“Baltimore is still like a Third World country.”
Don't worry; the AmeriKan media will put a spit-shine to it.
"Census shows Baltimore’s population decline slowing" by William Selway, Bloomberg News / February 20, 2011
WASHINGTON — As factory jobs disappeared, so did the people and the merchant stalls that once lined the sidewalk outside the 19th-century Hollins Market....
The exodus, while not over, is slowing, according to 2010 Census data released recently. That may be a cause for celebration in a city that’s long struggled to shake a battered image that was showcased in HBO’s television crime drama “The Wire,” a stark portrait of an urban center in decline....
The report on Baltimore’s population comes after census data showed that Newark, New Jersey’s biggest city, reversed decades of population declines as a surge in Hispanic people drove the first gain in 60 years.
An influx of Hispanic residents also bolstered Baltimore’s population. While the number of black residents fell 5.8 percent to 392,938 and whites declined 13.6 percent to 174,120, the Hispanic population more than doubled to 25,960.
After the census report showed the slowing decline, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake issued a statement citing a 13 percent drop in fatal shootings last year, as well as two straight years of increased enrollment in the city’s public schools, the first back-to-back increase in decades.
“We have more work to do to get Baltimore growing again,” the mayor said. “We must continue to make progress on the core issues that matter most to Baltimore’s families: better schools, safer streets, and stronger neighborhoods.”
Baltimore, now home to money-management firms Legg Mason Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. as well as Constellation Energy Group Inc., began trying to revitalize its inner city in the 1970s. The economy was once driven by manufacturers such as Bethlehem Steel Corp.....
In the 1970s, then-mayor William Donald Schaefer sought to lure residents back by selling off city-owned homes for deep discounts to people who would fix them up.
In 1980, Rouse Co., which redeveloped the marketplace mall near Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, opened Harborplace on the Baltimore waterfront.
The collection of retail shops spearheaded the area’s shift from warehouses to offices and hotels, which revitalized neighborhoods around the Chesapeake Bay harbor. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Baltimore tore down high-rise housing projects that had become renowned as crime-ridden traps for the poor.
The foreclosure crisis has also taken its toll....
Donald Brand, a steelworker who lost his job in the manufacturing district Sparrows Point in June, said he’s seen little to celebrate in the city’s rejuvenation efforts. While there are pockets of improvement — such as the area around Hollins Market in the city’s southwestern district — he said other neighborhoods remained forsaken.
“You go just a few blocks north and it’s just as bad as it’s always been,” said Brand, 57, who has spent his life in Baltimore. “I’ve seen this city go from bad to bad, and it’s still going down.”
Baltimore’s vacancy rate for housing was 15.8 percent in 2010, up from 14.1 percent a decade ago, according to the census....
And with all those homeless people crawling the streets.
George Quinn, 53, was drawn to Baltimore three years ago from Washington by the low cost of living and has watched his neighborhood struggle to survive after the housing-market crash....
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Also see: Baltimore cuts Poe House funds
