Affordable Housing

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.

The rewards of teaching did not include a house for Jamie Sienko. At a time when the American dream supposedly is more attainable than ever - a record-breaking two-thirds of Americans own a home - it continued to elude Sienko, even with her steady $39,000-a-year salary as a second-grade teacher in Baltimore. Only after moonlighting as a waitress and taking on a roommate was she able to make an offer on a Washington Hill home in East Baltimore, a deal she hopes to close next month. Two new studies show a flip side to the nation's record homeownership rates: That the income from many ordinary occupations is often not enough to pay for a house and that 1 in 7 Americans spend as much as half their income on a place to call home.

Invest in housing to curb the crisis The affordable-housing crisis will not be wished away by simplistic visions of an "ownership society." Ending homelessness and achieving stability for low-income families will require an earnest investment in the production and maintenance of affordable housing. The Sun's coverage of Harvard University's recent housing study rightly frames the issue and demands action ("Need for affordable rentals grows critical nationwide," March 9). Advocates would be wise to focus now on the affordable-housing fund working its way through Congress.

NORTHEAST -- The plant, which carries the strong, sweet stench of paint, is a frenzy of activity -- pneumatic nail pounding, power stapling and painting. Everyone seems in a rush to build the big wooden boxes, modules that will be trucked to home sites and assembled there.This is not mobile-home building. No, these are virtually the "Home Sweet Home" houses built stick-by-stick in well-heeled suburbs across America, insists Regional Building Systems, the Columbia-based company that runs the Northeast factory and another in Fredericksburg, Va.These days, the price range of a modular house to the consumer runs from $80,000 to more than $200,000.

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.

During his last State of the Union speech in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled his "Second Bill of Rights. " Among them was "the right of every family to a decent home. " Nearly seven decades later, we have not reached Roosevelt's goal. Next week, Baltimore will welcome a former president who followed him to the Oval Office 30 years later to remind us that Roosevelt's vision is just as important today. Indeed, President Jimmy Carter's engagement with Habitat for Humanity is an acknowledgement of what hasn't been reached but the potential that lies before us. For too many, the dream of owning one's home is a distant dream; to many others, the presence of decent housing is equally unattainable.

Enterprise Community Partners, a Columbia affordable-housing nonprofit, said Thursday that it has received a $300,000 grant for community revitalization work. E TRADE Savings Bank earmarked the donation for Enterprise's work in financing affordable housing, rebuilding communities and responding to the blighting effects of foreclosures in neighborhoods.

With the struggle over how to rezone central Columbia for transformation into an urbanized downtown fast approaching a final Howard County Council vote, the thorny issue of affordable housing remains in dispute. The two zoning bills, amended with requirements for lower cost housing and a way to locate a new school if needed, were the subject of a final council public hearing Tuesday night at school board headquarters, but the session was so crowded that the council held a second session Wednesday night.

A key City Council committee backed Wednesday the indefinite extension of law that requires developers to build affordable housing units along with market-rate homes, but it is unclear how the measure will fare when the full council takes it up next week. The 2007 law requires developers to set aside a percentage of homes, condominiums or apartments in large developments that receive significant public subsidies or meet other criteria to be sold or rented at lower rates. Advocates of affordable housing say the law was watered down in 2007 when the council — following the recommendations of a panel of developers — passed nearly 100 amendments, including some that slowed the implementation of the law. Only one development, Union Mill in Hampden, has triggered the set-aside, resulting in the construction of 10 affordable units.

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.