Members of a community development group gathered outside a vacant West Baltimore rowhouse on a cloudy winter morning, preparing for an auction, when a stranger in his 20s showed up with a New York accent and slicked-back hair.
As the auctioneer called out bids for the six vacant homes in the 2700 and 2800 blocks of West North Avenue in Coppin Heights, the man began bidding aggressively, and the community development group members grew worried.
They had been eyeing the abandoned properties along a three-block stretch for years, hoping to reverse the declining homeownership rate in this predominantly Black neighborhood. Many of the once-grand rowhouses along that corridor are vacant and crumbling. They are among the more than 15,000 vacant houses in Baltimore that many investors and developers long avoided — often requiring so much money to fix that they weren’t worth buying — but not anymore.
