The Baltimore City Council's Housing &
Community Development Committee will be holding hearings this week on two
subjects which you might find of interest.
This Wednesday, January 9 at 5:00 pm,
representatives from Baltimore Housing will update the City Council on the
progress of the Mayor’s Vacants to Value initiative, which focuses on vacant
houses in our communities. The initiative is a set of six strategies that
seek to streamline the disposition of city-owned properties, streamline code
enforcement in stronger markets, facilitate investment in emerging markets,
provide targeted home buying incentives, support large-scale redevelopment in
distressed areas, and demolish and maintain severely distressed blocks where no
other strategies would be effective. If you can't attend the hearing, you can
find more information about Vacants to Value on the Baltimore Housing
website: http://www.baltimorehousing.org/vacants_to_value.aspx
This Thursday, January 10 at
1:00 pm, the committee will hear 12-0077R, Request for State Action –
Community Association Standing. This resolution, introduced by Councilwoman
Mary Pat Clarke, seeks to empower Baltimore City communities to address zoning
disputes by allowing community associations to appeal zoning decisions to the
BMZA or the court system. While other Maryland jurisdictions have given
community associations the right to pursue zoning appeals in courts, the state
has not extended this right to Baltimore City. This places a great burden on
individual property owners to utilize personal time and resources in court to
address zoning issues that may affect an entire community. The full text of the
resolution is available here: http://legistar.baltimorecitycouncil.com/attachments/9900.pdf
All hearings are held in Council Chambers on the
4th floor of City Hall, which is located at 100 N. Holliday Street.
I hope you can join us!
Councilman Bill Henry
Chair, Housing & Community Development
Committee
Baltimore City Council
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment