By Baltimore Sun Reader, Nov 20, 2025
Baltimore City Councilman Ryan Dorsey is steamrolling Baltimore City Council Bill 25-0066 with the blessing of City Council President Zeke Cohen and a couple other council members. The measure aims to reshape the city as we know it by eliminating zoning restrictions, allowing single-family homes to be morphed unrestricted into apartments, and doing away with parking requirements for new developments so that pretty much anything goes (“Baltimore residents skeptical of zoning reform efforts,” Nov. 23).
In the process, a lot would be lost, but they don’t care. Their mission is to go on record as curing social inequality during their terms, even if it supersedes common sense. It’s too bad they didn’t let the citizens of Baltimore know about this plan before the elections.
The more affluent neighborhoods protected by covenants such as Roland Park, Guilford or Homeland will not be affected. That means the big property taxpayers aren’t worried, which helps explain why this effort hasn’t drawn more attention. In fact, some of those folks might be developers who stand to make a fortune from this boondoggle.
It’s the middle and lower-middle class neighborhoods Dorsey wants to use for his experiments in socialism — with Mayor Brandon Scott’s blessing. It is the misfortune that Baltimore’s middle classes are busy, struggling more than ever to make ends meet, and are, by and large, unaware of this revolutionary plan. Dorsey knows time is of the essence. He is pushing as fast as possible, so the developers may begin their work busting up houses into apartments, razing vintage homes for new construction and lowering the median home sale price to make housing “more affordable” for seekers. But, of course, all that will cause the value of the real estate investments of current home owners to crash.
Dorsey graduated from what was then called the Peabody Conservatory of Music with a degree in musical composition. He has never had the benefit of academic college courses in law, political science, comparative politics, public administration, real estate contracts or principles, public policy analysis, economics or statistics. He’s never been a lawyer, a parent, a business owner, a landlord or an educator.
Yet Dorsey believes firmly in his ability and knowledge to completely change the city to his utopian dream, whether the constituents who voted for him in the 3rd district prior to his revelation like it or not, or whether the impact on Charm City will be good or not. God help us.
— Georgia Corso, Baltimore