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Vacant Property Conversions in Baltimore: Effects on Mental Health Dustin Fry* Dustin Fry Michelle C. Kondo Kristin Mmari
Visible signs of neighborhood disinvestment, including unmaintained vacant properties, have been shown to negatively affect mental health, with Black residents of economically-deprived neighborhoods being among the most affected. However, vacant properties also present an opportunity to create publicly-accessible pocket parks, community gardens, and playgrounds in neighborhoods that lack access to greenspace. In Baltimore City, there are over 25,000 vacant lots and an additional 17,000 abandoned buildings. As city agencies and community-based organizations have restored some of these spaces, Project VITAL (Vacant Lots to Transform Adolescent Lives) has been implemented to study the impacts of greening vacant lots on the health of adolescents. Although positively identifying vacant lots from observations or secondary data can be unreliable, the City of Baltimore maintains databases of recent building demolitions, so outcomes from newly-created vacant lots can be assessed over time. This analysis uses mapped records of 1,143 building demolitions in Baltimore, Maryland conducted between 2009 and 2017 to quantify the effect of vacant property conversions on adolescent mental health. We are conducting longitudinal virtual audits of Google Street View imagery at demolition sites to categorize the outcomes of building demolitions over time (e.g., the creation of an unmaintained vacant lot, a greened vacant lot, or the replacement of a demolished building with a new building), and to assess the content and quality of sites before and after building demolitions. Audits will conclude in March 2024. Changes to lots will be used to predict changes in adolescent mental health outcomes in subsequent years. Pilot audits of 50 vacant lots found a median of six images per site, with imagery dates ranging from November 2007 to May 2022. Six sites experienced significant improvements in rater-assessed overall quality over time, with changes such as the installation of garden plots and playground equipment. Two sites experienced significant declines in quality, with changes including previously-maintained vegetation becoming overgrown. Maintaining vacant lots after building demolitions may provide an opportunity to improve access to health-promoting greenspace in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods.