Baltimore leaders face zoning fight as state housing rules intensify

Baltimore’s next housing fight is not just about where new apartments go. It is about who gets to decide, with City Hall, state officials and neighborhood residents now pulling on the same map in different directions.

Mayor Brandon Scott set that struggle in motion on May 12, 2025, when he announced the Housing Options and Opportunity Act, a package aimed at expanding access to multi-family homes and lowering housing costs. One of its key pieces, City Council Bill 25-0066, would create a new category of low-density, multi-family housing in certain residential districts and rewrite parts of the zoning code that govern permitted and conditional uses, bulk and yard standards, and residential conversion standards.

The move comes as Baltimore City develops its first-ever Comprehensive Housing Plan, which officials say is meant to be action-oriented, data-driven and community-centered. The plan is being shaped by resident feedback and by earlier city work, including the Framework for Community Development and the city’s effort to eliminate vacant properties. That vacancy problem remains huge: Baltimore has about 13,000 vacant or abandoned buildings and about 20,000 vacant lots, a stock that city and state leaders see as the fastest path to new housing if it can be turned into occupied homes and productive development.

State pressure has added another layer. In April 2026, Gov. Wes Moore and transportation officials announced a Baltimore region transit-oriented development strategy centered on dense, mixed-use construction around transit stations and other state assets, including underused parking lots. The message from Annapolis is clear: build more housing near transit, and do it faster. For Baltimore, that raises a harder question of local control, since the same parcels that look ripe for development from a state planning perspective can sit inside long-settled neighborhoods where residents care deeply about building scale, parking, streetscape and neighborhood character.

City officials have tried to ease those concerns by launching a Housing Options and Opportunities interactive map that lets residents visualize the proposed zoning changes. But the map also underscores the scale of the change now underway. Baltimore’s housing debate is no longer only about vacant houses and empty lots. It is about whether the city can speed up development, hold rents in check and still preserve enough say for the blocks that will feel the changes first.