With at least five vacant buildings collapsing in West Baltimore since March 28, including one that fell on and killed a man, city officials acted quickly to allay concerns that one of the dangerously slumped buildings was across from an elementary school.

The next day they razed 1625 North Payson Street, which is just opposite Matthew A. Henson Elementary School.

But their quick reaction and assurances that they are doing their best to protect citizens from the impact of nearly 17,000 vacants obscures the scope of the problem, especially when it comes to children.

About 68% of Baltimore’s vacant buildings are within a quarter of a mile of a public school, according to an analysis of publicly available data by civic blogger Justin Elszasz.

That works out to about 11,537 vacant buildings that children could potentially be walking past every day, says Elszasz, a mechanical engineer who crunches data about social and environmental issues in his spare time.

What does that mean for individual schools?

Elszasz’ analysis found 358 vacants within a quarter-mile radius of Matthew Henson Elementary at 1600 North Payson Street.

But that West Baltimore school’s grim numbers are topped by another’s: “The school with the most vacant buildings within a quarter of a mile is the Roots & Branches School with a whopping 722 vacant buildings surrounding it,” Elszasz said in his blog, The Training Set.

“Unfortunately it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s in West Baltimore, just a few blocks south of where Freddie Gray lived,” he adds in a post he titled “Bmore Schools Surrounded by Blight and Danger.”

“Context is everything and the story these data tells us about what it’s like to be a school-aged kid in Baltimore is harrowing.”

Hazardous Vacants “an Emergency”

Over the last year, politicians in City Hall and the Statehouse have been debating what to do about Baltimore’s desperately poor neighborhoods and focusing on one of the most glaring symbols of them – boarded-up, dilapidated rowhouses.

The city now spends $10 million a year on demolition, and the legislature this session approved millions more for additional Baltimore blight-clearing.

MAP of all of Baltimore’s vacants

How many vacant buildings are there?

Elszasz used the city’s official count of 16,897 vacant structures, last updated on March 21, but some groups say that official tally vastly undercounts the total.

With the recent blow-downs and fatality, calls for the city to speed up demolition plans have increased, with City Council members and candidates demanding the swift razing of the 500 buildings deemed most unstable.

Trying to articulate alternatives to demolition, Elszasz suggested offering some close-by lots or buildings to schools.

Once they were cleaned up and certified safe, he said, they could be used for greenhouses, gardens, art and sculpture classes or other activities.

He recognized that his idea would “hardly put a dent in the problem, but at least we’d be doing something with a few.”

Overall, he wrote in his his piece, which was posted months before the recent incidents, the situation dire. He cited studies that found abandoned buildings are not only safety hazards but “magnets for serious crime, including gang activity, drugs, murder, assault and rape.”

“The obvious concern is the exposure of children to serious hazards in and around these lots and buildings,” he said. “Based on the numbers this is nothing short of an emergency of the highest order.”

Campaign Signs and “RIP Tyree”

Yesterday that danger was apparent outside Roots & Branches at 1807 Harlem Avenue.

Directly across the street from the school stands a block of occupied and boarded-up buildings, including one on the corner of Kirby Lane with blown-out windows and a sagging porch roof projecting out over the sidewalk.

In full view of the grassy area in the front of the school is the bedraggled backside of another vacant, with jagged broken window glass and vines overtaking the side of it.

Around the corner on Fulton Avenue, and throughout the neighborhood, more abandoned houses. Their fronts were like an urban trauma-themed art show, considering the signs and fliers tacked to doors and plywood window-coverings.

“We buy houses – cash fast!” were on several. “RIP Tyree” was spray-painted on one.

Neon green “LEAD PAINT WARNING: NO OCCUPANCY” notices from the Baltimore City Health Department were plentiful.

So were faded-orange signs for the city’s Vacants to Value program. And on several unoccupied structures, bright red campaign signs for mayoral candidate Nick Mosby.

Sitting on marble steps of a house across from the school, a man who gave his name as Keith said the squalid places were clearly dangerous to children and the entire neighborhood.

“People get up in there messing around and smoking. They could set one of these things on fire,” Keith said. “How long is it going to take them to do something?”

What should be done?

“Just take ’em down, I guess,” he said. “But you know, I wish they didn’t get this way in the first place. Why did they?”