urban renewal in Baltimore. Why has it not worked....
http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/28/baltimores-long-history-of-failed-develo
Like many older American cities, Baltimore's population peaked at about 950,000 in 1950 and since then has settled into a long and virtually uninterrupted decline, even as the surrounding areas gained in people and opportunities. Currently about 622,000 people call Baltimore home and there's every reason to expect more people to move out as a result of recent events.
In late 2013, Baltimore's leaders pushed hard to start another mega-project that could only happen with massive subsidies, tax breaks, and other giveaways that strongly suggest the project isn't actually supported by real market forces. That project was the subject of a Reason TV documentary that adds meaningful context to eruption of violence and destruction now throttling Baltimore. From the original writeup of Todd Krainin's "Harbor Point and Baltimore's Taxpayer-Funded Edifice Complex":
For 20 years, Harbor Point, a 27-acre site of an abandoned chromium factory, has been a dream in the eyes of developers. It's the last big unbuilt site on the city's waterfront and arguably the most sought-after real estate in all of Maryland.
Yes, developers have lusted after the site, but they just didn't want to have pay the full cost of, well, developing it.
In a city as desperate for growth as Baltimore, they don't have to. Baltimore's political class has committed $400 million in public subsidies to a controversial plan that supporters claim will generate 6,000 jobs and build a complex of skyscrapers, residences, and public parks that will forever transform the character of the city.
City officials believe the $1.8 billion-dollar project will spark an economic turnaround. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake considers Harbor Point a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to reverse the half-century-long exodus of residents and businesses that have hollowed out Baltimore. Rawlings-Blake and developer Michael Beatty have campaigned relentlessly for the plan, offering promises of urban renewal and jobs in a city with 10.3 percent unemployment.
Yet Baltimore's citizens aren't convinced.
The public hearings and frequent street demonstrations outside City Hall have revealed a tale of two cities: sweetheart deals for the well-connected along the waterfront and decades of neglect for the majority of its blue collar residents. The subsidies are a major sticking point, as is the use of an Enterprise Zone for the benefit of wealthy residents. Tax increment financing, known as TIF, will exempt the developer from taxation for a decade. To many residents, Harbor Point is just the latest example of socializing risk and privatizing gain.
Why are the public coffers wide open to wealthy developers? That's the way business has always been done, in Baltimore and elsewhere. Just upriver from Harbor Point, the city's famed Inner Harboris the result of similar top-down, heavily subsidized development. Decades ago, city politicians spent billions to sweep away Baltimore's crumbling industrial-age infrastructure, replacing it with office towers, popular chain restaurants, museums, and an aquarium, all of which attracts millions of tourists, year after year.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...110618_1_public-housing-rowhouses-rehab-costs
The public housing unit Susan Batchelor shares with her teenage daughter on a blighted East Baltimore block has new kitchen cabinets, modern appliances and central air. After years on a waiting list, Batchelor is delighted with the renovated two-bedroom apartment she now calls home.
"I love it, I really do," she says. A widow who works as a teacher's assistant, she also loves her low rent: $475 a month, utilities included.
But whether it's such a bargain for taxpayers is debatable.
Batchelor's apartment is one of 10 units inside four East Preston Street rowhouses that were overhauled at a cost of nearly $1.9 million in public funds, 40 percent above the original budget. That means the tab for renovations was almost a half-million dollars per rowhouse — an "insane" price, according to contractor Jack BeVier, who restores rowhouses for profit and isn't involved in the project.
And that is just the start. On the rest of Batchelor's block, and another nearby, 30 more boarded-up rowhouses will soon be rehabbed at an average cost of $300,000 apiece, much of it from federal stimulus funds. Those houses will then be sold to lower-income buyers at steeply discounted prices of $70,000 or $75,000.
All told, more than $30 million worth of housing investment is under way or planned for Johnston Square, a battered neighborhood below Green Mount Cemetery where islands of homeownership are surrounded by vacant lots and empty or run-down houses. Major financing will be from government grants and tax subsidies.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/28/baltimores-long-history-of-failed-develo
Like many older American cities, Baltimore's population peaked at about 950,000 in 1950 and since then has settled into a long and virtually uninterrupted decline, even as the surrounding areas gained in people and opportunities. Currently about 622,000 people call Baltimore home and there's every reason to expect more people to move out as a result of recent events.
In late 2013, Baltimore's leaders pushed hard to start another mega-project that could only happen with massive subsidies, tax breaks, and other giveaways that strongly suggest the project isn't actually supported by real market forces. That project was the subject of a Reason TV documentary that adds meaningful context to eruption of violence and destruction now throttling Baltimore. From the original writeup of Todd Krainin's "Harbor Point and Baltimore's Taxpayer-Funded Edifice Complex":
For 20 years, Harbor Point, a 27-acre site of an abandoned chromium factory, has been a dream in the eyes of developers. It's the last big unbuilt site on the city's waterfront and arguably the most sought-after real estate in all of Maryland.
Yes, developers have lusted after the site, but they just didn't want to have pay the full cost of, well, developing it.
In a city as desperate for growth as Baltimore, they don't have to. Baltimore's political class has committed $400 million in public subsidies to a controversial plan that supporters claim will generate 6,000 jobs and build a complex of skyscrapers, residences, and public parks that will forever transform the character of the city.
City officials believe the $1.8 billion-dollar project will spark an economic turnaround. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake considers Harbor Point a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to reverse the half-century-long exodus of residents and businesses that have hollowed out Baltimore. Rawlings-Blake and developer Michael Beatty have campaigned relentlessly for the plan, offering promises of urban renewal and jobs in a city with 10.3 percent unemployment.
Yet Baltimore's citizens aren't convinced.
The public hearings and frequent street demonstrations outside City Hall have revealed a tale of two cities: sweetheart deals for the well-connected along the waterfront and decades of neglect for the majority of its blue collar residents. The subsidies are a major sticking point, as is the use of an Enterprise Zone for the benefit of wealthy residents. Tax increment financing, known as TIF, will exempt the developer from taxation for a decade. To many residents, Harbor Point is just the latest example of socializing risk and privatizing gain.
Why are the public coffers wide open to wealthy developers? That's the way business has always been done, in Baltimore and elsewhere. Just upriver from Harbor Point, the city's famed Inner Harboris the result of similar top-down, heavily subsidized development. Decades ago, city politicians spent billions to sweep away Baltimore's crumbling industrial-age infrastructure, replacing it with office towers, popular chain restaurants, museums, and an aquarium, all of which attracts millions of tourists, year after year.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...110618_1_public-housing-rowhouses-rehab-costs
The public housing unit Susan Batchelor shares with her teenage daughter on a blighted East Baltimore block has new kitchen cabinets, modern appliances and central air. After years on a waiting list, Batchelor is delighted with the renovated two-bedroom apartment she now calls home.
"I love it, I really do," she says. A widow who works as a teacher's assistant, she also loves her low rent: $475 a month, utilities included.
But whether it's such a bargain for taxpayers is debatable.
Batchelor's apartment is one of 10 units inside four East Preston Street rowhouses that were overhauled at a cost of nearly $1.9 million in public funds, 40 percent above the original budget. That means the tab for renovations was almost a half-million dollars per rowhouse — an "insane" price, according to contractor Jack BeVier, who restores rowhouses for profit and isn't involved in the project.
And that is just the start. On the rest of Batchelor's block, and another nearby, 30 more boarded-up rowhouses will soon be rehabbed at an average cost of $300,000 apiece, much of it from federal stimulus funds. Those houses will then be sold to lower-income buyers at steeply discounted prices of $70,000 or $75,000.
All told, more than $30 million worth of housing investment is under way or planned for Johnston Square, a battered neighborhood below Green Mount Cemetery where islands of homeownership are surrounded by vacant lots and empty or run-down houses. Major financing will be from government grants and tax subsidies.
