Full Citation
Title: Vacant Houses and Inequity in Baltimore from the Nineteenth Century to Today
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2019
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Abstract: Vacant houses tell a story about how racial and spatial inequality are built and maintained. Baltimore's official count of vacant buildings topped sixteen thousand properties at the outset of the national foreclosure crisis in 2008.1 These buildings are the physical consequence of decisions by people dedicated to preserving housing segregation, enacting transportation and land use policies that favor automobiles, and taxing and policing buildings in ways that stigmatize poverty. The concentration of these properties in historically segregated black neighborhoods in East and West Baltimore makes vacant housing an urgent problem for tens of thousands of poor residents. Even more residents share the risks to both individual and collective health and safety created by vacant and abandoned buildings. For the city, vacancy reduces tax revenue needed to support public services, farcing the remaining occupied buildings to bear a greater share of the costs. Ultimately, vacant buildings are a problem that affects everyone, whether or not they live in a neighborhood with a high vacancy rate.2
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Authors: Pousson, Eli
Editors: King, P, N; Drabinski, Kate; Davis, Joshua, C
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Volume Title: Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City
Publisher: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
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Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Crime and Deviance, Other
Countries: United States