Baltimore Neighborhoods

Andy York recently bought a T-shirt that captures how he feels about his city. The design includes various implements of violence that include brass knuckles, a switchblade, a noose and a brick in the shape of a heart. "It all comes down to self-deprecating humor," said York, a Pigtown resident who plans to wear the tee to live music events or festivals. "I would be really upset if someone from Pittsburgh was wearing a shirt like that. " Elected officials and tourism industry leaders have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing slogans to emphasize Baltimore's finer points.

A Taneytown man has agreed to pay $5,500, attend counseling sessions and perform community service as part of a settlement of a complaint that he threatened a local real estate agent to prevent a sale to black homebuyers.Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., a fair-housing advocacy group, filed the complaint with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, contending Allan M. Roberts swore and used racial slurs when he confronted real estate agent Jackie E. Robertson in July and October 1998.

Federal officials have extended a regulatory waiver that makes it easier to "flip" properties - a move meant to encourage the renovation of foreclosed homes but that critics say could herald the return of predatory schemes. The Federal Housing Administration has waived through 2014 an anti-flipping regulation, which had prevented the agency from insuring mortgages on properties sold within 90 days of acquisition. The waiver, first implemented in 2010 to bolster the flagging housing market, is intended to enable investors to buy and quickly rehab properties as the market continues to struggle.

A survey of 549 community-based organizations suggests that housing discrimination is on the rise, particularly targeting disabled individuals, immigrants, minorities and families with children, according to the nonprofit Consumer Action . Locally, Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc. has said it found similar problems. The organizations, which has sent “testers” out in the region to inquire about available housing, filed suit last year and in 2010 over alleged discrimination.

As we live in a time of general mistrust between some people of different skin color, we come now to the legal matter of Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc. vs. the Sterling Homes Corp. and its advertising firm, Jordan-Azzam Inc.Baltimore Neighborhoods fights discrimination in housing, real and perceived. Sterling Homes is a builder of houses, including some $90,000 town houses in an Anne Arundel County development called Stoney Beach, which had no complaints of discrimination until recent business involving newspaper advertising.

The Orchards, a North Baltimore area of stately elms and brick colonials where six-figure incomes are the norm, is the city's most affluent neighborhood, according to a new planning department study.Median household income of $103,041 in The Orchards, near Bryn Mawr School, was more than four times the citywide figure, the report shows. The statistic means that half the neighborhood's 171 households took in more than $103,041 in 1989 and half less.The study offers the first snapshot of more than 260 Baltimore neighborhoods -- their population, racial mix, educational level, income and other data -- as assessed by the 1990 census.

O'Conor, Piper & Flynn set sales record of 1,314 homes in AprilO'Conor, Piper & Flynn set a sales record in April, selling 1,314 homes last month. That was more than in any April in the company's history, according to James P. O'Conor, chairman and chief executive officer of the Timonium-based firm.April's sales were up 38.8 percent over the same month in 1995. This follows a record March for OPF.Workshop scheduled for home renovatorsA workshop for those who want to renovate old homes will be held Saturday, May 18, at the Orchard Street Church, 512 Orchard St.Renovator's Roundtable '96 is being presented by the Maryland Association of Historic District Commissions.

Today's low interest rates are scant consolation to would-be homeowners who simply do not have enough cash to pay the closing costs. Those costs -- which include one full year's property taxes as well as points and transfer and recordation fees -- are particularly high in Baltimore City.Late last year the municipal government earmarked $2.5 million for a program in which purchasers of homes costing $60,000 to $100,000 can borrow up to $5,000 for closing costs. The Neighborhood Housing Services of Baltimore is now taking the idea further by offering similar closing-cost loans for less expensive homes.

A Baltimore housing group that polices the federal Fair Housing Act has reached a $75,000 settlement with a Baltimore County developer accused in a lawsuit of failing to make its new condominiums accessible to disabled people.Martin A. Dyer, associate director of Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., said the federal suit was filed last year on behalf of two disabled condo owners at Falls Gable Condominiums, inside the Baltimore Beltway near Old Pimlico Road and the Jones Falls Expressway.Dyer said one condo owner had no accessible pathway for wheelchairs to her apartment, as required by federal law. In another unit, he said, an owner who uses a walker could not fully use the bathroom because the door and shower stall are too small.

IT HAS BEEN 25 years, a quarter of a liberating century, since President Johnson on Feb. 15, 1967, sent to Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1967, with its special emphasis on ending discrimination in housing by 1969.It did not end in 1969. It has not ended today.According to a recent nationwide study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of the home-seeking experiences of blacks and Hispanics, illegal discrimination is still widely practiced throughout the United States.