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Click here to read the final The Anatomy of Baltimore’s Blight: Analysis of Policy and Practice Creating a Pathway for Community Progress. It aims to provide an examination of how residents and communities prioritize and address property issues, and what tools (policies, practices, funding, etc.) are needed to execute their work toward blight remediation more comprehensively.
Floating All Boats: An Opinion on The Dollar House Program Reboot
Recently, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby released a housing package including a reboot of the 1970’s Dollar House program (The Urban Homestead Demonstration program). Baltimore was one of the cities selected for the initial pilot by the federal government to offer houses for sale for a dollar along with funds and a process for rehabilitation. The participating cities had to develop a framework for the program based on the availability of houses, the “market”, and purchaser interest. Baltimore initially selected clusters of properties in Barre Circle, Otterbein, and Stirling Street. According to Baltimore’s Brick Walls: An Observation Of Baltimore’s Dollar House Program (2015), the houses offered for sale were “ from the tax-delinquent properties and other properties acquired by the city…”(60). The location of Barre Circle and Otterbein seem to indicate the city had previously acquired those homes as a part of road construction or other planned Urban Renewal Projects.
The Dollar House program intended “..to help stimulate interest to those who could afford it back into the city with the aid of low-interest loans, assisting them in homeownership within failing areas of a city..”( Baltimore’s Brick Walls, 7). It is seen as a successful housing program. So much so there have been calls for several decades to bring it back. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake responded to these calls by creating the “Vacants to Value” program, which followed the Project SCOPE and Project 5000 programs. One of the reasons that Vacants To Value (V2V) does not share the “success” of the Dollar House program for individuals is because it did not come with the same federal funding nor programatic support. V2V also seems to be designed for developers, not people interested in buying a home in Baltimore to live in. In fact, more than half of the V2V settlements in the last decade were small or non-profit developers. Due to failures of programs like Project 5000, SCOPE, V2V and the unabated racism in real property laws and private sector policies (inflated tax assessments, tax sale, subprime lending, disinvestment, etc…) Baltimore is a city where more than 50% of renters are “housing insecure”, paying 30% or more of their income in housing cost (The Double Crisis, 2) and the loss of more than 2000 low to moderately affordable housing units since the late 1990’s is an “acceptable” price to pay for new development (The Abell Report, 2007).
Cover of Baltimore’s Brick Walls
In response to falling Black homeownership numbers and increased housing insecurity due to the economic pressure exacerbated by COVID 19, Council President Mosby is proposing to use $200 million of the $600+ million in American Rescue Act funds Baltimore is slated to receive to bring back the Dollar House program as the Baltimore City Urban Homesteading Program as well as launch a Baltimore City Home Repairs Grant Program and Baltimore City Senior Homeowners Grant Program.
Ad for Interview with Council President Mosby on the Dollar House Program
Upon reviewing the proposed legislation and listening to Council President Mosby’s interview with Madison Mason, there are four main issues with this legislation that must be addressed:
The eligibility criteria for the programs don’t match with the residents the bill states redress should be given because of racist policies.
Suggested solution: Instead of solely using the “Legacy Resident” and income criteria, eligibility should also require:
Resident has experienced a displacement resulting from mortgage, reverse mortgage, tax sale, ground rent foreclosure, lease or contract loan eviction, eminent domain or condemnation action since age 18, or
Resident has interest in an heirs property with a tangled title or unresolved estate administration action
2. There isn't enough specificity to ensure that the houses made available through this program will be affordable to those residents that Council President Mosby states the Dollar House Program is designed to help.
Suggested solution: The houses made available should be those with a total renovation cost of $175,000 or less.
3. The definition of “Designated Impact Investment Neighborhoods” puts the focus on developing around “assets” and “revitalization efforts” for investors not based on community needs.
Suggested solution: The neighborhood eligibility should be any neighborhood that was redlined (or yellow lined) and meets any three or more of the following criteria:
Vacancy rate of 15% or more
Residential Tax Lien Certificates Sales 10% or more
SDAT Neighborhood Subset has more than 50% rental housing (thus neighborhood classed as Rental Dwelling)
Lost 500 or more public housing units since 1990
Number of Demolition Permits greater than 20 for each 1000 residential units
Median Price of Houses sold $75,000 or less
Affordability Index of greater than 30%
4. The ability of participants to find lenders to provide quality mortgages will be key to their ability to access the grant.
Suggested solution: Identify a set of local banks and lenders with a demonstrated practice of equitable mortgage lending to act as preferred lenders for this program who will provide low interest and cost loans to participants that include a forgivable booster grant of between $25,000 (for renovations of $125,000 or less) and $50,000 (for renovations above $125,000).
There are a few other concerns with these bills. For instance there are programs like LIGHT and HUBS that could be expanded instead of recreated by the proposed Home Repair Grant program. And, why is the Senior Home Owners Grant program limited to 5k in funding for each participant? Also, why can’t a Senior homeowner redeem their home’s Ground Rent as a part of this program?
As written these bills offer an opportunity to “lift all boats” but in reality the people in canoes, dinghies or floating in the water on their backs will be drowned by the rising waters created. There are ways as suggested (and many more) to make these bills more than an opportunity, but to provide repair of the damage done historically.
We acknowledge that the legacy and current realities of racism in housing and community development law, policy and practice can’t be addressed by one program with a 200 million dollar budget so we have begun to organize and mobilize to develop a policy platform for reparations for Black Land Ownership and Sovereignty. An initial version can be viewed here.
Further, we propose a Single Payer Rehab Program. This program aims to provide a regenerative and sustainable option for equitable housing redevelopment in Baltimore. To learn more feel free to review the 4Points Comparison on Single Payer Rehab program, click here. Feel free to leave comment in the document, we would like to hear from interested parties.
Testimony for City Council Bill 21-0037R
"You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions." This quote by Sven Lindqvist in "Exterminate All the Brutes' sums up the necessity for City Council Bill 21-0037R - an Informational Hearing for Studying Options to Rid Baltimore City of Vacant Properties. Its stated aim is "to discuss the feasibility of certain specific recommendations to more efficiently and rapidly improve the ability of Baltimore City to remedy vacant dwellings." What is known? City government laws, policies, and practices together with those of the state and the federal government from ground rent to Ordinance 610 to restrictive covenants to tax sale collections to disinvesting in Black neighborhoods to over funding the police while underfunding schools are major contributors to the vacancies in Baltimore. Any effort to address vacancy that doesn't aim to repair the damage done to those residents and communities victimized by the city's actions will neither be equitable, just, or sustainable. What is understood? The time for wrapping smallpox-soaked bandages on burn victims never existed. Yet, that is what the city has been doing in the Black Butterfly to cover up its participation in making our villages vacant to facilitate poverty profiteering and Neo Urban Colonialism. The scope and scale of vacancy in the city, which is just one form of blight that we are facing, will not be fixed with more of the same "punitive" measures that will never be fully applied to those who have conspired with local, state and the federal government to displace Black communities, for now, a third time: first out of Africa, second out of the deep south and now out of the city.
Where is the courage to draw conclusions? Right here, recommendations to address the city's ability to remedy vacant properties require centering healing the people, communities and institutions harmed. Focusing on efficiency and speed measures alone will not do as we know those measures are rooted in plantation economics. The following recommendations for improving the city's ability to address the vacancy problem centers the health and wellness of communities without regard for respectability politics, harm reduction and repair, land sovereignty, food/water justice, housing security, and sustainability:
Land Sovereignty
Create a Baltimore Neighborhood Reparations fund and Social Equity Bond to support the development of housing, enterprise, infrastructure, and institutions
Create an Independent Condemnations and Demolitions Monitor
Publish a clear and concise set of procedures to apply for and receive city-owned properties for equitable and sustainable development
Create a program to support Co-Housing, Collaborative Workspace, and Cooperative development, including but not limited to cooperative grocery stores and worker-owned cooperative ventures.
Create a program to enable and support Black-owned retail, agribusiness, commercial, and industrial competent spaces
Advocate for an equitable property tax assessment and assessment process
Create participatory funding and payment processes for real estate development
Create a Ground Rent Redemption grant and ground rent map
Create and apply a measure to balance nonprofit property tax exemption against lost property tax revenues
Water & Food Justice
Ensure every property with metered water is receiving an accurate bill and develop a dispute resolution unit
Implement a city-wide food and nutrition scan in healthy food priority areas (communities experiencing food apartheid within the Black Butterfly) every three to five years
Develop and implement a goal for 5% of food needs grown within Baltimore for Black Butterfly
Create a path to ownership for Adopt A Lot licensees (participants) who live in the footprint of the lots
Housing Security
Support an appraisal gap tax credit focused on redlined communities
Abolish tax sale of owner-occupied units and enable installment payment plans.
Ramp up the "in-rem" foreclosure process — foreclosures that focus on vacant tax sale properties — using a new land bank for equitable distribution
Fully implement state enabled waiver of estate administration fees for low-income households
Reform the Side Lot program by streamlining the process and only applying the 10-year building restriction to owners not residing in the community
Implement a program to ensure all eligible homeowners are receiving all eligible property tax credits, including but not limited to the Homeowner's Tax Credit , Homestead Tax Credit, and the Urban Agriculture Tax Credit
Remove barriers to accessing housing, i.e., security deposits, by enacting policy to set security deposits based on income and creates a Security Deposit Grant Program
Enterprise Development & Sustainment
Revamp the food retail strategy to include a specialized focus on Black Butterfly communities providing technical assistance and funding to support community-owned and controlled supermarkets and small retail shops
Create a pipeline with low and safe entry standards. for local producers through city fresh, value-added, and prepared food procurement programs, including but not limited to City Schools, Health Department
Create incentives for agencies, schools, and organizations with city contracts to procure local food
Overhaul of current programs for urban agriculture, like Homegrown Baltimore, and advance a land disposition process that prioritizes farmers' land acquisition
Develop a policy to return funds (call-back clauses and CBAs) on failed developments using taxpayer dollars
A policy with DPW creating an Agriculture Water Customer, a separate protected customer category for agricultural use of municipal water (affordable rate)
Revamp the Urban Agriculture Tax Credit to benefit farmers
This list of recommended policies, programs, and practices to address vacancy is holistic and innovative. Taking this integrated approach to addressing vacancy will disrupt the pattern of city actions that produces little change while often creating or worsening complex and compound trauma experienced living in neighborhoods with concentrations of vacancy or blight.
For example, if a vacancy tax is enacted, it must include an "heirs exemption." The exemption would cover an heir's properties and those with tangled titles. It will protect generational wealth transfer and community continuity while allowing the legislation to address vacancy and blight supported by speculators and predatory investors.
I know there are those listening who only care about the numbers. Those folks should consider that more than 80 million in revenue to the city is lost annually indirect cost of vacancy and lost property tax revenues. There are millions more spent in indirect costs like 84 million dollars collected by local hospitals from 2013-2015 for treating asthma cases 3x the state average in neighborhoods with vacancy rates of 30% or more. Vacancies are bad for the city's bottom line, for real, for real. It's time to dismantle the structures and systems that support and enable vacancy. These recommendations are a platform for starting.
Prepared By:
Nneka Nnamdi, Fight Blight Bmore
For the Stop Oppressive Seizures Fund
Reflections in Black: Equity in Real Property
My lived experience and research shows that racism in public policy has damaged Black neighborhoods and disproportionately harmed Black residents wherever they may live. The interpersonal violence we see in the community is the direct result of the economic violence perpetrated by the city’s Black codes, Jim Crow, Ordinance 610, restrictive covenants, redlining, urban renewal, contract lending, land use and zoning, disinvestment, tax sale, subprime lending, etc. COVID-19 further exposed these deep wounds’ impact on housing and health outcomes in the Black Butterfly.
In response to these conditions, Mayor Scott ran on and other elected officials espouse a commitment to creating racial equity in the city. But there can be no equity without repairing the damage caused by the long list above. In order to achieve equity, Baltimore must implement laws, policies, regulations and practices that restore Black people and communities. As a part of the Mayor’s Business, Workforce and Neighborhood Development Transition Committee; the big idea I offered for his first term was to begin to dismantle and defund racism in city government and its agencies specifically surrounding real property. These are priority actions to begin that process:
Abolish tax sale of owner-occupied units and enable installment payment plans.
Ramp up the “in rem” foreclosure process — foreclosures that focus on vacant tax sale properties — using a new land bank for equitable distribution
Ensure every property with metered water is receiving an accurate bill and develop a dispute resolution unit
Support an appraisal gap tax credit focused on redlined communities
Advocate for an equitable property tax assessment and assessment process
Create a Baltimore neighborhood Reparations fund and Social Equity Bond
Create participatory funding and payment processes for real estate development
Create program to enable and support Black owned retail, commercial and industrial competent spaces
Create an Independent Condemnations and Demolitions Monitor
Publish a clear and concise set of procedures to apply for and receive city owned properties for equitable and sustainable development
Create program to support Co-Housing, Collaborative Workspace and Cooperative development
Create a Ground Rent Redemption grant and ground rent map
Create and apply a measure to balance non profit property tax exemption against lost property tax revenues
Fully implement state enabled waiver of estate administration fees for low income households
Create a path to ownership for Adopt A Lot licensees (participants) who live in the footprint of the lots
Reform the Side Lot program by streamlining the process and only applying the 10 year building restriction to owners not residing in community
Implement a program to ensure all eligible homeowners are receiving all eligible property tax credits including but not limited too the Homeowner’s Tax Credit and Homestead Tax Credit
Creating racial equity will take fundamental change in the way the city government operates. We have to start with lessons from the past to build a doper future.
Leaking Pipes to the Edge of Homelessness - A Baltimore Tax Sale Story
Ama Tubman is a Baltimore native and resident in her family home. She lives in Park Heights with her husband and children. She is a local entrepreneur.
In 2016, her family home was sold in tax sale for a $4000 water bill, which was the result of a hidden leak. Ms. Tubman got the leak repaired however she was unaware that using a repair person who was not licensed by the state would result in her being ineligible to receive a water bill adjustment from the Department of Public Works.
2020 Tax Certificates Schedule for Sale
That water bill was turned into a tax lien certificate and sold in the 2016 Tax Sale. Ms. Tubman and the lawyer, Scott Morse, Esq. representing the certificate purchaser, Nell Carey, agreed on a payment plan to satisfy the lien. She honored that agreement. The next year Ms. Tubman attempted to pay her annual property taxes, but was informed by the Tax Department that her 2016 tax lien still needed to be satisfied. She contacted the certificate purchaser who instructed their lawyer to provide the city with the appropriate lien release.
Due to a lack of clear communication between the attorney representing the certificate purchaser and Baltimore City Ms.Tubman was unable to pay the taxes due. As a result the bills piled up and in 2019 the house went back into tax sale. She called the city department that handles tax sales and was told there were now two liens on the house and that she would have to satisfy them both.
Letter from 2019 Certificate Purchaser's Lawyer
In August 2020, Ms. Tubman called the lawyer representing the 2019 tax certificate purchaser. The lawyer informed her she would need to first pay his fee (shown below) and after that she would have two weeks to pay the city $7100 representing the taxes owed and fees in order to redeem the property and avoid tax sale foreclosure. On December 1, 2020, Ms. Tubman went to the Abel Wolman Building to try to resolve this issue and they were closed due to COVID-19.
She tried to go to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on Calvert Street for help and they too were closed due to COVID-19. A security guard at the Abel Wolman building gave her a number to call (410-639-3556) for assistance with this problem. She called it and a staff member Eleanor answered and she explained everything to her. Staff person Eleanor again stated that there were two liens on the property. Ms. Tubman emphatically explained to her that the 2016 lien had been released.
Staff person Eleanor put Ms. Tubman on hold to dig a little deeper. One minute later she returned to the phone and said “...as I look further, I see that the first lien was satisfied”. Ms. Tubman asked, “Now what? You are admitting that had someone else simply looked further, I would not be in this position.” Ms. Eleanor asked Ms. Tubman to hold yet again. Upon her return Ms. Tubman was told, “My supervisor has agreed to give you till the end of December to pay everything due to the error. In the meantime, pay the lawyer and tell him to put the end of the month on the release letter.”
Exasperated, Ms. Tubman reached out to the Stop Oppressive Seizures (SOS) Fund* for help. The SOS Fund contacted Tax Sale Ombudsman Michael O’Leary on December 4th, 2020. As the Tax Sale Ombudsman does not have research to resolution power he asked the Bureau of Revenue Collections (BRC) to investigate. The BRC investigated the issue. Their position is that the tax certificate purchaser's lawyer did not provide the release to the city until November 2020 so the city was not in error. Despite the fact the tax certificate purchaser had directed his lawyer to provide the release more than a year before that the city claims it wasn't received until late last year. It is possible that the release was lost in the Ransomware attack of 2019 or that the attorney for the certificate purchaser failed to send the release to the city. We asked the BRC to provide Ms Tubman and the SOS Fund a copy of the release but to date that has not been provided. In the end BRC said all they would do was give Ms. Tubman till January 31st 2021 to pay the city the outstanding debt after paying the 2019 tax sale purchasers attorney.
COVID-19 Cases and Housing Insecurity
A run of the mill leaky pipe, exacerbated by the Department of Public Works’ lack of an equitable dispute/adjustment process for water bills, plunged Ms Tubman into the onerous, complex and opaque tax sale redemption process. Now Ama Tubman and her family find themselves at the edge of homelesness, saddled with a large debt that would not have existed otherwise. Ms. Tubman doesn’t have the nearly $10,000 necessary to clear the debt. Ama Tubman and her family are facing homelessness in the middle of a global health pandemic, COVID-19. This story perfectly illustrates the impact of the problematic and predatory practices that are woven through the city's tax sale process.
The tax sale should be abolished completely for owner occupied properties. Installment payments should be made available for current and past due taxes without onerous fees (see City Council Bills 21-0002/21-0016). The Tax Sale Ombudsman should be given the power to force the fair and equitable resolution of issues with tax sale certificates. And, the BRC should be required to publish an annual report on the performance of the property tax collections, tax sale, assignment, bulk tax sale and any tax sale foreclosures.
Ana Tubman is a pseudonym - her name was changed to protect her privacy. This issue has caused her to experience anxiety and a profound sense of shame. Despite the trauma of this situation and the city's less than empathic response to it, Ms Tubman and family have amassed roughly $4000 toward the debt. The SOS FUND has pledged $2000 in funds towards Ms.Tubman's debt. Help us raise the rest in 30 days as the foreclosure process has begun, click here to donate via PayPal. Checks or Money Orders can be made and mailed to Fusion Partnerships, Inc. FBO Fight Blight Bmore at 1601 Guilford Ave, 2 South Baltimore, MD 21202-2877. Please include Save Ama Tubman's House in the memo.
Testimony submitted for Baltimore City Council Bill 20-0593 Tax Sales - Properties Exempt from Sale
City Council Bill 20-0593 was introduced by Councilperson McCray to protect vulnerable homeowners from the predatory tax sale. This bill as amended will only provide limited protection for some legacy homeowners. The City’s finance department seems hell bent on protecting this unscrupulous practice of selling tax debt and thus the interest of investors in tax sale certificates. Investors target owner-occupied units because the redemption rates are higher. Evidence suggests that many vulnerable homeowners live in predominantly Black neighborhoods which have been subject to disproportionate property taxes, pushing more owner-occupied units into tax sale. This is in part why the tax sale has been judged to be predatory by advocates.
Continuing this practice is clear evidence that the city has failed to use the tools at its disposal:
- state statute allowing comptroller to remove elderly, disabled and low
income homeowners from tax sale - state statute allowing redemption via payment plan - city law allowing city councilpersons to challenge and have removed properties in their district from tax sale - Homeowner's Tax Credit (which cost the city nothing as the state would pay the city its portion of the taxes on approved applications) to protect vulnerable homeowners in order to make money.
If the intent is to protect vulnerable homeowners this bill should be amended as follows:
1. Remove vulnerable (65 or older, disabled or low income less than $60,000) homeowners from tax sale and put them in a payment plan
a. Enable a 3-5 year deficiency spread to avoid tax sale - charge 5% to cover cost
associated with payment plan
b. Allow all owner-occupied to pay taxes via payment plan - no charge c. Allow non-owner occupied to use payment plan as well -charge 10% to cover costs associated with payment plan
Note: Vulnerable homeowners in this context should include residents of family homes where a grandparent, parent, sibling, aunt, uncle or cousin died intestate and they would become owner of the property at the conclusion of a probate process.
2. Require the City Tax Sale Ombudsman to collect and disseminate a report annually to include but not limited to data and information on:
a. how many tax sale certificates were sold
b. how many properties were removed from tax sale based on the criteria outlined in section 1a
c. how many tax sale foreclosures were filed
d. how many right-to-redeem judgments occurred
e. how many excess funds applications were processed
f. how many properties where removed from tax sale due to city councilpersons
challenge and in what district
g. how many new homeowners tax credit applications were submitted and
approved
h. how many tax sale certificates were offered for vacant and abandoned properties
i. the average amount of the liens for both owner occupied properties and
separately vacant and abandoned properties
j. how many property tax accounts are being paid via payment plan by category (previously delinquent, owner occupied in advance and non owner occupied in advance)
3. In the working sessions for this bill we have heard multiple mentions of potential fraud by residents when using the tax sale exemption. Yet no evidence was presented to indicate that there has been any instance of fraud with the existing credits. In fact the existing credits have been underutilized. But there is evidence that tax certificate purchasers participate in bid-rigging. In fact several were convicted of it. Perhaps the city should focus its ire on fraud and other illegal or unethical actions of tax certificate purchasers by
a. requiring disclosure of when the tax sale certificate purchaser and the lawyer are on in the same
b. requiring law firms to return funds paid to them when there is a subsequent tax sale foreclosure
c. ensuring the return of excess funds when a tax sale foreclosure does occur
d. requiring the Tax Sale Ombudsman to conduct an analysis of the tax sale results to determine if patterns indicative of bid rigging are occurring within the tax sale
Stopping the vicious cycle of tax sale on the most vulnerable homeowners will
- stabilize population loss
- make property upkeep possible
- decrease vacancy
- attract new property owners thus expand the tax base
- enable the city to collect more tax revenue before delinquency occurs
Most importantly these measures will also help build and/or preserve assets for these vulnerable homeowners and their families, thus providing a stepping stone toward wealth creation and retention. This is particularly important for many Black homeowners who have repeatedly had their property rights and values eroded by laws, policies, regulations and practices of Baltimore City, State and Federal Government.
Nneka N’namdi
Bree Jones
Andre Robinson
John Kern/ Tim Chance
Stop Oppressive Seizures Fund
