City Neighborhoods

THAT INCREASE in the median price of a home in Baltimore you keep hearing about is not confined to just a handful of "hot" neighborhoods - housing prices are up at least 10 percent over a recent three-year span in nearly half the city's communities. And that decrease in major crime that Mayor Martin O'Malley and Police Commissioner Kevin Clark keep talking about is even more widespread - aggravated assaults, robberies, auto thefts and the like are down in four of five neighborhoods. These are just a couple of the insights gleaned from the data in "Vital Signs II," the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance's just-compiled follow-up to its initial 2002 report.

To boost homeownership in a flagging Baltimore County neighborhood, several financial institutions pledged more than $1.5 million yesterday to a housing program in Greater Hillendale.The commitments, which will provide low-interest financing and closing-cost assistance to homebuyers, were announced at the official opening of the Taylor Avenue office of Neighborhood Housing Services, a nonprofit organization that counsels potential buyers.Neighborhood Housing Services, which has been involved since in Baltimore City neighborhoods, has been working with 72 potential buyers in Greater Hillendale since June.

Baltimore residents will be able to tap into a $1 million fund aimed at increasing homeownership in certain city neighborhoods under a plan Mayor Martin O'Malley is expected to announce today. The so-called Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative will provide below-market financing for homeownership and renovation on targeted blocks in the city. The money also will be used to help community groups that are trying to improve their neighborhoods. "I know a lot of neighborhoods were frustrated that the only way they could get help from the city was if they needed demolition dollars," O'Malley said yesterday.

They're swimming upstream and down, heading northeast and southwest. Ichthyaerius Baltimoris, that rare breed of painted fish surfacing in downtown Baltimore, may soon be seen in Federal Hill, Waverly, Bel Air Edison and Pigtown. The four neighborhoods are participating in a new phase of the Fish Out of Water project, which has overseen the placement of 120 whimsical fish sculptures in the downtown area. Corporations, institutions and hospitals have sponsored those fish. Now, local communities can pay $1,000 to have a fish publicly displayed in their neighborhood.

CHICAGO -- For years, corporations have been encouraged to get involved in the cities' minority neighborhoods because it's the right thing to do.Now there's a new message: Do it or you're missing important niche markets in the fiercely competitive new global economy.The message seems to be taking. Ameritech, the Midwest's husky telecommunications company, noticed how hot prepaid long distance cards are in Mexico and is starting to market them heavily in Hispanic Chicago neighborhoods.Allstate Insurance has a Neighborhood Partnership model of working with low- to moderate-income neighborhoods to fix hazards and talk candidly with homeowners about deficiencies.

Baltimore development officials plan to use $800,000 in federal stimulus money for grants to help commercial property owners in blighted neighborhoods renovate building facades. The city expects to use Community Development Block Grant funds, made available through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to expand a facade grant program that has been used throughout the city, including along Pennsylvania Avenue. The projects must be in mainly low- to moderate-income neighborhoods with high commercial vacancy rates and should help increase and retain jobs, Nancy Jordan-Howard, chief operating officer of the Baltimore Development Corp.

TO THE amazement of many people, Roland Park is back. For months, the North Baltimore neighborhood's real estate market has been so active it has been difficult to buy a house without paying more than the asking price -- that's if you can find one for sale.Some longtime residents like me are thrilled that people are willing to take on these comely, old homes, many in need of renovation and priced from $200,000 to $1 million.The sudden rush on Roland Park -- and some other city neighborhoods -- is indeed good news for a city where 1,000 residents leave every month, most bound for surrounding suburbs.

A group of recovering drug addicts is trying to help slow the spread of AIDS in Baltimore with a plan to go into city neighborhoods to pick up used needles and syringes.The plan was unveiled yesterday by city health officials and All of Us Helping Us, a group of drug addicts who have tested positive for HIV, which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome."No one has taken an effort to slow down HIV by cleaning up syringes," said Troy McMillion, head of All of Us Helping Us. "If there was a situation where children are playing and abandoned houses are serving as shooting galleries, we'd go in and clean up the houses."

Most of Baltimore's safe neighborhoods disappeared in the late 1970s, and conditions worsened when the crack cocaine epidemic hit a decade ago and sparked a surge in crime, asserts a new study presented at a conference yesterday.The findings by Temple University professor Ralph D. Taylor, who is working for a year as a researcher for the National Institute of Justice, show that the city's crime problem began years earlier than previously thought and is rooted in poverty and the loss of industry and city residents.

GOOD playgrounds make good neighbors. They also make good sense, for the safety of children and the health of the surrounding community. Many of the city's approximately 300 public playgrounds are unsafe for children, with derelict (or no) equipment. They often have concrete or asphalt surfaces that are unforgiving of falls. Broken glass is common. Community disuse encourages criminals to take over the sites for drug dealing. The General Assembly has a request for $500,000 to help rebuild 10 dilapidated play lots in Baltimore, with a 150 percent match of funds by private sources and the city.