Voting is the way to do that, not term limits. Few people vote in Baltimore, so it's easier than average to do.

It's more than that. If this passes, most current elected positions will be up at the 8 year mark. They aren't just looking to buy politicians, they get a chance to buy a set of politicians.

Yeah, good info, I'm just making a restaurant joke.

They mostly speak Spanish BOH in a lot of places...

Real convincing.

If there are actually fragile men, then it logically follows that pointing one out isn't necessarily projection.

Uhhh... You've seriously never encountered fragile masculinity? Someone who won't drive a certain car or eat certain foods or wear certain things because they think it somehow reflects on their manhood? There are plenty of fragile men out there, it's not just projecting.

I don't mind paying for our infrastructure, but a quarter of the cost is just in bill pay fees because there's no way to consolidate these associated properties and pay the bills together.

I think it is a storm water fee, but frankly I haven't done anything to address the problem besides complain. I'll check out my options, thanks!

What does that entail? Does it get me out of ownership or just the water bill?

My home and my parking pad across the alley are two separate parcels of property purchased as a pair. That means I get a water bill for my home, plus a separate 12$ bill with a 3$ service charge for an 18x18 square of concrete with absolutely no water infrastructure.

Sure.

>I'm not saying we shouldn't get the lead out of these places, but to say tent cities are preferable shows ignorance of the needs of the homeless

>I truly don't understand this weird obsession with the abandoned city blocks full of homes that look like a warzone.

You're the one with that obsession. No specific location was ever given for where in the city this might happen. You're the one assuming that's where it would be.

Winter is coming. If you asked someone about to face it without shelter, lead poisoning would be very far down their list of concerns. I'm not saying we shouldn't get the lead out of these places, but to say tent cities are preferable shows ignorance of the needs of the homeless.

I've visited them plenty. I've gone door to door talking to poor folks in just about every area of the city. I help run a community garden in Harlem Park. I've personally observed the purchase, renovation, and occupation of a vacant as described in this article. I've helped establish community land trusts and I helped fight to secure a permanent source of funding from the city for projects like this. How about you take a look at your own ignorance before you assume mine?

Plenty of people are living decent lives in these neighborhoods you're writing off. There are plenty of problems to be solved, sure, but you've got the audacity to accuse me of ignorance when you don't know a damn thing about the people actually living in places like this.

>So you're saying the author didn't intend to refer to abandoned city blocks despite referring to them in both words and the picture?

Here is what you said:

>Because that picture IS a picture of the mentioned "abandoned city neighborhoods."

That's false. The article is not referring to the homes in the picture, it's referring to vacants in general. The article does not reference any specific locations this would happen whatsoever, so all your criticism is based on facts you invented yourself.

There are plenty of habitable, good vacants in this city to be filled.

Ok, but do you understand that this is a news article and the vacants in that picture are an editor illustrating the content of the article, and not literally the exact units they're "considering"? You're just making up your own facts here about where, when, and how this would be done.

So your opposition to this policy is rooted in the condition of the vacant in the picture? Do I have that right?

What does that matter?

> Those that can are usually sold at tax sales. > >But you would hope it would help local homeless before all others.

And there's the benefit. People are dismissing this idea based on the bad vacants, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

That's false. Only buildings with historic designation are subject to regulations like that.

Typical unfounded, unspecific pessimism from someone offering no solutions. Yes, many vacant properties are not habitable, but many absolutely are. Vacants in poor condition are not an argument against this type of policy until we've run out of good ones.

We wouldn't be the first. It's not such a radical new idea anymore.

The Affordable Housing Trust Fund supports what it says it does and is funded by a tax on housing speculation - any sale by someone who doesn't live there to someone who also won't live there. Currently this tax only applies to transactions over $1m, and there aren't that many. We wanted the threshold lower when we passed it, but it can be changed now.

This takes money from the absentee owners behind most blighted vacants and uses it to create affordable housing, help the elderly who can't afford home repairs stay in their homes, ect. The work of winning this, funding it, and setting the right conditions on using the money has been done. Now let's turn up the heat and make the law what it originally should have been.

I do not have an exact figure on what the dollar amount should be, I'll defer to more wonky experts on that.