Home Repairs

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.Editor: In the midst of America's confusion about race, it's important to remember the example set for us by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate on January 21.The U.S. has been rocked recently by racial tension on campus, controversies over school curriculums and clashes over scarce housing and neighborhood stores. As the economy contracts, the strains on our social fabric worsen.We need to do better than to simply give formal honor to Dr. King.

Elizabeth A. Blair spends her days peacefully crocheting afghans in the living room of her Taneytown home.When it rains, though, the 75-year-old widow has no peace.The roof leaks, and she fears water will soon be seeping through the ceiling of her three-bedroom ranch home, built in 1965."I canhear the dripping in the walls," she said.Unable to afford the estimated $3,500 repair on her fixed income, she turned to the state Office on Aging for help.This month, Blair can put her roof worries to rest.

Robert W. "Bob" Summers, a retired Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. manager, died Thursday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village retirement community. He was 82. Robert Wendell Summers was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. He was a 1947 graduate of Polytechnic Institute and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1952 from the Johns Hopkins University. He served in the Army from 1952 to 1954, and was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where he worked on weapons development research.

Volunteer craftsmen sought for Senior Home Repair DayComprehensive Housing Assistance Inc. is seeking professional contractors and craftsmen to provide minor home repairs and maintenance for its eighth annual Senior Home Repair Day May 18.On Senior Home Repair Day, CHAI volunteers work on the homes of elderly and physically challenged homeowners with limited incomes. Last year 32 homeowners received approximately $10,000 worth of repairs and improvements.Plumbers, electricians, roofers, carpenters, brick masons and cement workers are among the workers needed this year.

LAST MONTH, on the eve of my son's high school graduation, I wrote a sentimental column listing all the wisdom I wished that I had passed on to him while I had the chance. There was a lump in my throat as I composed my parting words, to be delivered in the days, indeed, hours, before he left home for life at a service academy. I advised him to smile often, to look people in the eye, to keep his heart open to the possibility of God, to always do what was expected of him. I told him that he should believe in himself because so many other people did, and they could not all be wrong.

The tidy, cozy rooms filled with family keepsakes show the pride Simeon and Jewell Brown take in the Union Bridge home where they have lived for 35 years. She points to the polished cabinets he helped install in the kitchen where she cooks all their meals. He says he has been "keeping up with things, until lately." "But we can't anymore," she said, finishing the thought for her husband of 67 years. The couple, both in their 90s, readily admit that they can no longer maintain the bungalow in optimum condition.

THIRTY YEARS AGO, David Caplovitz wrote about a situation that the poor have known for years. He called his book "The Poor Pay More." At the time, his documented evidence created quite a stir and many articles were written about these intensive consumer abuses against people least able to endure them or fight back. Some protective legislation was passed and some good court decisions were written. Now in the year 2000, the National Consumer Law Center in Boston reports that business crime, fraud and abuse are thriving on the backs of poor Americans.

The federal government's biggest home mortgage program streamlined itself at the end of December, and that could be good news for buyers, sellers, realty agents and builders in 2006. In fact, the Federal Housing Administration's decision to eliminate or soften many of its onerous rules about property conditions and mandatory repairs should be a stimulant to the entire housing market this year. It could help open low-down-payment mortgages with no prepayment penalties to thousands of first-time, moderate-income purchasers who might have turned to higher-fee "sub-prime" alternatives instead.

With efforts to reduce lead poisoning among children at a crossroads, Maryland lawmakers are wrestling with proposals to expand state regulation of home sales, rentals and repairs to reduce youngsters' exposure to the toxic metal. But the biggest question facing legislators might be how — or whether — to help landlords facing a flurry of lead-paint poisoning lawsuits from former tenants. The number of young children reported poisoned by lead in Maryland has dropped 98 percent since the mid-1990s.

When Bard Wickkiser first laid eyes on an empty Greenmount Avenue rowhouse on the edge of Guilford, he knew he had something special. For months, Wickkiser searched Charles Village and the areas nearby, looking for an older home that was sound but needed some tender loving care. "The house sat on the market for over a year and no one bought it," said Wickkiser. "I did a lot of homework and a lot of sniffing around before I found this. I thought someone had moved the decimal point on the price or maybe a `1' was missing.