Baltimore property owner finds woman living in vacant East Baltimore rowhome

A bed with flashing disco-style lights was set up inside a vacant East Baltimore rowhome on the 2900 block of McElderry Street before Robert “Bobby” Williams ordered the woman out. The house sits in Elwood Park, blocks from Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the discovery added a new example to the city’s worsening fight over vacant properties and unauthorized occupants.

The case has become part of a larger pattern Baltimore property owners say is no longer just trespassing, but a more organized takeover tactic. In recent Baltimore-area disputes, owners have said intruders presented fake or fraudulent lease paperwork to justify staying in homes, a claim that has pushed Maryland lawmakers to toughen penalties for counterfeit agreements.

In the 2026 legislative session, lawmakers advanced two anti-squatting measures: one would make fraudulent lease agreements a felony, and another would launch a blockchain-based study aimed at helping law enforcement verify property ownership. The push followed months of attention on suspected squatter homes, including viral video posts that helped drive Spotlight on Maryland’s investigation in Northwest Baltimore.

Baltimore’s vacancy problem gives those disputes a wider backdrop. City and state sources say Baltimore has roughly 13,000 vacant and abandoned houses and structures and more than 20,000 vacant lots. The Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Initiative was created to help redevelop those properties through acquisition, stabilization, demolition and other pre-development work, but the scale of the vacancy stock also leaves many homes exposed to break-ins, illegal occupancy and fire risk.

That risk has already turned deadly or nearly so. Baltimore fire investigators believed a 4-alarm fire on March 10, 2025, began in a vacant property that may have been occupied by squatters. Separately, on February 27, 2024, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said six people ran a Baltimore criminal organization tied to one murder, two attempted murders, several commercial burglaries and robberies, and at least 35 carjackings, a case that underscored how property crime can overlap with broader violence.

The McElderry Street case also comes as Gov. Wes Moore announced $50 million for the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Initiative, a fresh infusion into a problem that has shadowed neighborhoods from East Baltimore to West Baltimore for years. With empty homes scattered across the city and fraudulent lease claims becoming more common in recent disputes, the stakes for owners, neighbors and tenants continue to rise each time a vacant property is left unchecked.