Live Baltimore encouraging D.C. residents to relocate

A Baltimore company is spending $150,000 on an advertising campaign to persuade residents in the region to move to its city, where, the ads insist, they’ll pay more reasonable home prices and still be able to make the commute into the nation’s capital.

Anna Custer, executive director of Live Baltimore, said this is the third installment of the ads following similar efforts in 2002 and 2004.

Throughout the rest of the year, billboards touting the appeal of D.C.’s northern neighbor will pop up in more than a dozen Metro stations as well as in print ads.

“We want to let people know that there’s not only the cost factor, but living in Baltimore is also appealing in terms of its livability,” Custer said. “Last year, the average price of a home in Baltimore was $182,000, while the price in D.C. was $555,000 ... and there are a lot more doable options for them to get to D.C.”

So far, it’s hard to judge whether the billboards have done their job, she said.

Demographics experts, though, told The Examiner they are seeing a rise in the number of D.C.-area workers settling in Baltimore.

According to the latest census figures, between 1990 and 2000, the number of Baltimore residents who made daily trips into the D.C. region rose 26 percent, from 106,000 to more than 133,000.

Researcher David Garrison, of the Brookings Institution, said there’s a unique and increasingly fascinating link between the powerful cities, as they alternately compete and feed off of each other for housing and jobs.

It’s why sociologists are beginning to group them together as a mega-region instead of two distinct areas. Brookings is studying this phenomenon.

“We want to look at it as a single region and see what characteristics they would have and the extent to which the economies are integrated,” Garrison said. “It’s an issue that there’s great interest in.”

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com