On Wednesday, I stood with community partners on McCabe Avenue in Northeast Baltimore for the first major Vacants to Value demolition event (Baltimore Sun video of event). The demolition is one part of how the new Vacants to Value initiative is working to revitalize communities challenged by vacant housing. A strong partnership between Baltimore Housing, the Woodbourne/McCabe Community Association, Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) Baltimore, and Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake resulted in a plan to purchase, demolish, and redevelop 34 vacant properties in the North Baltimore community.

Wednesday's event is a great example of Vacants to Value in action and brings us a step closer to ridding our city of blight in order to make our neighborhoods better, safer, and stronger. This is also an example of how community partners can come together with a targeted, strategic plan for a neighborhood and make real progress on one of Baltimore's toughest and most stubborn challenges.

As a result of more than five decades of disinvestment, Baltimore is burdened with approximately 16,000 vacant buildings, roughly 25% of which are City-owned. While recent reductions in crime and improved public schools have made it more attractive for families to relocate to and remain in Baltimore, city government must do more to spur growth and reinvestment in our communities.

Vacants to Value is my administration's comprehensive 6-point strategy to reduce blight. The initiative seeks to drive growth and reinvestment in Baltimore's neighborhoods by streamlining the sale of vacant City property, strengthening code enforcement efforts in transitional blocks and emerging markets to promote rehabilitation, and by providing new, targeted incentives for homebuyers and developers who invest in vacant homes.

We are cutting the red tape and bureaucracy and getting government out of the way to make buying and selling properties with the City easier. The strategy is projected to cut the transactional time of selling City property by two-thirds. But this is not the only measure of progress.

We are also getting tough on absentee landowners by issuing new $900 citations, which force them to either invest in their property or sell it to someone who will. To date, this has generated $167,000 in permit revenue, representing $5.7 million of new private investment in targeted areas.

Baltimore has suffered over 50 years of disinvestment, and it is our neighborhoods that bear the cost. Change will not take place overnight, but we can make real progress by targeting our limited resources to spur new investment in neighborhoods.