Affordable Housing

The Baltimore City Council will consider extending a 2007 law aimed at providing affordable housing in new city developments, though supporters acknowledge that the initiative has had little impact in the midst of a deep housing downturn. Housing advocates praised the Inclusionary Housing Act when it was passed during the heady housing boom, when glitzy Ritz-Carlton condominiums in the Inner Harbor were being touted as signs of a redevelopment rebirth throughout Baltimore. At the time, affordable housing supporters said the legislation would ensure that low- and middle-income residents wouldn't be lost in the shuffle.

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.

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.

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 number of homeless children in public schools is up 57 percent since the start of the last recession. That gloomy figure -- from the U.S. Department of Education -- was highlighted by the First Focus Campaign for Children, a Washington-based nonprofit. Across America, classrooms are filled with more than 1 million homeless students, the highest number in the country's history, First Focus says. In Maryland, the number of homeless students has more than doubled since 2007 , colleague Jessica Anderson reported in January.

A plan to build an affordable housing development in Glen Burnie has ignited a heated debate among members of the Anne Arundel County Council. Councilman John J. Grasso, a Glen Burnie Republican whose district includes the planned Marley Meadows development, spoke out against the plans at a recent County Council meeting, saying low-income residents are likely to bring crime to the area, an assertion quickly dismissed by some of his colleagues....

We have had yet one more long-range planning session featuring elected officials of Carroll's eight municipalities and the county commissioners.We have yet to see, after more than two years, substantiveprogress on what is perhaps the most pressing, most persistent and most perplexing problem on the town-county agenda.Actually, we still await a definition: What is "affordable housing?"To some, the phrase conjures up apocalyptic visions of "those people" -- read poor inner-city people -- housed in teeming tenementsrising high over the green fields of home.

It comes as no surprise that Baltimore City houses a disproportionate share of the region's threadbare supply of affordable housing. The soaring cost of life in the suburbs -- and exclusionary regulatory policies there -- have stifled the development of moderately priced homes. Now, strapped for tax revenues, county politicians are beginning to re-think policies that have created these homogenous, largely upper-income enclaves.In Howard County, where affordable housing has been an elusive goal, the county has kicked in subsidies to make rents manageable in the $14.8 million Columbia Commons apartment complex.