BALTIMORE — Just driving through the city, you can see the prevalence of vacant properties.
A Baltimore woman shared her worry that the crumbling property next to her could fall anytime posing a credible threat to her and her family’s safety.
"We had this wall filled just hanging off the wall handing plates whatever,” said Robin Yorker, a long-time Poppleton neighborhood resident.
It’s not hard to remember the good times she’s had living on Carey Street for the last five decades.
"Those homeowners were great homeowners and they died off, kids moved away sold the houses yea sold those homes sold the houses,” she shared.
Slowly she would become among the few residents left around while the houses like one next door decay day by day with the back wall completely missing, the yard full of trash and the structure itself barely standing on its own.
"That's a hazard. That shouldn’t be like that. Who does that and how many years it take for them to find the owner of that house? that's public record right?” she asked.
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And yes, it is.
Records show the home was purchased back in 2006 by Anna Zhen and had been cited by the city in 2008.
"Who you handing a citation to when you don't know who the owner is? We had never saw the person who owned it, that landlord or whatever,” said Yorker.
Yorker says the owner listed is an absentee owner creating a burden on her neighbors whom she's never met.
"Pretty much the damage from that house is like damaging my house from the rodents and then the debris that falls and then my upstairs the second floor room. Eventually its going to collapse and it looks like some of it already did,” Yorker worried.
Yorker has hopes that the city through their proposed plans for vacant properties will lead to some progress.
She’s relying heavily on the success of initiatives proposed by Councilwoman Odette Ramos that will stiffen penalties for absentee owners and legislation introduced by Council President Nick Mosby intended to incentivize property improvements among home owners
In the meantime she's holding those leading the charge for change accountable for their actions rather than their words.
“Step up to the plate. I voted for you. Now what you gone do,” Yorker questioned.
