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Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Friday that the city has reduced thousands of vacant properties over the last five years, which he said should ultimately help reduce the number of people who experience homelessness by keeping housing costs down by increasing supply.
“Affordability is number one for us in Baltimore,” Scott said at a Friday panel at the Maryland Association of Counties’ summer conference. “Baltimore, as we all know, has a ton of housing stock, but a large portion of that is unlivable, vacant housing throughout our city.”
He reported that since he became mayor in December 2020, the city has reduced the number of vacant properties by about 3,500 units, after a period of more than 20 years when the number of vacant properties had not changed.
“We were at 16,000 vacant properties when I came into office. As of 20 minutes before we started today, we’re now down to 12,510,” he said to applause from MACo attendees.
Improving housing stock and housing access was just one of the many potential solutions offered at a pair of housing events Friday at the conference in Ocean City. Scott was joined by members of state and local government as well as homeless advocates to discuss the challenges and potential solutions to homelessness.
“People always tell you that homelessness is this simple thing to fix, and that you can take these cookie cutter approaches,” Scott said. “No — every single person experiencing homelessness needs a specific, tailored thing for them.”
He said that investing in vacant housing efforts across the city, not just in downtown areas, will especially help underserved areas where people experience higher rates of poverty. He added that a partnership between the city, the Moore administration and private developers called Reframe Baltimore will bring in $3 billion over the next 15 years to eliminate vacant houses in the city.
But Scott assured the audience that there’s still work to be done.
Making progress, but challenges continue
Danielle Meister, assistant secretary of homeless solutions with the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, said there has been a 28% decrease in homelessness across the state since 2015.
There’s also been a 42% drop in unsheltered homelessness since 2015, she said. Meister attributes that drop to the state’s adoption of “housing first” policies.
“Rather than requiring people to first go through treatment or first get a job to kind of earn housing,” she said, “we really endorse and fiercely protect the idea that they should be connecting people rapidly to permanent housing with the supports to stay there successfully.
“It’s really hard to get a job, it’s really hard to maintain sobriety if you don’t have a regular consistent place to live,” she added.
But even with that progress, there are a few populations where state data shows “really concerning trends” particularly with people aged 65 years and older and among families with children.
Meister said the number of homeless seniors doubled between fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2024.
“The vast majority of the homeless system resources, they’re set up for people who can work and eventually, maybe, pay their own rent,” Meister said. “Most of our homeless system is not equipped to serve older adults who are on restricted income.”
She added that there’s been a “big increase” in families experiencing homelessness since the pandemic.
“It looks different than single adults, so what we’re going to start to focus on a little bit more is family homelessness,” she said.
Meister said that looking at trends in state data on homelessness can help identify and target new solutions.
“Generally, our state has been really great at accelerating permanent, supportive housing growth, not so much on other housing interventions which is more often navigated to families.”
Nick Rinehart, legislative analyst for the Howard County Council, asked the panel how officials can counter the stigma of homelessness to help push solutions in their jurisdictions.
“We’re elected to do the right thing, not the popular one,” Scott said. “We have to educate folks … but sometimes, they’re still going to be mad – so what?
“We have to be able to do what we know is right,” Scott said. “We just have to do the right thing no matter who gets mad.”
