Around Maryland

Stepping over needles on the sidewalk, Alexander Cruz walked up to the crumbling front stoop of a West Baltimore home. He craned his neck and looked through an open third-story window to see whether the roof had caved in yet. Cruz’s company had a deal to buy this vacant rowhouse in the New Southwest/Mount Clare neighborhood, one of at least 15,000 in Baltimore. He wanted to renovate it, rent it to a family and remove the eyesore from a block on West Pratt Street that otherwise appeared to be occupied. Then Cruz learned the property owner owed more than $100,000 in property taxes and water bills that had gone unpaid for years, snowballing debt until it became overwhelming. Homes saddled with such debt are called “ghost homes” because their debts are so large that no one will buy the homes, condemning them to a sort of housing purgatory. The vacant homes then become crime magnets and fire hazards.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it has rejected Pennsylvania’s latest plan for reducing its pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, finding it falls well short of the state’s commitment. The agency forced Pennsylvania to resubmit its plan last year, warning that its first try was insufficient. But the state’s newest attempt also missed the mark, the EPA said, failing to account for 9.3 million pounds of nitrogen reductions that the state is supposed to achieve under a 2025 deadline.

The state park service’s superintendent and two local park managers are no longer employed by the state amid ongoing scrutiny of the agency’s culture and the criminal indictment of the Gunpowder Falls State Park manager. Gregg Bortz, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources that includes the park service, said Monday that superintendent Nita Settina, regional manager Steve McCoy and Gunpowder Falls assistant manager Dean Hughes were no longer with the agency.

Baltimore is again approaching a grim milestone in homicides for the eighth consecutive year. As of Monday afternoon, 299 people have been killed in the city so far this year. Since the weekend, police recategorized two of this year’s killings. One was a February shootout that is now listed as a justifiable homicide. In that incident, Marcus Harris shot Edward Johnson, who fired back. Both died from their injuries, and the death of Harris was ruled justified.

As a huge soccer fan, devouring the Premier League and Champions League, Mike Steenstra dreamt of opening his own soccer bar — a place for like-minded fans to soak in a unique atmosphere. But when it came down to it, between raising his two children and affording a mortgage with his wife, Steenstra felt he needed to reach one rung lower on a ladder of dreams. So instead, he’ll settle for keeping his day job while organizing a week-long watch party for the World Cup. It’s not his full dream, but it’ll do. For now. “Soccer bar was the goal,” Steenstra said, “and World Cup Pop Up was what it became eventually.” At the SoFive indoor soccer complex in Columbia, Steenstra has organized an event that encapsulates a World Cup experience.

Baltimoreans prepping for Thanksgiving dinner can add one more item to the shopping list this year: higher prices. Rising costs for everything from turkey to cans of pumpkin are putting a strain on budgets as the country continues to deal with burgeoning inflation rates. Overall inflation was 7.7% in October, according to the Consumer Price Index, which tracks the fluctuating costs of goods and services. The growth in grocery prices was even more substantial, at 12.4%. “It’s a real thing that it’s going to be more expensive,” said Laurence Ball, a professor of economics at the Johns Hopkins University. “There’s been inflation in general, but [the increasing cost of] food at home has been faster than inflation, and certainly faster than people’s wages have been growing.”