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Animanialmanac t1_itwg5oz wrote

You can look up any city address on Open Baltimore 311 request archives. My son and his girlfriend did this, they found one house had previously had a vacant notice, structural damage and basement flooding. The inspector never found anything related to that history. I know from experience once a house floods there is a lifelong need for monitoring and repair.

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planetarylaw t1_itwzomg wrote

This reminds me, when I was house hunting several years ago I saw SO MANY houses that had very obviously been flooded. You could smell the mold and/or bleach. I don't know if that's just because of my tight budget or what but I was blown away at the sheer number of houses in the area with severe water damage. I just did not expect that here.

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Animanialmanac t1_itxcdvr wrote

There is a problem with the city sewage pipes that pushes water back into houses, usually the basement. That’s what happened in my neighborhood. I used grant money from the neighborhood association to fix it but I know some rental properties didn’t do the repair installation, so the landlord relies on the tenant to deal with it. I also know multiple houses where the owners used their grant money to move away, they fixed their old house enough to sell but didn’t completely prevent the floods. This leaves many houses with mold, sewage leaks, and some become abandoned. It’s a tough situation, two homes on my block are empty now, the combination of flooding from the sewage pipes, increased crime, increased truck traffic makes it hard to attract new buyers when the old homeowners sell.

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20ooo t1_itztfa8 wrote

Hi, could you tell me how to navigate to the part of the Open Baltimore website where I can request 311 archives?

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Animanialmanac t1_iu0adp3 wrote

I put “311” in the search bar, and click the one with the year I want. A spreadsheet comes up that you can filter for your address. I use the one with the most recent data to see what’s going on with pot holes and downed trees in my block. https://data.baltimorecity.gov/datasets/e068dbf331cd4782b3248f75a88e2876

I think maybe I wrote it confusingly in my first comment. You are looking through the “311 request” archives, that’s what it’s called. You don’t request anything.

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