As city workers cleared an East Baltimore alley of discarded mattresses and loose garbage recently, a resident called out to the Department of Public Works crew from his rear porch: “You all got to do this like every other day!”

The Solid Waste bureau’s Special Services section cleans the alley north of East Baltimore Street in the Baltimore Highlands neighborhood about once a week, and it’s coated in trash each time.

“We don’t have the manpower” to keep up, a crew member said.

Baltimore has long struggled with litter, a problem made worse by larger city issues like vacant housing and disinvestment. The cleanup at the East Baltimore alley was routine for Special Services laborers, who serve on the city’s front lines as it tries to combat trash. In addition to litter hot spots, Special Services crews respond to 311 complaints for dirty streets and alleys as well as graffiti.

Data suggests that the city took slightly longer to handle trash complaints last year than the year before, with the median time to close those 311 requests increasing by about a day in 2024.

Officials say the problems with garbage are heavily fueled by residents: “If we had more people who took pride in where they lived, it’d be helpful,” Solid Waste Superintendent Robin Ghee said during the alley cleanup.

But it also comes down to manpower at the solid waste bureau, which has been plagued by staffing problems. Some argue that wages need to increase to compete with other jurisdictions and private trash haulers.

In troubled neighborhoods, complaints outnumber people

Carrollton Ridge has long topped the list of neighborhoods with the most trash complaints reported to the city’s 311 line. Reports of dirty streets and alleys, illegal dumping, properties in need of sanitation and other trash issues made up 42% of the neighborhood’s 311 calls in 2024.

The Southwest Baltimore neighborhood, just over a mile from the city’s core, is home to hundreds of vacant homes, as well as empty lots, where abandoned residences were demolished. Many of those grassy lots are now littered with trash: broken porcelain toilets, dirty mattresses, cracked liquor bottles and leaky garbage bags — giving others license to litter there, as well.

Although the number of 311 complaints for trash-related problems citywide decreased by 9.6% last year, down to around 116,000, many of the residential neighborhoods with chronic dumping problems have not seen much improvement, and others have continued to decline.

Since 2024, Carrollton Ridge has had the most trash complaints per resident, followed by Penn North and Midtown-Edmondson. Those three neighborhoods have consistently topped that list for at least the past seven years. And in Midtown-Edmondson and Penn North, reports continue to increase, reaching over 120 reports for every 100 residents each year — more than one complaint per person. That’s more than six times the average of every other neighborhood.

After two consecutive years of having over 4,500 trash complaints, Carrollton Ridge’s total dropped to just over 3,600 reports in 2024.

Residential neighborhoods with chronic trash problems often also face other symptoms of historical disinvestment, such as disproportionately high crime and a large amount of vacant residences, which can facilitate drug trade. Carrollton Ridge, Penn North and Midtown-Edmondson together make up more than a 10th of the vacant building notices issued in Baltimore since 2004, according to city data. Census data indicates that the three neighborhoods’ total housing stock decreased by 28% from 2010 to 2020 — in the same time, the number of vacant units nearly doubled.

Asked about their biggest problem areas, residents and leaders in all three neighborhoods brought up vacant lots that have become dumping grounds. The unsightly look lowers property values and attracts rodents to occupied homes nearby.

The city knows about the dumping ground on Flora Street in Penn North, but the trash always returns “just as soon as somebody comes,” one resident said.

The Rev. Darryl Watts said that, walking through the alleys near his Carrollton Ridge church, “you still see a wealth of trash.”

The pastor of New Tabernacle Baptist Church participates in neighborhood cleanups, though he said he’s not sure how DPW could adjust and catch up with the volume of litter — maybe by altering their pickup patterns or the frequency of cleanups.

“What may work in one community may not work in another,” he said. Education from DPW in trash-burdened communities could help residents become more cognizant of how trash affects their communities, he said, and more cameras in dumping spots could help catch illegal dumpers.

The public works department said in a statement that, although it doesn’t designate specific zones for chronic trash issues, it prioritizes “areas with persistent challenges, responding swiftly to service requests and community reports.”

The city also provides cleaning services in 42 neighborhoods through the Clean Corps program, which partners with community associations and nonprofits to address known trash hot spots and work orders submitted through 311. The city committed over $14 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for nonprofits to hire and train residents to pick up trash at $15 per hour under that program.

Staffing issues

A watchdog investigation of the city’s public works department, released this month, found that a “lack of proper staffing levels” was partially to blame for the solid waste bureau’s operational issues. The report noted that Baltimore’s wages for solid waste employees faced heavy competition from those of nearby jurisdictions and private garbage collection firms.

The union representing Baltimore’s municipal employees, now negotiating a new multiyear agreement, echoed that message.

As far as wages in the region, city employees have been “the lowest on the totem pole,” said AFSCME Local 44 President Dorothy Bryant.

“The city needs to pay them to do the work,” Bryant said.

Solid waste workers’ base salaries start between $40,669 and $44,233, according to the Baltimore inspector general’s report. The public works department said in its response to the report that it had conducted a pay study and intended to implement new salary scales in fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1, subject to negotiations with the union. It also noted that its vacancy rate was the lowest in three years.

The median amount of time for the city to close out trash-related 311 requests increased by one day in 2024 after holding flat at two days for several years. Mean response times indicate that the city is acting faster than before the pandemic began in 2020, but also show that the average time to address a complaint increased in 2024.

Though trash cleanup response times had long been exceptionally slower in Southwest Baltimore than in other parts of the city, and in lower-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods, the city has seen a reversal in that trend since 2020. Many of those neighborhoods now have 311 response times on par with the city average, while cleanup times in several North Baltimore neighborhoods with fewer complaints have jumped.

Waste crews “work tirelessly to keep our neighborhoods clean, but we can’t do it alone,” the city’s Department of Public Works said in a statement, adding that “a cleaner city requires a shared effort between the City, community partners, and residents.”

The department said that residents “play a critical role” and can report illegal dumping in progress to 911 or report an existing dumping site to 311.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com, on X as @DanBelson_ or on Signal as @danbels.62.