On Saturday on the way back from visiting a friend in Baltimore, our GPS took Embry and me through the heart of what used to be strong working class neighborhoods in the city. My career was in the field of developing affordable housing and seniors housing, and years ago I did a lot of work in Baltimore. My, how things have changed from what I remember!
I was stunned. We drove though block after block of boarded up, dilapidated town homes and apartments, giving the feel of a war zone. I had no idea of how challenging the situation must be in Baltimore today. I checked with AI and learned that in 2022, Baltimore had 16,000 vacant buildings. There are probably more today. In many low income neighborhoods, particularly in West and East Baltimore, vacancy rates are over 30%. In other words, in these “tough neighborhoods,” one out of every three townhomes is vacant and boarded up. Some apartment buildings are totally empty and abandoned. Add to that graffiti on the doors and walls, broken windows, trash on the street, and crime in the neighborhood and you wonder how anyone could be happy living on these troubled blocks and in these neighborhoods.
There is nothing like this in Washington, not even close.
When I started in the housing development field fifty years ago, the Washington and Baltimore metro areas were about the same size, around 3.5 million people in the early 1970s. In 2026, the Washington metropolitan population is more than twice the size of the Baltimore metropolitan area population. The Washington metro area today has a population exceeding 6.3 million, while the Baltimore metro area has lost population, which is estimated to be around 2.4 million in 2026. The median income in Washington is almost $110,000. In Baltimore it is about $60,000. Try living on that if you part of a family of four or more people.
In my thinking the decline of Baltimore is due mainly to three factors–loss of jobs, loss of jobs, and loss of jobs. The union, blue collar jobs have almost vanished in Baltimore, which fifty years ago was driven by a manufacturing economy. The city lost about 75% of its industrial employment between 1950 and 1995. By 1998, Baltimore had lost 90,000 manufacturing jobs compared to 1970 levels. A major factor was Bethlehem Steel, which shrank from 30,000 workers in the 1970s to just 8,000 by the late 1980s before closing entirely. What was left were mainly service jobs, paying much less and with fewer benefits. One could argue whether Baltimore could have done a better job in keeping these jobs, but the loss of higher paying, blue collar jobs affected most older, industrial cities in the United States.
Washington on the other hand has an information-based economy aided by the high growth in federal employment. And over the last 50 years, the Washington metropolitan area has transitioned from a government-centric workforce to a diversified, private-sector-led economy, nearly tripling its total employment. Employment in the metro area grew from roughly 1.2 million jobs in the mid-1970s to over 3.3 million by 2025. The private sector now accounts for approximately 78% of total employment, up from being a minority share 50 years ago. And the region has historically outperformed the nation during recessions, often returning to pre-recession employment levels within five years.
This does not mean that all is well in Washington. The city currently has a substantially larger homeless population than Baltimore, more than twice as many–5,138 in Washington versus 2,024 in Baltimore. And homeless encampments have been prolific in Washington until recently. Trump’s threats to the mayor have resulted in their mysterious disappearance, out of sight out of mind.
Housing affordability is also a huge problem in Washington, but not in Baltimore. In Washington, D.C. average rents are over 50% higher and home listing prices more than double what they are in Baltimore. The median rent in D.C. is $2,600 , compared to Baltimore with a median rent of under $1,500. The median sales price of a home in Baltimore is $210,000 compared to $650,00 in DC. If you want a good deal and are willing to commute a long way for work in Washington, Baltimore is appealing. We know people who have done that.
The experience prompted me to see what I could find on the internet about Baltimore. I was surprised to find a lot of positive initiatives and reasons for optimism.
Baltimore achieved a significant decline in violent crime in 2025, recording its lowest homicide count in nearly 50 years. A lot of progress has been made since the filming of “The Wire.” The city attributes this progress to a “comprehensive, public health-centered” strategy led by the mayor and the police department.
As for housing and urban development, Baltimore is currently undertaking the largest housing redevelopment program in the nation, centered on a massive $6 billion community reinvestment plan. This 15-year initiative, formally coordinated through “Reinvest Baltimore,” aims to revitalize over 65,000 vacant or at-risk properties across the city. The next five years the goal is to demolish 5,000 units. That is a start but still about 60,000 vacant units would remain. Renewal efforts now focus on “whole blocks, and whole neighborhoods.” Small parks will fill in some of the vacant sites. The strategy is to encourage large-scale, private investment rather than scattered rehabilitation. These efforts are targeted to the distressed neighborhoods like the ones we drove through. So, there is hope that in a few years the drive we took would be very different, though it seems to me to be a heavy lift.
My reaction in driving through the Baltimore neighborhoods was similar to my attitude about the homeless encampments in DC– both disbelief and shame that in a country as rich as ours, these stark disparities still exist and in many cities poor and working class people are worse off because the federal government under Trump has retreated in supporting affordable housing and supportive services. In a word, it is outrageous. Will the situation change? Unlikely in my lifetime, but the course we are on now is unsustainable. We have to do better.