The chasm between Howard County's richest and poorest neighborhoods is widening.
At the top in the state's wealthiest county is a census tract that includes most of Clarksville, where the median household earned $117,101 in 1999, according to new Census 2000 data.
At the bottom are Ellicott City's neighborhoods bounded by U.S. 29, U.S. 40, Interstate 70 and the county line, where the median household earned $41,237.
Those two census tracts held the same ranks 10 years earlier. But while both gained financially during the 1990s, Clarksville gained more - 15.5 percent compared with 5.5 percent in the Ellicott City tract, when adjusted for inflation.
A median household income of about $41,200 - which means half earn more and half earn less - would look good to the 40 percent of Baltimore-area census tracts where families earn less money. But it is a far cry from the county's median of $74,167.
"Big gap," said Dorothy L. Moore, executive director of the poverty-fighting Community Action Council, who fears that low-income families are not getting the help they need. "In Howard County, we take great pride in having services for families, but ... I don't think we do a very good job informing the public about our services."
Her organization met several weeks ago with representatives from 21 churches to improve outreach to people in poverty.
Moore plans to testify before the Governors Commission to Study Poverty in Maryland at a hearing scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Kahler Hall in Columbia, an effort by commission members to learn about people struggling to get by amid wealth. Nearly 10,000 Howard residents were living below the poverty line in 1999, according to the census.
The income figures, released this month, were compiled from responses to "long-form" census questionnaires sent to one in six homes.
They suggest that the richest areas in the county in 1999 were in western Howard, Columbia's River Hill and central Ellicott City - all with median household incomes above $100,000 - while the poorest areas were near the county seat in Ellicott City, south of Whisky Bottom Road in North Laurel, and in Columbia's Town Center and Wilde Lake villages, all with median household incomes below $60,000.
Town Center, at least, seems poised for an income boost. Newly built luxury townhouses in Columbia's core sell for more than $300,000. The cheapest apartments at Archstone Columbia Town Center, a nearby complex finished in May, rent for $1,125 a month.
