After almost four decades of charging families a fraction of their income to live in Howard County's largest public housing complex, county officials are considering substantial rent increases.
Concern over the ability to cover operating costs at the 94-unit Hilltop Housing community in Ellicott City while major repairs on the aging complex are looming has led county housing director Stacy L. Spann to propose the increase.
Funding for the townhouse and apartment community comes from a one-eighth share of the county's real estate transfer tax. But the housing slump has reduced that revenue from $4.7 million in fiscal 2006 to a projected $2.8 million this year.
And housing officials also suspect that some families at Hilltop might have income they don't report, Spann said.
"We've got folks living there for decades reporting the same income," Spann said. "There's got to be some discipline."
But some tenants say they see the proposal as a way to oust longtime residents. Martha Ebb, 65, a widow caring for four grandchildren who has lived at Hilltop since it was built, said a significant rent increase would force her and others like her out.
"They are really trying to get rid of people," she said. "Half the people here would end up in shelters."
Hilltop opened in 1970 as the county's first public housing complex, built by the county entirely with local funding.
It replaced a string of ramshackle county-owned wooden bungalows along Fels Lane just off Main Street that for years comprised Ellicott City's segregation-era black community. The houses had no indoor bathrooms, and waste emptied directly into a stream behind the homes that routinely flooded the street after heavy storms.
A few former Fels Lane residents still live in Hilltop, even though they have incomes that require them to pay unsubsidized market rents. But most tenants pay very little.
The system calls for tenants to pay 30 percent of their income and for rent to increase when household income rises. However, that arrangement can discourage accurate reporting of income, said Thomas Carbo, deputy housing director.
"It provides a disincentive to families to increase their income," Carbo said.
County officials discussed raising rents at Hilltop in 2000, but no action was taken.
Some tenants report grown children who are not working as members of the household but possess outward signs of income such as vehicles, Spann said. The agency has evicted families who don't pay the current rent or who violate other rules, but more needs to be done, he said.
