Residents of Ellicott City's subsidized Hilltop housing complex are renewing a call for ownership of the public housing community's townhouses after a recent county error in rent pricing rekindled a decades-long controversy between tenants and the county over selling Hilltop's units.
This summer, county housing officials issued new lease agreements to some Hilltop residents that mistakenly raised their rents by as much as $200 a month. The errors will be corrected soon, officials say, but the problem raised anew the issue of an alleged promise to residents long ago that the county might sell them their rented homes.
Meanwhile, the erroneous rent increases still are stirring residents' ire.
"It's absolutely ridiculous," said Raymond Johnson, president of the Hilltop Association, who was told last month that his rent would go up from $625 a month to $820 starting Sept. 1. "They just handed me the new lease agreement and said your rent is going to go from this amount to that amount. That's unjustified. This is one of the reasons we're pushing for ownership."
Raised too high
After a reporter asked about the rent increase, county housing officials said that they realized they had raised some residents' rents too high and that they are correcting the error.
The correct increases will be significantly smaller and should be known in the next few days, housing officials said.
Hilltop residents pay the lesser of the county's fair market rental rate minus utility costs or 25 percent of their incomes.
The average income of Hilltop households is $11,300 a year, housing officials said. On average, they pay $235 a month in rent plus utilities.
But when some new lease agreements were drafted this summer, housing officials said, they didn't subtract utility costs from the rents charged to those who pay market rates -- about 10 percent of the occupied units.
"This is actually a little embarrassing on our part," said Robert Mulderig, deputy director of the county Office of Housing and Community Development. "The rents should not have gone up as much as they did. This is something that should have been caught by our office, but we now see the error of our way."
That's not good enough for Mr. Johnson and others, who say concerns about rent and ownership have been a source of contention between residents and the county since the 94-unit apartment and townhouse community was constructed.
