Two bills that would have helped establish a land bank authority in Baltimore, allowing the city to foreclose on certain vacant lots and properties, did not garner enough support at a City Council committee hearing Tuesday, and members will recommend against its passage at the next council meeting.

The move signals yet another blow to efforts to reverse the city’s vacant housing crisis. More than 13,000 dwellings are empty in the city, with most of them located in areas with “high concentrations of both vacancy and poverty,” according to the Abell Foundation. A 2023 report supported by funding from Abell and others found that vacant homes cost the city more than $200 million annually in direct expenses as well as lost tax revenue. Many of the properties are magnets for crime or pose significant safety hazards: Three city firefighters were killed in 2022 in a fire at a vacant house.

“It’s very clear that we got where we are because of the racist housing policies that were passed in this very chamber in 1911 and spread like wildfire across the nation that spawned a lot of disinvestment and racism … where people are living,” Councilwoman Odette Ramos said during Tuesday’s hearing before the council’s Ways and Means Committee.

Ramos is the lead sponsor of both bills, which were introduced in March 2023.

“We know that what is happening [with vacant housing] is affecting people’s health, it is affecting our crime rates, it is affecting really the quality of life for so many of our residents in Baltimore City,” Ramos said.

Land banks are typically quasi-governmental agencies, such as public authorities or nonprofits, that acquire properties to clear title issues, consolidate parcels and hand the properties over to qualified developers. In 2009, Democratic former Mayor Sheila Dixon sought to create a Baltimore land bank, but it failed due to City Council members’ concerns about transparency and financial feasibility.

Ramos advocated for a 2019 state law when she was executive director of the Community Development Network of Maryland that allowed in rem foreclosure, which essentially permits the city to sue a property, rather than file a lawsuit against a person. One of her bills would have allowed the land bank authority, once established, to “initiate and participate” in certain in rem foreclosures on behalf of the city.

What we’re proposing is simply another tool in the toolbox to be able to go to scale and work together to make sure that we are acquiring these properties and getting them to people who will do something with them with community input,” Ramos said.

While supporters say a land bank would aid the housing crisis in the city, reducing the number of vacant homes and helping the most impacted neighborhoods, opponents argue that it duplicates the work of the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Some city agencies also raised concerns about accountability, as the land bank authority would not be a city agency, and concerns about overlap with DHCD that could take over the agency’s property acquisition and disposition processes. Ramos said the land bank is not designed to take that process away, but rather add to the capacity of DHCD.

Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy said “we definitely agree” that there is a need to scale this idea, innovate for efficiency and efficacy and ensure programs are funded so properties are put in the hands of people who will make neighborhoods stronger. But DHCD is already doing this, Kennedy said.

“We have the capacity to decrease vacants at this moment faster than any agency or entity has had in the City of Baltimore in the last 20 years,” Kennedy said.

Ray Baylor, who is involved with community organizations around the Midtown-Edmondson neighborhood said as he reaches his senior years, he is tired of waiting for the issue of vacant homes to be fixed. It is “incumbent” on the city to do something, Baylor said, while building trust with communities that those actions will benefit them.

Others testified in support of land banks and discussed their success in other parts of the country, the need for collaboration and the ability to focus on equity and address areas that have been hit hardest.

Bree Jones of Parity Homes, an organization focused on the issues of gentrification and displacement, expressed that, while many recognize the issue of blighted homes, there is no consensus on how to tackle it.

“It’s clear that we all want to tackle hyper-vacancy in the [area of the city known as the] Black Butterfly. There’s no debate there,” Jones said. “But today demonstrates that there’s some healthy tension about how we should tackle that challenge.”

The bills didn’t receive enough votes by the council members present, so they will be reported unfavorably at the next City Council meeting.