Greater Baltimore Committee seeks $100 million from institutions for vacant housing

The Greater Baltimore Committee announced Tuesday that it is seeking $100 million from private institutions to help finance struggling real estate projects in Baltimore, money that would sit alongside the $1.2 billion the city and state are already providing. The group, led by president and CEO Mark Anthony Thomas, is calling the vehicle a funders' consortium.

Its target is the city's vacant stock: an estimated 11,800 vacant or abandoned houses plus, in GBC's phrasing, tens of thousands of vacant lots, which the committee totals at roughly 37,000 properties. GBC is working with the housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners to hammer out the private capital strategy and its implementation, with funds to be made available primarily through financial institutions taking part in the program ahead of a November launch.

The money is meant for projects whose construction or rehabilitation costs exceed what the finished property is worth, a condition the organizations involved believe seems to limit developers' avenues for more conventional financing. GBC's stated goal is neighborhoods in which private investment no longer depends on government and nonprofit programs. "This is an important next step in building the private sector support needed to strengthen Baltimore's neighborhoods," Thomas said, adding that institutions looking to make an impact in Baltimore get a way to collaborate through GBC and support the projects and neighborhoods driving its revitalization.

Against the public commitment, the private ask is small. Twelve dollars of committed city and state capital for every dollar GBC hopes to raise from institutions comes to about 8 percent of a $1.3 billion total if the full amount arrives, and spread across those 37,000 properties it is roughly $2,700 apiece. That per-property average misdescribes the ambition: the point of a pool that size is to place money where a modest slice of capital decides whether a project moves.

Mayor Brandon Scott, in a statement, called private-public partnerships critical to delivering investment and opportunity to every neighborhood, and said the impact of support from GBC and its private-sector partners shows up every day, particularly with generational challenges like the vacants crisis.

After the November launch, the number worth watching is how many of the 37,000 properties the money reaches.