The deterioration of our major cities has been a matter of concern for some time now. While we write a lot at RedState about the left-coast cities of Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles as examples, and those are pretty compelling examples, now we turn our attention to the East. If you own or have an interest in a historic building in downtown Baltimore...

Urine trouble.

Many of downtown Baltimore’s buildings are slowly being washed away. The problem is less flooding and rain, more golden showers.

That’s right, pee is eroding thousands of historic buildings downtown, the exterior bases corroding with every spurt.

Like a yellow Sharpie, it’s highlighting long-standing tensions in Baltimore: the decline of a once bustling city center, dwindling public spaces and the enduring needs of the local homeless population.

It's pretty obvious, to anyone that has been paying attention to the governance of most of our major cities, Baltimore being no exception, that the problems are not "dwindling public spaces," much less the "enduring needs of the local homeless population." Those are symptoms, not causes--and these are causes, nobody in the Baltimore municipal government is willing to discuss; but they are varied, not least of which is the city's failure at basic things like education and criminal justice.

The issue is happening in other places worldwide. But of course, Baltimore's response is to throw more money at the problem.

The acidic liquid is also wreaking havoc on the world’s tallest church in Germany, the historic streets of Paris, and medieval inns in London, where cities have opted to install “urine deflectors” and “open sidewalk urinals” to redirect bold tinklers.

Baltimore’s considering another approach: more public restrooms.

City officials and the Downtown Partnership are working to install several restrooms throughout downtown sometime in 2025. Exact locations, timelines and costs are still to be determined.

One supposes it couldn't hurt, but how much money does the city propose to spend? How will the city prevent these new public restrooms from being used as temporary (or even semi-permanent) shelters by the same homeless people who are causing the pee problem in the first place? How will the city prevent these new public restrooms from being used as places to shoot up? From being taken over by drug dealers looking for a discreet place to peddle their illegal wares?

It's likely that "city officials" and the Downtown Partnership haven't thought much about that part.

The problem, of course, is almost completely due to the major cities of the nation failing to address the problem of street people - the "homeless" that the left so often bemoans. The cities in question tacitly cater to the homeless populations, but they will do anything except require them to get off the streets; that, of course, being the one thing that might save them from themselves. It’s certainly cruel and unusual to leave these people on the streets. Forget about the possibility of harm to themselves; they made choices that led them to this status, and nobody else is responsible for their predicament. Many, if not most, of them have mental health and substance abuse issues, and they pose a direct threat to the urban environs they infest. Look at Los Angeles, where they have had outbreaks of various communicable diseases among their urban outdoor population, including such things as typhus, tuberculosis, and others, largely due to failures in basic sanitation principles that were well-known as long ago as the days of the Roman Republic.

Baltimore and Maryland's problems are many and varied, and all can be laid at the feet of Democrat leadership. As I've said repeatedly, until that changes, nothing else will.