Baltimore loses $100 million in tax revenue from vacant properties every year and spends another $100 million annually maintaining them, according to a report published Thursday by Johns Hopkins researchers.
The economic and social costs “far exceed the investment needed to bring them back to productive use,” the report argues. In an interview, study authors Mac McComas and Mary Miller, both of Hopkins’ 21st Century Cities Initiative, said that while $200 million may be a conservative estimate, it is the most accurate and holistic assessment of the crisis produced in several years.
“The city bears this cost and so we all have to pay for it, through taxes and through the knock-on ‘contagion” effects,’” McComas said.
