REVISED Exploratory Essay

Exploratory Essay – Addressing Baltimore’s Vacant Property Crisis Your Name Subject and Section Professor’s Name October 18, 2024 Baltimore continues to suffer from a chronic housing problem whereby over 16,000 homes remain empty. Several affected neighborhoods resulted from redlining and were denied credit and investment facilities. Not only do these idle properties prevent economic growth, but they also create insecurity and threats and deepen inequality. Handling this problem means recognizing vacancy as a social, economic, and technical phenomenon. This exploratory essay seeks to answer the question: What forms of neighborhood change interventions are equitable, sustainable, and capable of more than swapping one void of vacant houses for another of vacant people in Baltimore while meaningfully addressing poverty, housing, and structural racialization in the city? In order to answer this particular question, all the sources will be analyzed mainly to provide a realistic solution to the mentioned problem. Analysis of Vacant Properties and Social Justice Hypervacancy is not just an economic question since a gap troubles city life in Baltimore, but rather a social justice one. Harrison and Immergluck (2021) opine that hypervacancy, which they describe as areas with persistently high vacancy rates, is dominating poor people's communities, more so for Black and Latinxs. The authors demonstrate that these patterns of vacancy result from past urban injustices, enabled through policies such as redlining that excluded the oppressed groups from housing. When they exist in Baltimore, hypervacant zones are in the areas of the city that have been characterized by disinvestment, population decline, and majority Black populations. The authors note that hypervacancy is a racially constructed category where there are more Black and Latinxes in hypervacant areas than in other tracts (Harrison & Immergluck, 2021, p. 1478). As a result, BLBS demonstrates how vacancy itself is an outcome of neighborhood racial inequality and a gentle for the latent unfairness that shapes urban societies and populations, calling for innovative programs to address the social injustice that underlies vacant structures. Although Harrison and Immergluck (2021) describe general characteristics of hypervacancy throughout the United States, the identified patterns can be closely tied to Baltimore. What the city is facing is not just about empty buildings; it extends to racial construction that excludes certain areas from development. Therefore, solutions to hypervacancy in Baltimore must extend beyond simple economics, with those communities most impacted by the condition demanding equitable participation in formulating and implementing the solutions. Informal Housing Markets and Vulnerable Homeownership The next factor exploring Baltimore’s housing challenges is a highly developed informal housing market, contributing massively to vacancy rate and housing insecurity. Jang-Trettien (2022) exploring the contingency of home ownership: Black Baltimore and formal and informal forms of home ownership. Such casual purchases are notorious for putting buyers at higher risks in ways like they cannot acquire a legal title to the property, lack adequate information about the physical condition of such property, or even becoming vulnerable to certain real estate frauds. This results in housing insecurity, foreclosure, and property abandonment, contributing to the city's high stock of vacant housing units (Kubo & Mashita, 2022). Jang-Trettien (2022) noted that the study is beneficial in knowing ho...