The Whole Blocks Toolkit

A Roadmap for Rebuilding Baltimore Neighborhoods

In 2022, ReBUILD Metro and BUILD engaged national housing experts to complete a new study on Baltimore’s citywide vacancy crisis. Their report, Whole Blocks, Whole City, analyzes the crisis in unprecedented detail and illustrates why it has been so intractable. The report also offers bold and actionable strategies to tackle the crisis at scale: using ReBUILD’s successful revitalization of East Baltimore communities as an exemplar, the study stresses the need for a “whole blocks” model that would change both how we examine abandonment in Baltimore and how we fix it.

As ReBUILD continues striving to transform communities in East Baltimore, we are committing ourselves to advancing “whole blocks” solutions that resolve abandonment in communities citywide. Our online Whole Blocks Toolkit will offer an expanding series of tools and resources to help mission-driven redevelopers of abandoned rowhouses plan, finance, and execute strategies to resolve abandonment across entire blocks in order to restore and revitalize the neighborhoods they serve. 

We encourage you to review the below Story Map to learn more about the vacancy crisis and our model for overcoming it—then review our tools and methods for executing our model, from creating strong community-led revitalization plans, to managing scattered-site redevelopment, to restoring dilapidated properties into decent homes for families.