Affordable Housing

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

Construction has begun on more than 100 housing units for senior citizens in Dundalk. Baltimore County officials gathered this week for a ground breaking for the Greens at Logan Field, a 102-unit development being built on the site of Baltimore's first municipal airfield after World War I. The Enterprise Homes development, scheduled for completion in 2014, is for senior citizens who earn 60 percent or less of the area median income. The $15.2 million project is set to include mostly one-bedroom apartments, plus 18 two-bedroom units.

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.

I strongly agree with Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc. director Robert J. Strupp that all Marylanders should have an equal opportunity to live in decent, safe housing with "access to transportation, jobs and safe, academically achieving schools" ("State shouldn't let landlords discriminate," May 5). Having studied the bill, I can see that the provisions of the Home Act, with its source-of-income protection, would simply compel landlords to treat all tenant applicants fairly and would in no way prevent landlords from using criteria to ensure they are getting responsible, reliable tenants.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In her April 23 column, “Forcing landlords to accept vouchers won't help the poor,” Marta H. Mossburg quoted me as saying that laws prohibiting landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers “exacerbate” the problem of finding housing for the poor. That's wrong. When Ms. Mossburg interviewed me for her column, I was clear: banning housing discrimination based on source of income will help increase housing options for the poor. I told her about fieldwork I've done with families in Baltimore; Mobile, Ala.; and New Haven, Stamford and Norwalk, Conn., where I repeatedly heard about landlords refusing to rent to parents who were trying to secure housing.

America is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis - Baltimore, too. Ten million families are paying more than 50 percent of their monthly income on rent, a severe cost burden that leaves little for food and other necessities. Over 32,000 applicants (and counting) are on the Housing Authority of Baltimore City's waiting lists. Public housing authorities can only do so much. With limited, dwindling public resources, private dollars are needed now more than ever to help create affordable housing.

The Greens at Irvington Mews, a 100-unit residential community for seniors and adults with disabilities, celebrated its Grand Opening on Monday. The four-story structure is in the 4300 block of Frederick Avenue across from Mount Saint Joseph High School in the Irvington neighborhood of southwest Baltimore. The $16 million project was developed by Enterprise, an affordable housing finance and development firm that was founded by J ames W.  Rouse, who conceived Columbia. Of the 100 apartments, 85 are already occupied, Enterprise said.  The community was designed by the Baltimore-based architecture firm  Hord Coplan Macht Inc. The contractor was Harkins Builders Inc., headquartered in  Marriottsville.

For years, the vacant Columbus School on a busy corner of East North Avenue appeared to be nothing more than a giant planter. Leafy tree branches stuck out over the top of the historic red-brick walls, making it seem like the school's only future inhabitants would be squirrels and birds. But Kevin Bell and Michael Barland saw more. They are investing about $14 million into the run-down 120-year-old building, also known as Public School 99, to make it livable for dozens of families.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has allocated $25 million for affordable housing in the fiscal 2014 capital budget that will allow the state to " leverage an additional $180 million in private sector and other public funding ," the state housing department said. The money will go toward an initiative the governor started last year, called Rental Housing Works, and is expected to fund the construction or renovation of 1,100 affordable rental units. T he allocation will also support 1,900 jobs and generate $39 million in taxes over 15 years, according to O'Malley's office the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Gov. Martin O'Malley proposed Friday spending $25 million to expand a program that gives developers low-cost, long-term loans to build or renovate affordable rental housing. The Rental Works Housing initiative was launched last year with $17.5 million, which can be lent to developers to finance construction or rehabilitation of homes for working families, senior citizens and people with disabilities. The governor said he is proposing $25 million for the program in his capital budget proposal to the General Assembly.

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.

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.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta has agreed to provide $1.3 million to fund affordable housing projects in Baltimore and Cecil County, Maryland's U.S. senators announced Wednesday. "As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have fought to put funds in the federal checkbook to develop affordable housing," Senator Barbara Mikulski said in a joint statement with Senator Ben Cardin. Developers will work with local member institutions of the Atlanta-based community development bank to construct or renovate 128 residential units, the senators said.

At the recent Governor's Housing Conference in Baltimore, the blue logo of a house with rays of light emanating from behind the roof was ubiquitous. It's the emblem of one of the conference's main sponsors, Enterprise, and to the roughly 800 people in attendance Oct. 16, it was nearly as recognizable as the red-and-yellow square of Wells Fargo, another sponsor. "They're not just a distant organization. … They bring home their national knowledge to us, and we impart what we're seeing," said Trudy McFall, president of the Maryland Affordable Housing Coalition, who moderated a panel about rental housing financing at the conference.