Housing dream or budget nightmare? Inside Mayor Scott’s $3B plan to fix Baltimore’s vacants

Mayor Brandon Scott had the crowd right where he wanted them. He told a rapt audience in December what so many had waited so long to hear: Baltimore finally had a big plan to address the city’s vacant housing epidemic. To pull it off, the mayor and the city must convince the revenue-strapped state to do something unprecedented: contribute nearly $1 billion over 15 years and give Baltimore control of a portion of the sales tax collected in the city.