Affordable Housing

Most American politicians, including most so-called liberals, are cowards on the subject of housing for the poor. They may grandstand on the backs of the huddled homeless when winter comes, but ask them to do something practical, smart and lasting to make housing more accessible and affordable to our poorest citizens and they either run for cover or use the topic, as the radio-talkers do, to incite a crowd with fear and anger. In Baltimore County, the leadership acts as if there are no poor - or as if there's no urgency to help them find a place to live.

More than 100,000 Maryland children whose families got mortgages in the middle part of the last decade have lost their family home to foreclosure or were dangerously close to it as of last year, according to a new report . That's one out of every 11 children in the state, which ties Maryland for the sixth-highest share nationwide. The study, from the child-centered group First Focus in Washington, looked at the swath foreclosure has cut through families across the country.

DEVELOPERS who eschew affordable housing in their quest for fatter sales prices aren't as disappointing as the politicians who let them get away with it. Elected officials should have the greater community's interest in mind.They don't when they are so shortsighted as to not see the consequences of building only upscale housing. Yet that appears to be happening in Howard County.The first two large developments proposed under the county's new law requiring a certain amount of affordable housing may be able to skirt the requirement.

Mike Posko was building a house with Habitat for Humanity International — in Nepal — when the Baltimore-area affiliate emailed him late last year to ask him to come in for an interview. He got the job. Posko, who took over as Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake's chief executive in February, said he's passionate about the group's affordable-housing mission. The nonprofit builds new homes and rebuilds vacant ones in the Baltimore region with the help of volunteers, then sells them at no profit and with no-interest mortgages to workers with modest incomes.

A draft Howard County housing plan proposes that the county adopt higher-density zoning to permit significantly more development of town houses and apartments for families earning $60,000 a year or less.The plan, now in the final drafting stages, will be forwarded later this month to County Executive Charles I. Ecker. It is being devised by the county's Housing and Community Development Board and the Housing Commission.The executive asked the citizen panels to develop a blueprint for creating more affordable housing in the affluent county.

Baltimore residents and housing advocates applauded yesterday the City Council's consideration of a bill to ensure the creation of more affordable housing - but said the legislation would have to be broadened to accomplish its goal of establishing mixed-income communities. Specifically, residents and leaders asked at a hearing that the standards of affordability set in the bill be lowered and that the bill be extended to include more developments. "The bill will not serve enough of Baltimore's residents," said Darryl Smith, secretary of the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council in North Baltimore, one of several city communities where housing prices are appreciating rapidly.

Oxford Mews, a 192-unit affordable-housing project off Bywater Road in Annapolis, may have fallen victim to the savings and loan crisis, and its demise could cost the city government $156,000.Robert Gaines, an Annapolis developer, had been negotiating to buy the 18 acres from Second National Federal Savings Bank, but federal regulators seized the thrift and its assets in December 1992, before the sale could be completed.Now, Resolution Trust Corp., which manages the thrift's properties, wants to sell the land.

The latest census of Baltimore's homeless population shows that some things are getting worse, particularly the number of people who remain homeless for more than a year - and many things remain the same, which is hardly good news. What the census report reinforces is that the homeless will continue to be with us until there is a major effort to deal with housing shortages that help push people onto the streets. The huge imbalance between supply and demand for affordable housing makes the Housing Authority of Baltimore City's use of a specially created affordable-housing fund to demolish more than 1,500 public housing units without adequate, tangible plans for redevelopment especially alarming and regrettable.

A bill designed to increase Baltimore's stock of affordable housing by requiring it to be mixed into certain market-rate projects comfortably passed a City Council committee last night. Supported by a politically powerful coalition of religious groups, urban advocacy organizations and unions, the inclusionary housing legislation will go to the City Council, where it is expected to come to a vote within the next few weeks. "There are people who still say [the bill] won't work, and if we do it, it will backfire," said the Rev. Richard Lawrence, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church downtown, part of the coalition.

More than a year after Baltimore passed a law intended to keep housing affordable for working-class families, City Hall is testing the limits of its newfound power on a prominent stretch of waterfront property. Relying in part on the new law, the city is negotiating with Turner Development Group to build at least 200 affordable homes and apartments alongside the massive residential project proposed for the Westport neighborhood on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco, The Sun has learned.

Patricia T. "Patty" Rouse, who with her late husband, Columbia developer James W. Rouse, co-founded Enterprise Community Partners Inc. and who devoted her life to making sure that decent and affordable housing was accessible to all Americans, died Monday afternoon from complications of Alzheimer's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at Vantage House in Columbia. The Wilde Lake resident was 85. "Patty Rouse was a visionary, who, along with her husband, saw a time when all Americans would have a home they could call their own," Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat, said in a statement released Tuesday.

Baltimore's Housing Authority filed a motion Friday to prevent its property from being sold in order to satisfy a $2.6 million judgment in a lead paint exposure case, according to the agency. Last week, representatives from the Baltimore's sheriff's office tagged vehicles used by the Housing Authority in anticipation of seizing them to pay off a jury award. Siblings Antonio Fulgham and Brittany McCutcheon were provided the judgment in 2010, but the agency has resisted making payments while it appeals.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is proposing a $15 million increase in the state's program to help build affordable rental housing, saying the bump would leverage $285 million in private investment and create 1,100 jobs in Maryland. Surrounded by housing advocates, construction workers and local residents, O'Malley went to the site of a former public housing development in Annapolis to announce plans to double the state's investment in loans to developers to help spur rental housing construction.

What accounts for the unfairly sensational tone of your recent article on Baltimore City's legitimate - and sensible - use of affordable housing funds to demolish vacant eyesores ("City 'affordable housing' fund destroys more houses than it builds," Dec. 26)? Didn't The Sun take Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano to task just six months ago for overspending on affordable housing units in Johnston Square? Johnston Square should have taught us that government bureaucracies are not well-suited to meeting the complicated economic and logistical challenges of developing new housing, affordable or otherwise.

The city is misguided if it believes that demolishing vacant homes is the solution to providing affordable housing in Baltimore ("City 'affordable housing' fund destroys more houses than it builds," Dec. 21). Demolishing vacant homes is myopic, since the number of vacant homes will increase as long as the city's population continues to decline. That alone will undermine any alleged improvements to public safety. A 1996 demolition project targeting vacant housing stock in Camden, N.J., initially decreased the vacant housing stock of the city.

A cluster of vacant rowhouses in the 1600 block of North Gay Street succumbed to the metal claw of an excavator this month, as yet another batch of unwanted city homes turned to rubble. Once the East Baltimore tract is cleared, nothing will be built there. It will be turned into a community-managed open space, providing a patch of green for residents of nearby senior housing units and tenants at the restored American Brewery building. The $215,000 demolition is among the most recent projects funded by the city's Affordable Housing Program.

RESPONDING TO a plea from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for help housing displaced Hurricane Katrina victims, the nation's mayors are admirably rolling out welcome mats and offering up public housing apartments and federally subsidized homes. The mayors of Detroit and Philadelphia each offered 1,000 homes. Chicago offered to house 1,500 people and Miami 3,000. Baltimore is making 236 public housing units available and Mayor Martin O'Malley has appealed to city landlords with available apartments to help out in exchange for rent payments guaranteed by the federal government.

Tapping into a new affordable-housing fund for the first time, city officials approved a plan yesterday to spend $10.7 million to tear down more than 400 housing units in some of Baltimore's most neglected neighborhoods. From Poppleton to Cherry Hill, the demolitions are expected to begin this fall and will be paid for from an affordable-housing fund created last year as part of negotiations over a city-funded convention hotel. City officials hope the demolitions will spark private development of affordable housing.

When the second plane slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Stacy Spann had a bird's-eye view of the firestorm from his employer's office a mere block away. Anxious that the skyscraper where his wife was working could be targeted next, he called Shannon and told her to get out of her high-rise and go to a friend's house, even as he watched workers jumping from the burning buildings. As the last train leaving Manhattan pulled away with him on it, he looked over his shoulder and watched the twin towers fall.

The fate of a proposed affordable housing community in Glen Burnie is in limbo after an Anne Arundel County Council vote to delay a proposed tax break that the project's developer says it needs to move forward. Councilman John J. Grasso, a Glen Burnie Republican whose district includes the planned Marley Meadows development, pushed for the delay, which was unanimously approved by the council Monday. Members will now vote on the $5,000 annual tax break at a Nov. 21 meeting, a timeline that officials said could potentially derail the controversial project.