This article in the Sun from a few months back estimates $7.5 billion in private & public money would be needed to renovate all the city's vacants.

Yeah, I think the MICA offer was a few years ago - I don't think they're in a financial situation to do much right now, unfortunately...

According to a friend of mine who knows the bartenders there well, the old owners turned down an offer from MICA and an offer from another group who wanted to turn the place into an upscale cocktail bar. From what the neighbors are saying on the BH FB page, there's a good amount of trust that the new owners will keep the soul of the place intact.

From the article:

> According to a contract submitted with an application to transfer the pub’s liquor license, the price was $800,000. The four new owners include Nicholas Wisniewski and musician Daniel Deacon of Baltimore plus Marlon Ziello and artist Derrick Adams, both of Brooklyn, New York.

> The bar has not changed hands in more than 35 years; the seller was listed as Marota Inc., which was formed in 1985.

I'm not sure why people would recommend against Charles - of all the N-S streets in that area, foot traffic will probably be highest on Charles, which is what you want from a safety perspective. St Paul and especially Calvert are both fairly residential in that area, so you're going to have less foot traffic once the sun goes down.

For what it's worth, if I'm wandering home from Club Charles late at night, I walk down Charles to Mt Royal to get back to Bolton Hill. I've never felt unsafe on Charles after dark, though it can get lonely on the bridge over the Jones Falls. Maryland Ave can be a bit weird at night, and I've heard too many stories about nighttime muggings to feel comfortable on the Howard St bridge after dark.

There are so many places in the city where the fastest and safest path between two points on a scooter or a bike is to ride on the sidewalk for a block or two. The best example I have is coming north out of Otterbein/Fed Hill to get on the Sharp/Hopkins/Cathedral/Maryland cycle track. What do you do?

• Head north on Light? If you ride in the road, it's four or five lanes wide with traffic that moves way too fast for comfort. The cycle path along the harbor bends you around onto Pratt, away from where you want to go. You end up having to go Light -> Pratt -> Commerce -> Lombard -> Sharp, which is a long detour.
• Head north on Charles? Marginally better, but Charles is still three lanes wide with no shoulder from Conway to Lombard, and the road surface is atrocious. The drivers aren't much better than on Light. Plus, you still have to make a left turn across Charles onto Lombard to get over to Sharp.
• Head north on Sharp? You can't, it's one way southbound through the convention center, and riding counterflow on a road with two lanes and no shoulder is both illegal and a death wish. There is a sidewalk that will take you between Sharp & Conway and Sharp & Pratt, though.

The quickest and safest thing to do in this case is to take Sharp north out of Otterbein, cross Conway, hop on the sidewalk, duck under the convention center, and then cross Pratt onto the cycle track. It's the most direct route, and it minimizes your exposure to multiple lanes of high-speed traffic.

I wish it weren't the case, as riding on the sidewalk should be frowned upon, but because the city loves to build disjointed bike infrastructure rather than a coherent network, you end up with situations like this all over.

There was a study done a few years ago to narrow the width of the lanes on MLK so that the median could be widened and so that a proper bike path could be added alongside. I have no idea what happened to this proposal, but it seems like it might be a good first step.

In an ideal world, we'd take out most of MLK and re-build the street grid so that the west side wasn't as isolated from downtown, but that's a pipe dream until we get a much better public transit system.

"Police say 29 percent of seized dirt bikes in Baltimore are stolen."

Yes, good point, we only voted to legalize it last year. Here's hoping the state pulls together a good legalization plan before July 1...

You'll find that St Louis and Baltimore have an awful lot in common - both are largely-poor, largely-black cities with declining populations that are politically separate from the suburban jurisdictions that surround them. I've never been to St Louis, but I've heard that it kinda feels like Baltimore - lots of brick houses from the 19th century, fairly low outside of the central business district, whole sections of town that are full of dilapidated buildings slowly reverting to empty lots, the highest rates of lead paint contamination in the country, a fair number of really nice neighborhoods that surprise out-of-town visitors expecting Fallujah-on-the-Mississippi/Patapsco, etc.

At the state level, the good news is that Maryland is overwhelmingly Democratic, meaning that abortion bans, book bans, etc generally don't fly here. That doesn't mean the rest of the state cares all that much more about Baltimore than Missouri does about St Louis, though. There is a fair amount of animosity towards Baltimore City from the surrounding counties - it's a popular whipping boy on subjects from policing to schools to crime to government corruption. Maryland is very, very blue, but it's not particularly progressive. Moderate Democrats are the order of the day around here, and liberal policy goals tend to lag here despite how overwhelmingly Democratic the vote is. (We only just legalized weed last year, for instance.) If you're looking for liberal paradise, this is not your state; if you're looking for a fairly well-governed state that leans left but not overwhelmingly so, Maryland will be a good fit.

edit: department of redundancy department calling

I hadn't thought about congregation members moving out of neighborhoods local to their church but commuting back to it on Sundays - it would also explain the big fight here in Baltimore a few years back between Fountain Baptist Church and the city over a bike lane removing street parking spots in front of the church on Monument St.

What's funny is that both of these instances are in neighborhoods that aren't gentrifying. As far as I can tell, no major development is bringing more people (and cars) to Lafayette Square, and that stretch of E Monument St isn't being redeveloped at all.

Aw, jeez, this is terrible news. I'd really love to see this mansion get restored, but as time goes on I get less and less hopeful.

It's especially terrible to hear that the nearby church wants to convert it into a parking lot. I highly doubt the area around Lafayette Square is lacking for parking. What is it with churches in this city and letting historic houses molder away? First the townhouses on Preston in Mt Vernon, now this...

UPDATE: Looks like it was torn down.

I strongly agree with previous posters that you should consider renting at least for the first year. Take the time to get to know the city - there are hundreds of neighborhoods here, all with their various pros and cons. You might find in a year's time that you like a place you'd never have considered now.

If you can afford a $200k-225k house, you can probably comfortably afford $1500/month in rent - this is enough to get you a 1BR in most nice neighborhoods. Transit can be tough in the city, so it never hurts to live near where you work or at least within a one-seat bus ride. Walkable + safe + close to MARC immediately makes me think of Mount Vernon, Otterbein, or Ridgely's Delight, but if you don't drive I would take a serious look at where you'll be commuting to and work backwards from there.

The Druid Hill Y is probably your best bet for something year-round with broad choices of physical activity.

Beyond that, I would investigate the city rec centers and see if any of them offer exercise programs. I get the feeling that they do, but the city website is unhelpful in figuring out which site offers what.

As far as swimming goes, I know there's an outdoor pool in Druid Hill Park, and I believe there's another in Sandtown-Winchester, though they're both closed in the winter. Friends in southwest Baltimore say you can take swim lessons at the Vivien Thomas Medical Arts Academy in Franklin Square, but I don't know if their pool is open to the public beyond that.

It's going to depend on what condition the vacant house is in (is there a roof? are the floors intact? are walls crumbling?) and on the cost of labor. I once heard that it costs about $150/sq. ft. to do a full renovation/refinish of a shell of a rowhouse, but I can't remember where I saw that number or what it includes.

Edit: I found this paper from last year which estimates that the cost/sq. ft. to bring a vacant up to code is between $100 and $200/sq. ft.

Carol Ott at the Fair Housing Action Center of MD is a good resource for navigating landlord-tenant disputes from the tenant's point of view. Go here and fill out the form.

If you're interested in living within Baltimore City limits, you could try to find something up in the Roland Park EMS district - there are some smaller SFHs with yards and spacious rowhouses in Keswick and Evergreen, and you would be sending your kid to one of the best elementary/middle schools in the city (and then hopefully on to City/Poly/BSA, which are all well-regarded citywide public high schools). Something like this. City houses tend to have lower purchase prices but higher property tax bills than comparable houses in Baltimore County.

I don't know as much about the county (and surrounding suburban counties) as some other folks on here will, but I have heard very good things about the family-friendliness of Catonsville, Rodgers Forge/Towson, Ellicott City, and Columbia. Hopefully others can fill you in on those.

Where will you be working? What's your budget to spend on a house? Do you prefer a more urban, suburban, or rural environment? There are plenty of family-friendly neighborhoods with decent schools in the area - a little more information will help narrow things down.

The answer to most of these questions is 'it depends', but I'll try to answer them as best I can.

> Are wages typical of the rent?

It depends how much you're making and where you want to live. If you're making $15/hr, you're going to struggle to find a place without roommates more or less anywhere in the city. If you're making more than $75k/year, you should be fine to rent a 1BR in a good neighborhood. Housing costs are comparatively low in Baltimore as opposed to other NE cities, though they have been going up recently.

> Should I immediately get cameras and an alarm if living in a home with a street entrance?

If it makes you feel safer, by all means, but I don't think cameras + an alarm are strictly necessary in a lot of the neighborhoods this sub is going to end up recommending to you. If you're in a rougher area, though, they're definitely worth their while.

> Is parking generally included in apartment complexes?

I'm not sure, but I don't think so - friends who have lived in apartment buildings downtown say it's generally $100-150/month extra, if it's offered at all.

> Is crime in the city getting better?

Short answer: not really. The vast majority of the shootings in the city are between folks (overwhelmingly young, Black, and male) involved in the drug trade. If you are not involved in the drug trade and don't spend a lot of time in neighborhoods where drugs are openly dealt, your chances of getting shot are vanishingly low. Unfortunately the rates of muggings, robberies, and carjackings are quite high and are much more dispersed across the city. Some people live here for decades and never have an issue with crime, others see quite a lot of it in a short period of time. You can minimize your chance of being a victim by being proactive, but one day your number might come up. That's Baltimore.

I mean, it's Baltimore, and occasionally bad things happen in good areas. If you adjust your crime reference frame to Baltimore standards, Bolton Hill is a safe area. I'm not saying you'll never be mugged in broad daylight just walking around, but I don't think of Bolton Hill as the sort of place where that's more likely to happen than any other part of Baltimore. In terms of how crime impacts you on a daily basis, package theft will dwarf the rest.

The MARC commute to DC is long but doable if you minimize the distance you have to travel on each end of the train. Bolton Hill is a five to ten minute walk from the train station. If your work is near Union Station, the DC commute would be plenty doable. I know plenty of folks who live here who commute to DC on the MARC train. Lastly, as part of the infrastructure bill that got passed last year, there are plans to rebuild the tunnel under West Baltimore to allow trains to go faster into Penn Station - the idea is that when it's done (in ten years) a BAL->DC express train would take just half an hour.

Edit: About the other commenter's real estate agent recommendations - I swear Jessica Dailey sells half the houses in this neighborhood. I'd agree with them solely based on the volume of business she does here - she's obviously doing something right.

Hello! Always good to see another Bolton Hill-er on here.

Vibrancy: it's definitely residential. I describe it as being close to a lot of things without being next to them. You're close to Mount Vernon and Station North for all your culture wants - most of the city's cultural institutions and a fair number of its restaurants/bars are within a twenty-minute walk - but you're very much not in the middle of it all. With the exception of when MICA classes let out, the sidewalks are never very busy, and they're pretty much devoid of foot traffic by 8pm.

Walkability: Most of the things I need for daily life are within walking distance, but they're never on the corner of the block and there might only be one walkable option. There are three restaurants, a café, and a kick-ass dive bar, but those are your only entertainment options. There's a Save-a-lot discount grocery store in the neighborhood as well as a pharmacy, but beyond that most of your shopping will be found fifteen to twenty minutes away by foot in Mt Vernon. As said before, lots of cultural institutions and restaurants/bars can be found in Mt Vernon and Station North. Druid Hill Park is also within a slightly longer walk, as is most of downtown. There's also great transit access - the light rail and the subway both stop on the edge of the neighborhood, as do several bus lines.

Safety: It's not bad, but it could be better. Bolton Hill is a fairly wealthy neighborhood that sits very close to one of the city's poorest areas. MICA has their own safety patrols that keep eyes on the street at all hours. However, there have been a rash of muggings and carjackings this year, and property crime (including catalytic converter theft) is always a concern. I would feel OK walking around past midnight (fellow white guy here), but I would absolutely not wear headphones or walk around with my face in my phone. You absolutely will not have a problem being LGBTQ+ here - there are plenty of non-straight folks around. Overall, I don't think crime is much worse than, say, Mt Vernon, but it's definitely not as safe as Roland Park or Locust Point.

Please don't let the above make you think I don't like it here - Bolton Hill is a wonderful neighborhood in a great location filled with lovely people. I met a guy a few months ago who had lived in the same house on Park Ave for eighty years - this is definitely an area people commit to. I'd love to stay as long as I can.

Just to clarify: next Sunday = tomorrow (December 11)! The cookie tour is always a great time.

One of the reasons why the dollar houses in Federal Hill, Ridgely's Delight, Otterbein, and Barre Circle were so successful was because the city had condemned them en masse to build a highway. When the highway didn't materialize, the city had contiguous blocks of vacant houses to sell at the same time. The density and continuity of the vacants was hugely advantageous for building healthy neighborhoods. Individual house-buyers could be confident that every other house on the block was being renovated to a similar standard and that every future neighbor was committed to living in the neighborhood for several years after renovations were finished. A completely renovated block surrounded by completely renovated blocks, all with a high rate of owner-occupancy, is a fantastic way to develop and maintain neighborhood stability.

Today, unfortunately, the city-owned vacants are scattered all over the place. You might see one or two (or several) on a block, but it's basically unheard of for the city to own every house or lot on a block. Large numbers of vacant properties in the city are in private hands - some are owned by speculators, others by out-of-towners, still others by owners who have died without a known heir. If tomorrow the city listed every vacant property it owns for $1, and somehow made financing available and affordable, you'd be helping on average one or two houses on a block - which, while a good thing, wouldn't be enough to create the completely renovated blocks surrounded by completely renovated blocks with high rates of homeownership throughout that are the markers of a healthy neighborhood.

To bring back the dollar house program and make it as successful as it was in the '70s, the city would need to figure out how to condemn entire neighborhoods at once while navigating a whole host of thorny, expensive problems that will make a lot of people very angry. I just don't see how that happens today.