BALTIMORE — A call for city leaders to do something about the vacant eye sores that create blight in East Baltimore.
The COR Health Institute on N Collington Ave was built on top of a vacant building.
It’s still got the bricks to show it’s story.
Founder Munir Bahar wants the people who own other vacant buildings to start investing in them and build up this community.
“The residents of East Baltimore are standing up and we are fed with the negligent handling of property developers coming in and buying properties and having those properties sit,” said Bahar.
For over a decade there have been over 16,000 vacant homes in Baltimore City.
These houses have looked like this for as long as Bahar can remember.
“It’s kind of hard to combat illegal dumping, it’s kind of hard to combat drug activity if the physical environment is conducive for it,”
Bahar said. “We’re tired of it. Developers are coming in from out of town they are buying properties and sitting on them for years. In our neighborhood where there is some positive development that’s hurting those of us who are positively developing the neighborhood.”
The city website says they respond to 70,000 complaints from citizens and conducts 250,000 Housing inspections a year.
A recently passed city council bill requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to post these signs so people can find out who owns the vacant property and hold them accountable.
Bahar said the community is tired of sending emails, pleading for something to be done and being left to live with the trickle down effect of the negligence.
“I have to raise my children here. I have to walk my daughters past these abandoned houses. It’s not fair that just because we’re in a poor black neighborhood that these conditions are allowed to exist year upon a year upon year. This would not be happening in Fells Point, Canton, Brewers Hill, Washington Hill where more affluent people live.”
On Tuesday he and other people who are fed up in the community are coming together.
Hoping that if they amplify their voices someone will listen and start to make changes.
“We want action on the part of the city to deal with the developers. To take those properties, to revert those sales, and make sure those properties go to developers who actually have the capacity to develop those properties.”
Everyone is welcome to the rally the that starts Tuesday at 6:30.
It’s at the 2200 block of E Chase Street.
