LOW-ENDRENTALHOUSINGTHEFORGOTTENSTORY INBALTIMORE’SHOUSINGBOOMSandra J. NewmanFUNDED BY THE ABELL FOUNDATIONTHE URBAN INSTITUTE 2100 M Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037Tel: (202) 261-5687 Fax: (202) 467-5775Web: www.urban.org NEWMANLOW-ENDRENTALHOUSING LOW-ENDRENTALHOUSINGTHEFORGOTTENSTORY INBALTIMORE’SHOUSINGBOOMSandra J. NewmanFUNDED BY THE ABELL FOUNDATION Copyright © August 2005. The Urban Institute. All rights re-served. Except for short quotes, no part of this book may bereproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by informa-tion storage or retrieval system, without written permission fromthe Urban Institute. The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy researchand educational organization that examines the social, economic,and governance problems facing the nation. The views expressedare those of the author and should not be attributed to the UrbanInstitute, its trustees, or its funders. CONTENTSAcknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vExecutive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viiThe Status of Low-End Rental Housing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Baltimore City Renters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Vacancy Rates and Abandonment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Rents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Affordability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Housing Quality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Neighborhood Quality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Rental Housing Owners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Federally Assisted Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22What All These Numbers Tell Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25What Should Be Done? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Addressing the Affordability Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Addressing the Combined Problems of Affordabilityand Inadequacy with Project-Based Vouchers. . . . . . .29Addressing the Inadequacy Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Rental Housing Rehabilitation Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Technical Assistance for Small-Scale Owners. . . . . . . . . .52Reforming Small-Scale Rental Property Management . . . 52Neighborhood Targeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTSAn embarrassingly long time ago, Bob Embry, president of theAbell Foundation, asked me to write a paper on the low-endrental market in Baltimore and what might be done about it. Thisseemed like a reasonably straightforward, small research task atthe time, but it has turned out to be anything but straightforwardor small. What happened?There is no way to address this topic competently and accu-rately without solid, hard data and, as it turned out, such hardevidence was often either nonexistent or difficult to assemble.That I was ultimately able to develop sufficient data to producethis paper owes everything to the help I received from a numberof exceptional city and state staff. One unexpected benefit of car-rying out this study was working with such talented, professionalindividuals as Alexis Johns, Steve Janes, Brenda Davies, JohnGreiner, Tom Stosur, Linda B. Allen, Peter Matthews, Tim Goet-zinger, Thom Mullaney, and Michelle Thomas. This is only apartial list; everyone who provided data included in this analysisis cited in footnotes and included in the reference list, and I amenormously grateful to them all. This paper could not have been produced without the assis-tance of an able team that included two of my very talentedformer students: Jonathan Lo, then a Johns Hopkins undergrad-uate; and Rachel Brash, then a graduate student in our Master’sProgram in Public Policy; along with David Kantor, my long-suffering data programmer; Laura Vernon-Russell, a whiz at pro-duction logistics; Felicity Skidmore, a remarkably insightfuleditor; and last but hardly least, Amy Robie, the best researchassistant imaginable.I am delighted to have had the opportunity to work, onceagain, with the Urban Institute Press, which always does a mas-terful publication job.Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the Abell Foundation forsponsoring this research, and thank Bob Embry, Beth Harber,and Gil Sandler for their insights and their perseverance.v EXECUTIVESUMMARYRecent headlines in the Baltimore Sunproclaim that “real estate’srising tide” has hit Baltimore’s home prices.1At the oppo