by stockboardasset
The implosion of America’s inner cities are the real “shitholes,” which should be on everyone’s radar– not Haiti. In Baltimore, Maryland, decades of deindustrialization and 50-years of democratically controlled leadership has turned the city into a failed liberal experiment, with a homicide rate on par with Venezuela, a country that is suffering from an economic collapse.
In 2017, Baltimore’s population crashed to a 100-year low, as Baltimorons have finally discovered that the gentrification narrative by Kevin Plank, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland Medical Center could be a distant pipedream. The fact is, the millennial generation is quickly leaving as violent crime has turned Baltimore into America’s most dangerous city.
Breaking down the racial wealth divide in Baltimore, the figures are truly shocking. When it comes to education, health, and wealth inequalities, Baltimore has the most extensive gaps in the United States. African Americans make up a majority of the total population coming in at 63 percent of 614,000. But according to JPM, one-third of African American households have a net worth of zero. To make matters worse, the unemployment rate for African Americans is three times the rate of white workers, despite the garbage propaganda from the Trump administration declaring record low unemployment figures for African Americans.
Why do we need to know the structural backdrop of Baltimore? Well, because, it would better help us understand why the vacancy rate of one Baltimore neighborhood is the highest in the United States.
According to 24/7 Wall St., the report analyzed the 30 highest vacancy rates in U.S. Zipcodes from the housing market data company called Attom Data Solutions. Those 30 communities are situated in 20 inner cities across the United States.
24/7 Wall St finds similarities between all high vacancy rate locations:
Many have not participated in the nation’s economic recovery — areas that continue to experience the economic malaise of the Great Recession. They are characterized by shrinking populations, jobs loss, low home values, and underwater mortgages.
The report names Zipcode 21223, a West Baltimore community as the highest vacancy rate in the United States coming in at 17.3%. Interesting enough, this is the same area where the American drama series ‘The Wire’ was filmed.
In ZIP 21223, in the city of Baltimore, some 17.3% of housing units are vacant, the 26th highest vacancy rate of any zip code nationwide. Like most neighborhoods with high vacancy rates, the area has suffered from population loss and declining property values over the last several years. The population of ZIP 21223 fell from 25,270 in 2012 to 25,127 in 2016, a 0.6% decline. Over the same period, the median home value in the zip code fell from $86,500 to $69,500, one of the largest drops in real estate value of any neighborhood.
A bulk of the vacant buildings resides in Zipcode 21223. However, the U.S. Census Bureau says there are as much as 46,800 vacant structures throughout the city. Simply, the city is shrinking
JPM details the phenomenon behind vacant structures and homicides:
There is no shortage of theories to explain it—a dearth of jobs and opportunities, poor schools, underinvestment in public services. The plight of the city’s most vulnerable residents mirrors that of cities across the country. As residents began leaving Baltimore in the 1950s, public investment followed them to the suburbs. While the city’s population has dropped, the surrounding counties have grown by leaps and bounds. And along with the people came investments in roads, schools, and businesses, leaving far fewer resources for the core city.
In November, we documented how one neighborhood in Zipcode 21223 was under lockdown, as one citizen said, “Police Declared Martial Law.”
And apparently police been standing on corners like this the last two days pic.twitter.com/y9Qrd2TSRe
— Vote Joshua Harris for Delegate District 40 (@KINGDACEO) November 17, 2017
15 @BaltimorePolice vehicles on Schroeder alone and dozens more on surrounding blocks. All the officers are just sitting in their cars. pic.twitter.com/M9zCCltdzK
— Baltimore BLOC (@BmoreBloc) November 19, 2017
To sum up, the situation in Baltimore is only going to get worse as the city continues to shrink. As JPM demonstrates high vacancy rates leads to more violent crime. The situation is critical in Baltimore, can the city avoid a collapse before 2020?
Baltimore has the rudest people in the world. Drug dealers are on every corner.
Blacks represent a majority of the population by more than twice that of whites but it’s still all the white mans’ burden, huh? Socialist (read Democratic) governments fail EVERYWHERE. You can’t rob Peter to pay Paul without Peter getting pissed and leaving, it’s that simple. As long as the average voter has an IQ at or below 85 this and other shithole cities will continue to spiral into poverty, debt and death.
If you are going to comment, at least read the fcking article prior to doing so.
Historical context is given in sufficiently large font that one can easily read it.
The ones that created those devastating historical events did not have the same melanin level as those in the outcome phase of those practices.
It is like the drug problems…they were first pumped into the Indigenous American Negro neighborhoods to destroy them, for decades; its usage leveled off in most of those communities, then began to wane.
Those same drugs spread outside of the targeted audience and started a wild fire of drug use among the White communities and the war against drugs began. The Whites were far more susceptible to the addicting nature of drugs…use along with the profits exploded.
A lot of schit happened in the past that always seems to be, conveniently, forgotten.
H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, predicted this very thing, and more..
The vacancy rate will go up when it isn’t financially viable for owners to make repairs required to bring a property up to level where it would be legal to rent. The lead photo shows a row of row houses without any windows. Just the cost of the windows is likely more money than an owner could recover over the course of a year if the tenants weren’t busy destroying more things in the house. I’ve worked for owners to fix up homes to get them ready for the next renters and it’s always been the case that the poorer the people were that just left (or were evicted), the worse the condition they left the home in. The last one I worked on was missing all of the cover plates on switches and outlets and had many broken outlets. How do you do that? The poorer the people, the more loose change I have to pick up which strikes me as odd, but I’m also having to shovel out loads of welfare paperwork at the same time that has been stripped of the checks and then just piled up somewhere.
There are some drone videos on YouTube of the most desolate sections of Baltimore and it’s easy to see from above that it’s not unusual to find half of the homes in a row are just burned out facades. It will take some very serious money to demolish and redevelop those areas and unless the surrounding areas are also at least torn down at the same time to a natural boundary, the new homes won’t sell for enough to pay the costs. If the housing was single family homes it might be easier to get a rebirth, but the row houses are an all or nothing proposition from the state they are in.
The “average” black unemployment rate in the US may be at an all time low, but that has no bearing on individual regions. Broad statistics can be worthless. Baltimore needs good quality jobs that people can be proud to do. From there, it won’t be hard to find developers and investors that will start rebuilding neighborhoods. It will also take a city council that will work with those developers and not just fee them to death and throw up obstructions. The town I’m in loves to have long meetings about new fee schedules for the year and looks completely dumbfounded when it’s asked why many of the fees and ordinances are needed in the first place. There are more homes destroyed each year than built partly due to the cost of permits. I expect that a few fires are to get rid of a property that’s just costing money. The city has a vacancy tax and a demolition fee. Burn it down and you can rent a skip loader and a big dumpster for much less.