Grass in the inner city of Baltimore - what to do

[Christina R.]

(no, not THAT kind of grass....)

I have an end unit rowhome that will be up for rental shortly that has about 2 feet between it's exterior side wall and the tall chain link fence for a truck depot facility that is down behind it.  There is a small, approx. 4 x 5 patch in the front that used to be grass and then the back yard.  The house is about 33 feet deep and the property is about 70 feet deep, so there is definitely some "yard" back there.

  The side area I can clean up and I think pretty much leave it.  It gets walked on and is pretty much trampled down.  I thought about doing some colored stone on the front patch and sort of caging it with chicken wire (to hopefully prevent people from picking up the chips and throwing them, etc).   That way no worries on having to weedwhack/mow the front.   The back is what I'm most concerned with.  

This is going to be a section 8 rental in basically a C, C- area of Baltimore.  When it's ready for occupancy, I just want to do serious tenant screening and get it rented.    Should I really care about the back yard?  Around here it's mostly concrete but I'm not going to spend the $ on concreting the entire yard areas (at least not at this point).   I'm still having a hard time looking at this first project without my homeowner glasses on....

Any suggestions on what to do?  Thanks in advance for any replies.