Abell Foundation

Myra Williamson is back home. She's moving into a house just around the corner from where she grew up - and where, not so coincidentally, her downward spiral began. "I spent most of my life in this community," Williamson said as she prepared to move into a newly refurbished home at Monroe and Lexington streets. "I became addicted here." She had to leave town about 10 years ago to get the kind of drug treatment she felt she needed, but today, Williamson will celebrate the opening of a residential facility in which she will help others fight their own addictions - without leaving the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.

A scathing report from The Abell Foundation on public housing in Baltimore suggests that the city's housing authority has "abandoned its mission to house the poor" by focusing on the demolition of properties instead of providing new housing. The report, to be published today on The Abell Foundation's Web site, says the number of occupied public housing units in the city has declined by 42 percent in the past 15 years - from 16,525 to 9,625. The report says the authority's plans for new housing are "unclear."

A small charter school serving poor children in Northwest Baltimore has transformed students' academic careers, turning low-performers into some of the city's highest scorers on reading and math tests, while their peers in neighboring schools have continued to lag behind, according to a new study. Of students who started at KIPP Ujima Village Academy in fifth grade in 2002 and stayed for four years, 100 percent passed the state's eighth-grade math test, compared with 19 percent in the control group, a Johns Hopkins University education researcher found.

The last time Jon Hyman led a company, he helped turn the golf industry on its head, introducing plastic cleats to replace metal spikes. Now, he's planning a revolution for a similarly staid business: concrete. "This is not a very exciting industry, but we've been able to do things differently," said Hyman, who is chief executive officer of Baltimore-based CeraTech Inc. CeraTech has a technology that seeks to replace the way that cement has been made for nearly 200 years, since English inventor Joseph Aspdin mixed chalk and clay and heated it in a kiln to produce what is now widely known as Portland cement.

The incoming mayor of Baltimore should revive a common-sense idea that the outgoing mayor of Baltimore scrapped. If city officials really want to end chronic homelessness in Baltimore, then Sheila Dixon should reopen discussions about Community Court. This is a great idea that was set for takeoff as the new millennium approached. It never got a chance to work. It would not have been a panacea - what is? - but it certainly would have made a dent in the homelessness and other human miseries that continue to diminish the quality of life here.

There is no doubt that Baltimore capitalists could rustle up $517 million, which is what Lehman Brothers media analyst Craig Huber estimates it would take to buy the Baltimore Sun Co. The question is whether enough of them want to, whether Tribune Co., which owns The Sun, would accept such an offer, and whether they would even get a chance to make one. Two months after Chicago-based Tribune decided to auction itself off, the answer is still foggy, and...

The Abell Foundation - started by the families that long owned The Sun - is interested in joining with other local investors to buy the newspaper if a shareholder fight at its Chicago owner forces a sale. Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the foundation, sees an opportunity to get The Sun back into local hands. The foundation has called the paper's owners - first Times Mirror Co. and then Tribune Co. - once a year for about a decade to see if it was for sale, and the answer was always no. "I think it's important that The Sun be locally owned and be separate from a larger corporate conglomerate," Embry said yesterday.

For decades, video poker machines - supposedly for amusement but often used for illegal gambling - have been tolerated in parts of Maryland, especially Baltimore and Baltimore County. Authorities, from the state comptroller's office to local liquor boards, have accepted the devices with more than a few winks, if not blind eyes. Now a new study says this is no mom-and-pop business - a few machines here, a few there - but a large illegal gambling industry. The study, released last week by the Abell Foundation, counted 3,500 slot-like machines in just the city and county, more than the number of legal slots at Delaware's Dover Downs racetrack.

Operators of amusement video games in hundreds of corner bars and mom-and-pop convenience stores cheat the state out of $15 million annually in uncollected tax revenue and make illegal payments to players, according to a report released yesterday by the Abell Foundation. The study of the vending machine industry in Baltimore City and Baltimore County found that operators of the games, including video poker, under report their taxable earnings by $63 million to $153 million a year. And that as a result, residents in both municipalities are missing out on millions in possible revenue.

When Sylvia Lane-Gibson retired in 1999 after a 32-year career at Bell Atlantic, the Johnston Square resident quickly got active in a new residents' association in her East Baltimore neighborhood. But community organizing was not enough for the 61-year-old woman who was determined to make a difference. So last year, she joined Experience Corps, a national program that places older people as paid volunteers in public schools. Under Baltimore's version, more than 100 senior citizens like Lane-Gibson volunteer in six elementary schools.