Suburban Decline Becoming a Reality

By: Alicia Schuller, Marketing Coordinator, NHS of Baltimore

One lonely, occupied home standing in a sea of abandoned row homes, stretching block after block— children and families sitting on their front steps next to graffitied shells of homes with boarded up windows and crumbling walls. Residents of Baltimore city are all too familiar with these images.

Surprisingly, the images that once plagued metropolitan centers are becoming increasingly common in the outlying suburbs. Yes, the suburbs. New studies and information on suburban decline indicate that McMansions are sitting vacant and acre large plots of land are going undeveloped. According to a story in the Baltimore Sun, many experts contribute this shift in paradigm to the rise of the housing boom and its consequential bust, followed by the current subprime mortgage and lending crisis.

Furthermore, the rising cost of fuel, food and other essentials have caused people to search for alternatives in order to tighten their belts. Urban centers offer public transportation and close proximity to work and leisurely needs, cutting down on commute times and gasoline consumption and putting more money back in the pockets of Americans. The trend of out-migration over the last 40 years appears to be reversing little by little. This is good news for cities and urban centers, however its not so good for the suburbs.

Studies consistently show that crime is higher in communities with a large percentage of vacant and abandoned housing and vacant McMansions and housing developments can no longer hide from this statistic. According to the Washington Post, homes that sit empty due to foreclosure or difficulty being sold by developers have become new safe havens for drug dealers and squatters. After a home is foreclosed, it could sit vacant and un-chaperoned for months before it is auctioned off. This allows drug dealers and traffickers to move into the home unnoticed, using it as a drug lab.

As foreclosures continue to rise, vacant housing in the suburbs is going to create more crime and social problems in suburban areas that have not typically seen these problems before.