on a block to be demolished - $25K each (plus the market value of the remain real estate (10K?)); Cost to relocate an existing homeowner - $175K (average).
First for the relatively easy part - it is assumed that more than 1/4 of Baltimore's vacants are fully viable are rehab projects if they can be brought onto the market. Vacant house receivership (or the threat of it) is a good tool force sale. Some structurally unsound houses in marginal neighborhoods need to have structural work done in order to create a house with market value. Demolishing individual houses in mostly intact rows doesn't make financial sense for the city because the costs of demolition plus the new side walls are higher than stabilizing the structure (and the city can recover some of its costs after the work is done.)
Some neighborhoods could be dealt with by giving low subsidy rehab grants to developers. An input of $20k-$30k per house will do the trick in many situations. This would work best for houses with decent structural soundness in low market value neighborhoods.
Dealing with rows with a high levels of vacancy is even more expensive. If the city were to try to demolish 5,000 houses on very high vacancy blocks, the cost per house would probably be around $40K each ($20K for demo and sidewalls + an allocation of relocation costs of $20K per house) for a total of $200 million. This would be money well spent if it could be raised somehow. If I were the mayor (or we had a mayor that had any initiative at all) I would be in DC with my hat in hand asking the Republican congress for that $200 million. All they can do is say no.
Anyway, if you gave me a budget of $400 million, I could cut the number of vacant house in Baltimore from 16,500 to 6,500 in a decade. Considering that the budget for the Red Line is $2.9 billion, I think a mass demolition project would be a lot better deal for the taxpayer.
By the way, the high vacancy neighborhoods where most of the mass demolition would take place cover about 11% of the city. Also, even the weakest neighborhoods wouldn't be totally demolished by a demolition surge. Overall, the city wouldn't look wouldn't look like a fundamentally different place when the project was complete. But it would look better.
Or you could simply buyout existing residents and declare the area, Terra nullius. Make it an area with little zoning regulation and let the market do what the market does.
Or you could simply buyout existing residents and declare the area, Terra nullius. Make it an area with little zoning regulation and let the market do what the market does.
I'm not sure what you think is being disallowed by zoning in area's with high vacancies. Are you talking about allowing otherwise illegal commercial enterprises: houses of prostitution, for example? How about an illegal drugs bizarre? Dealers could rent booths and the booth rent could pay for security. A Lexington Market without the food... could work...
In rowhouse blocks, property acquisition can be a real headache that the demolition of the row can be the first step towards resolving. If there is any chance of redevelopment, it would be much more likely once the houses are gone.
Do you think that developers would be interesting in building market rate apartment buildings or strip malls in these areas? They might be, but, unfortunately, the numbers don't pencil out. The market can be quite cruel too. As I have said in another post, the city could choose to just let the most problematic rows just fall down on their own. Unfortunately, this would be an unrelenting public relations disaster.
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