Joe Weisenthal

So you can work with private developers, as you mentioned.

I guess they can choose to renovate them.

They can choose to demolish them.

How do those conversations actually go?

Okay.

Wait, why do people think that TIFF only works for contiguous areas?

So one of the other things you're doing is taxing vacant land.

And we've done, you know, we are vacant houses, I should say, we've done episodes on odd lots about a land tax.

Walk us through like the pushback that you got to that plan.

Why do people seem opposed to taxing empty buildings or empty land?

Who would have thought that incentives matter?

Crazy, crazy stuff.

Can I ask how how does safety play into actually attracting capital back into the city?

Because I get that, you know, if you're a business or a developer and you're thinking of putting money into Baltimore, you want to see the crime rate go down.

But like, do people get really specific about it?

Do they have like targets like, OK, once homicides are under like 100 per year, we'll go in.

Very familiar New York City problem as well.

So I have a very technical question going back to the vacant homes issue.

But one of the things I saw on the Baltimore subreddit was someone was saying like, we would get more buyers of vacant homes or more action on vacant homes if the water bills were not such an issue.

So what's the deal with the water bills?