The city of Baltimore, Maryland, is giving people a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a home for just $1. A newly authorized initiative would enable the local administration to sell hundreds of empty properties to locals at a great discount; these properties are now owned by the government. In March, the five-member Board of Estimates of the city—the mayor, the president of the council, the comptroller, the city solicitor, and the director of public works—voted 4-1 to approve a plan to implement a new price structure for abandoned homes held by the government. One person who disagreed was Nick Mosby, the president of the city council.
The fixed pricing program is a component of the recently authorized pricing system, which is part of an initiative known as BuyIntoBmore. Community land trusts and individuals intending to use the property as their principal dwelling are eligible to purchase a home for a mere $1 under this program. For $1,000, a vacant home might be purchased by a nonprofit with less than fifty employees; for $3,000, it would be offered to developers or organizations with fifty or more employees.
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Buyers must be willing to invest $90,000 in the home’s restoration to be eligible for the $1 home. Applications are being processed on a rolling basis and are open to interested applicants beginning on April 1. Once an application passes the vetting procedure, they will be awarded the properties. According to the city’s Department of Housing & Community Development, “applications will be reviewed by order of submission” if all applicants for a given property pass the vetting procedure.
Although Mosby, who is the president of the city council, did suggest a $1 housing program, he voted against the bill in March due to his belief that it did not give present Baltimore residents enough priority. Additionally, he was concerned that towns might see the displacement of lower-income residents due to the increased purchasing and renovation of surrounding properties.
During the vote, he stated, “This is a really bad policy” if the fundamental competency about property disposition is affordability, affordable house ownership, equity, and all the other wonderful things that we like to say. “The rights of people in these communities are not protected or prioritized by this policy, which is why it is bad.”
Earlier versions of this software were also available. True, several Italian towns notably sold properties for one euro in the late 2010s, but in the 1970s Baltimore tried a comparable deal and sold homesteaders’ dwellings for one dollar. In addition, in January of this year, the city of Newark, New Jersey, sponsored a lottery to choose certain citizens to purchase houses for one dollar each.
