Homeownership

H ere's a radical notion: Let's rethink the cult of homeownership in America. Why, a sensible person might ask, do we need to do this when millions of homeowners faced foreclosure in the last year alone, and an estimated 15 million more own homes worth less than their mortgages? Clearly, one might conclude, the bloom is already off the homeownership rose. The answer is simple. Even in the middle of this collapse, when people were asked about their expectations for house price appreciation over the next year, the answers shock.

The recent article regarding the Goldseker Foundation's decision to hire Matt Gallagher, Gov. Martin O'Malley's chief of staff, reminds me of the role Morris Goldseker and other real estate investors played in providing homeownership for many minorities in the inner-city after World War II ("O'Malley's staff chief to lead Goldseker Foundation," April 18). Mr. Goldseker was one of the largest residential real estate investors active in Baltimore. He purchased typical Baltimore city row houses, made improvements and sold them to potential buyers under land installment contracts where the potential buyers began as tenants paying what amounted to a fair rent and, if they fulfilled the terms of their contracts, acquired title to the property, usually within 10 to 12 years.

Central Maryland's rate of homeownership, the proportion of households that are owner-occupied, was slightly lower in the fourth quarter of 2012 than during the same time a year earlier, according to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Just over 65 percent of occupied homes in Baltimore and six surrounding counties - Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, Howard and Queen Anne's - were owned by someone who lived there, the Census Bureau reported. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the homeownership rate in the region was 67.5 percent.

Central Maryland's rate of homeownership, the proportion of households that are owner-occupied, was slightly lower in the fourth quarter of 2012 than during the same time a year earlier, according to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Just over 65 percent of occupied homes in Baltimore and six surrounding counties - Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, Howard and Queen Anne's - were owned by someone who lived there, the Census Bureau reported. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the homeownership rate in the region was 67.5 percent.

Interest rates and home prices haven't fallen enough to put homeownership in reach of many moderate-income workers in the Baltimore area, a new study suggests. A home buyer would need to make $70,000 to afford the Baltimore metro area's median home price of $235,000, according to the Paycheck to Paycheck report released Tuesday morning by the Center for Housing Policy. But local police officers and elementary school teachers make about $52,000, licensed practical nurses make about $41,000 and retail salespeople earn about $23,000, the center said.

Washington. -- The federal government's new homeownership initiative, kicked off by President Clinton at a White House ceremony Monday, is a Washington exception.It's not a piece of legislation or an executive order, not a regulation, not a new office, not even an appropriation.Instead, it's a shared commitment to add 8 million new homeowners, to boost homeownership to an all-time high of 67.5 percent of American families, by the year 2000.And while the Department of Housing and Urban Development is the initiator, the new National Partnership for Homeownership includes more than 50 partners, public and private, federal, state and local.

The continued increase in the number of single-person households will drive up homeownership rates in the next five years despite a parallel decline in the traditional "Ozzie and Harriet" model, predicts a top economist with the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp."

Reversing America's declining rate of homeownership will require a new round of public-private partnerships -- not more government intervention -- a top federal housing official told community bankers in Baltimore yesterday.Nicolas P. Retsinas, second in command at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, offered a glimpse of the Clinton administration's upcoming strategy to get more people into homes."There continue to be serious unmet housing needs in this country," with "serious discrepancies in housing conditions and access to credit," said Mr. Retsinas, assistant secretary for housing.

The Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People kicks off the second year of its Homeownership and Business Initiative with a reception Saturday. As part of the initiative, the NAACP Baltimore chapter and Bank of America will sponsor six free homebuyer workshops throughout the year, offering information and technical assistance to potential first-time homeowners. The NAACP chapter has also partnered with Coppin State College to hold the Small Business Workshop Series at the campus.

As part of its Homeownership Week 2001, the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors is sponsoring several free homeownership workshops at public library branches in Baltimore and Baltimore County. Real estate agents will conduct the workshops, aimed at familiarizing potential homebuyers with how to buy and sell a home, and the services that are available to them. The GBBR is also holding the seminars to combat fraudulent housing practices and reinforce community and neighborhood partnerships.

Would you support a tax reform measure that could help reduce the federal deficit, remove a needless distortion in the economy and make the system fairer? Me too, which is why I'm taking aim at a sacred cow: the home interest mortgage deduction. That's right, the mortgage interest deduction that every homeowner, including me, loves. If you listen to home builders and real estate agents, they'll tell you that the mortgage interest deduction is what makes homeownership possible for millions of Americans.

Imagine that a federal agency wanted to hurt America's working-class families on purpose. How would it inflict maximum damage? It might start by aggressively marketing homeownership to marginal borrowers. It would tell them that bad credit scores aren't a problem. It would push them into homes they can't afford, saddle them with loans that barely build equity and provide no incentives for fiscal discipline. And when many of these homes go underwater and into foreclosure, it would leave families in financial ruin.

It's been said it takes a village to raise a child, but in this scenario, it takes a community to build a home. For the past seven years, Habitat for HumanitySusquehanna and Harford Technical High School, a vocational school in Bel Air, have partnered to build homes for those in need. This summer, the students were able to give back to one of their own and help an alumna achieve the American dream of homeownership. “It's really nice,” says the new homeowner, Kimberly Johnson of Aberdeen.

Here's the biggest reason Baltimore's property tax rate is the highest in the state and twice that of the surrounding counties: We have most of the region's poor people. About one in four Baltimore residents is officially poor, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. From 2006 through 2009, Baltimore's poverty rate was around 20 percent. But the Census Bureau's survey for 2010 put the rate at 25.6 percent. And that being 15 percentage points higher than the poverty rate for Maryland, and poverty being related to a thorny array of other problems, it follows that taxes would be higher in Baltimore.

Apartment complexes in the Baltimore region are raising rents as a muted economic recovery and a foreclosure crisis have discouraged homeownership — and added to the ranks of renters. Rental costs rose more than 6 percent to about $1,120 in the Baltimore metro area last year, according to preliminary numbers from MPF Research, a Texas-based company that tracks the industry. Those effective rents, or the monthly tab minus waived application fees and other concessions, rose even more in the upscale part of the market, Alexandria, Va.-based real estate research firm Delta Associates found.

Homeownership became an achievable American dream thanks to government-insured 30-year mortgages, part of the federal government's bold intervention in the housing market since the Great Depression. The ideology of the dream had germinated for decades, though. Political Progressives, a bipartisan reform movement between the 1890s and the 1930s, saw homeownership as good for America. Lawrence Veiller, of the influential Russell Sage Foundation, wrote in 1910: "Where a man has a home of his own he has every incentive to be economical and thrifty, to take his part in the duties of citizenship, to be real sharer in government.

Repentant drug dealers and gang members streamed into Allan Tibbels' home Thursday without knocking. Children who once went hungry dove into food spread on the kitchen table. Community leaders from Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and elsewhere sat together, swapping stories of inspiration. The scene, said Susan Tibbels, reflected nothing less than her husband's lifelong dream. Allan Tibbels, a quadriplegic who abandoned a life of suburban prosperity a quarter-century ago to toil on behalf of his adopted city neighborhood, a pious man who expressed his convictions through hammers and nails and drywall, died of multiple organ failure early Thursday morning at Mercy Medical Center.

The American Dream: A two-story house with a yard, picket fence, 2.5 children and a golden retriever. The problem: Someone has to mow the lawn, paint the fence, shuttle the kids and walk the dog. Professional carpoolers and dog walkers have the last two chores covered, but for many homeowners the notion of home maintenance is dismaying. They grew up watching their parents spend weekends with honey-do lists, and they are not going to follow in their footsteps. "They don't want to do that stuff," said Dave Smith of Chicago, Cambridge Homes' vice president of marketing.