Four years after being elected to represent Baltimore’s 14th city council district, Councilwoman Odette Ramos says there are signs of progress.
Ramos is a longtime housing advocate who has dedicated much of her time to the problems surrounding the city’s housing crisis.
“We’re wasting a bunch of money maintaining these old properties, $100 million a year in maintenance, $100 million in lost tax revenue.Do you know what we could do with $100 million?”asks Ramos.
Ramos has lobbied to expand the process which better tracks when the city can foreclose on vacant homes.
Many of the 122 ordinances she’s sponsored in the past four years deal with housing reforms.
54 of the measures were enacted.
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FOX45 and The Baltimore Sun are jointly examining the effectiveness of city council members.
Last week, Ramos who handles 750 constituent requests each month, discussed her progress.
“I think we’ve been pretty effective. We can always do better,”said Ramos.
Like many of her counterparts, Ramos does not support a ballot measure calling for the reduction of the city council from 14 member districts to 8 districts.
“The residents will suffer. They will not get the representation they deserve,” said Ramos.