Last week, Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed a host of bills into law aiming to solve the ongoing affordable housing shortage across the state. Three of the measures were part of his own priority legislation to address the issue.
“This was a year that we made the choice to put housing front and center, because we knew this was an issue that could not wait,” Moore said at an April 25 bill signing event in the State House.
Due to the high-profile nature of the Governor’s housing package, other bills trying to create more housing opportunities often went under the radar.
That might have happened with House Bill 2, a bill that aims to reduce the number of lots and houses that sit vacant for years on end without any plan to develop the property into usable spaces.
The new law initially started as legislation just for the city of Baltimore, so that the Baltimore mayor and the city council could be authorized to issue specific tax increases on vacant and inhabitable properties. But the bill was amended by the House Ways and Means Committee to allow any local jurisdiction in the state to have the taxing authority.
Baltimore City Councilmember Odette Ramos (D) explained that raising the taxes on vacant property could help reduce the number of abandoned houses and lots in two ways: to incentivize property owners to revitalize the lot for habitation and to make it easier for local jurisdictions to acquire the abandoned property.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Danielle J. Brown over at Maryland Matters
