Life is a lot cheaper in Baltimore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate

Baltimore is one of the most murderous cities in the world, surpassing even such well known crime-ridden shitholes as Kingston, Johannesburg and Port Moresby. Pretending that our violence issues are an overall US issue is dishonest in the extreme.

People that do shit like that should get multiple years in prison for threatening someone with a gun. Also, the gun in question was almost certainly illegal for him to carry.

> BCPD

It's BPD. BCPD is Baltimore County Police.

Thank you for stating it more eloquently than I could.

I was hoping you were from the National Zoo and were going to announce that they'd start renting out their pandas to clear bamboo the same way goats are used to clear weeds.

Some people want to make everything about race.

> Hold press conferences to pass his bullshit bills

Remember how he hyped his "Healing City" bill? God, what a load of fluffy BS nonsense.

That being said if it's a choice between Zeke Cohen and Nick Mosby, Zeke will get my vote in a heartbeat.

I guess that explains why his office has lost any interest in effective constituent service recently.

It's definitely MSG.

Defending a federal criminal case can be extraordinarily expensive. Many years ago there was an interview with Ed Norris where he explained how much it would have cost to effectively defend his case. If I recall correctly it was over $200k in early 2000s dollars.

I have no interest in defending MM, I despise her. You can be "indigent" in federal court without being poor though.

If the bottom picture were Baltimore the stream and the grass next to it would be choked with garbage and litter.

I'd be fine if we'd just increase sentences for people with previous felony convictions who are caught with illegal guns.

Anyone with a prior violent felony who's busted with a gun should get 10+ years since they're clearly still a huge danger to society.

> that hasn’t worked

Until the last few years crime rates in the United States had been dropping at a remarkable rate for decades, decades that just happened to coincide with the rise of so-called mass incarceration.

Violent criminals with guns destroy communities and increase violence.

Oh, I must have missed that on the menu.

DiPasquale's doesn't have chicken parm but they have veal or eggplant parm and everything they do is delicious.

Sounds like a justified shooting. There was a string of bad decisions here, all of the made by Rochester.

I did some quick number crunching. Between when we sold our old house (the one we considered turning into a rental property) and today the S&P 500 is up about 33%, and that includes 2022's drop. I am so glad we did not become landlords.

> hopefully u feel good about the choice u made

I wake up every morning thankful that I did not become a landlord.

Re: why it's a bad thing, buying a home in Baltimore is already relatively affordable compared to renting. That suggests that we need more rental homes, not more houses available for sale.

There are many reasons you want a robust rental market. Buying a house is not always better. The general rule of thumb is that you need to live in a house for seven years in order for the transactional costs to be worth it. Lots of people are not staying here for that long. Baltimore has a lot of grad students, medical residents, nurses working at big hospitals for the first few years of their careers and just people who don't want to stay in the city after having kids. People have become more mobile in general. If you want those mobile people to be part of your tax base for at least a few years then they need to have decent rental options.

> The tax loopholes and long term value of real estate make this game too appealing even with increased risk.

That's definitely not what I found when I looked into landlording. The realistic returns were not that great relative to the risk and hassle. Maybe for big institutional investors it's a different story but being a small time LL was a high-risk nightmare.

There are still requirements to participate in the Section 8 program though and a landlord could easily make sure they don't pass the government's inspection.

Section 8 is a mixed bag. For "professional" landlords who have a bunch of properties and understand the system well it can actually be great. Guaranteed payment, often highly stable tenants who rarely move, there are pros to it. OTOH for small-time landlord it forces you into a three-way business arrangement with the government and your tenant that can be a huge hassle. When we considered landlording there was no way I would've dealt with Section 8 tenants.

OP, this is the wrong place to have a rational discussion about landlording. All of the wannabe Maoists on here will act like you're evil for gasp wanting your property rights protected and trying to make a profit on an investment.

> It’s in general super easy to evict

That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long time.