House Courts

It was a good day.Big speakers boomed the bass of music -- sometimes live,sometimes off the radio. The sun beamed brightly despite predictions of cloudy skies. Pineapple and orange snowballs awaited those seeking a cool remedy. Hot dogs sizzled on the grill.And smiles sparkled in conversation.The old stony, weed-ridden playground in the middle of Flag House Courts was the center of celebration yesterday afternoon as about 300 residents and a few city officials toasted with canned drinks to the recent rejuvenation of one of Baltimore's most squalid housing developments.

The demolition yesterday of Flag House Courts took only seconds, but for former tenants of the East Baltimore public housing site, the event symbolized years - in some cases decades - of a way of life that many now say never should have been. With the controlled collapse of Flag House Courts' three 13-story buildings, Baltimore became the first major U.S. city to tear down all its high-rise public housing complexes for families. Last year, then-U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo said in a speech here that the high-rises "should never have been built."

The elevator shook to a stop and Andrea "Piper" Horton, 6 and her 4-year-old sister, Erica, found themselves staring at a wall. They were stuck between floors.Not knowing what to do, Andrea helped lower her younger sister to the floor below. But as she tried to get out, she slipped and plunged more than eight stories down the shaft."I thought I was going to die," she recalls.Andrea fell on a bed of trash, lucky to escape only with bruises and a back injury in that 1987 incident. But it illustrates the dangers residents face daily at Baltimore's Flag House Courts public housing project.

ON SATURDAY morning, the Flag House Courts public housing complex will no longer exist. In not much more time than it takes to read a couple of paragraphs of this column, the three towers on the edge of Little Italy that for decades have housed hundreds of families will collapse into a heap of dust and rubble -- the last of the city's four family high-rise complexes to be toppled under a federal program to replace dilapidated buildings with viable communities....

Baltimore Housing Authority police made another sweep through a public high-rise complex yesterday, seizing drug materials and arresting seven people who were illegally "squatting" in apartments.Armed as in past sweeps with semiautomatic weapons, about two dozen police officers unlocked doors of 41 supposedly vacant apartments in the Flag House Courts development just east of downtown.Inside, they found not only squatters but also "a host of drug paraphernalia, including syringes and empty vials," said Bill Toohey, a Housing Authority spokesman.

Evelyn Scipio moved to East Baltimore's Flag House Courts public housing project 30 years ago, a time when a move to the then-sparkling complex was seen as a step up for the poor but hopeful families that lived there.Ms. Scipio reared five children at Flag. Photos of them and her seven grandchildren are proudly displayed on her coffeetable. Her youngest daughter, Robin Parke, 34, a state employee, visits her mother at Flag a couple times a week, and over time has grown increasingly distressed at her old neighborhood's deterioration.

City housing officials have chosen a team that includes the nation's largest African-American construction company to redevelop the Flag House Courts housing project.H. J. Russell & Co., an Atlanta company with annual sales of $155 million, is one of three companies that formed Flag House Courts LLC. The other principal companies are Integral Group LLC of Atlanta, a minority-owned development company, and Mid City Urban LLC, of Bethesda, a developer of housing for low- and moderate-income people.

The Girl Scouts met for the first time in years recently at the Flag House Courts public housing project. And last week, 16 Flag youngsters attended a Boy Scout meeting, hoping to re-energize a troop that was inactive for months.On Saturdays, dozens of Flag children take part in Bible study classes. And yesterday, the council threw a big Halloween party, complete with a haunted house and goodie bags, for Flag's children.These staples of community life had been all but stamped out at the East Baltimore public housing project by open drug dealing, rampant violence and Housing Authority neglect when The Sun ran a series of stories on Flag in May.Those problems profoundly altered the rhythms of life for residents of Flag.

A man accused of killing two Baltimore youths was charged yesterday with sexually abusing three other boys while he lived at the Flag House Courts public housing high-rise between July and January.Shawn E. Brown, who is being held without bail at the Baltimore City Detention Center on the murder counts, now faces 20 additional charges, including sex offenses, battery, kidnapping and using a deadly weapon.A police spokesman said Mr. Brown befriended the three boys -- 6, 13 and 14 years old -- and lured them into a residence near Flag House Courts or into his sister's apartment in the high-rise, where he sexually assaulted the children at knifepoint.

This week's $208,000 cleanup blitz at the Flag House Courts high-rise public housing project sends important signals all over the city.The message to residents of public housing complexes is that the Housing Authority is taking serious steps to stop the uncontrolled deterioration and crime that have been allowed to continue far too long at the 17 federally funded high-rises. This is the time for those residents who care about their apartment buildings to join the effort and help to turn their complexes around.

They're calling it an "implosion." But is that really the right term for Saturday's planned demolition of East Baltimore's old Flag House Courts housing project? The demise of the city's last public family housing high-rise invites the question. Spectators might be surprised that the answer is not exactly what they think they see when explosives are detonated. "Of course, it's not an implosion," says Nick Jones, chairman of the civil engineering department at the Johns Hopkins University.

THE COMMUNITY that is planned to replace the Flag House Courts public housing complex in East Baltimore has won national recognition as an example of successful urban design. An American Institute of Architects jury chose the 338-unit development as one of four projects that will receive Honor Awards for outstanding regional and urban design during the AIA's annual convention in Denver in May. City officials have set Feb. 10 as the date when contractors will demolish the vacant public housing complex to make way for the replacement community, which will contain housing, commercial space and a community center.

THE ANNAPOLIS City Council can take the easy way -- and possibly the correct way -- out by awaiting the wisdom of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of anti-loitering laws.The court is to rule next month on a challenge to an anti-loitering law in Chicago, which in 1992 gave police sweeping power to arrest suspected gang members.Chicago police may order groups of two or more people to move along if they are standing around "with no apparent purpose" and if an officer "reasonably believes" one of them to be a gang member.

Calling it an extraordinary victory for the city, the federal housing secretary delivered a $21.5 million grant yesterday to Baltimore that will pay for the demolition of the city's last high-rise housing project.U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo delivered the news to Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke at a U.S. Customs House news conference.The funding will pay for the demolition of the Flag House Courts public housing project at South Abermarle and East Pratt streets; and the building of a mixed-income development of single-family rowhouses and apartments.

WASHINGTON -- Baltimore's housing authority has won a $20 million federal grant to renovate buildings used for public housing, U.S. officials are expected to announce today.Andrew M. Cuomo, the U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, is scheduled to make the announcement at a Baltimore news conference this morning. The news conference is to feature several prominent Democratic officials, including Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke of Baltimore, and Gov. Parris N. Glendening.

City housing officials have chosen a team that includes the nation's largest African-American construction company to redevelop the Flag House Courts housing project.H. J. Russell & Co., an Atlanta company with annual sales of $155 million, is one of three companies that formed Flag House Courts LLC. The other principal companies are Integral Group LLC of Atlanta, a minority-owned development company, and Mid City Urban LLC, of Bethesda, a developer of housing for low- and moderate-income people.

WASHINGTON -- Baltimore's housing authority has won a $20 million federal grant to renovate buildings used for public housing, U.S. officials are expected to announce today.Andrew M. Cuomo, the U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, is scheduled to make the announcement at a Baltimore news conference this morning. The news conference is to feature several prominent Democratic officials, including Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke of Baltimore, and Gov. Parris N. Glendening.

Calling it an extraordinary victory for the city, the federal housing secretary delivered a $21.5 million grant yesterday to Baltimore that will pay for the demolition of the city's last high-rise housing project.U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo delivered the news to Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke at a U.S. Customs House news conference.The funding will pay for the demolition of the Flag House Courts public housing project at South Abermarle and East Pratt streets; and the building of a mixed-income development of single-family rowhouses and apartments.

Court. It's the ultimate weapon, used to bring the worst housing scofflaws to bay. Sometimes, though, the zeal of city enforcers to make slumlords and others who abandon pay for their misdeeds snares unwitting victims.Sheila Ellerba is one of them.Thirteen years after an arsonist's flames consumed her dream house and the city razed the charred Park Heights hulk, Ellerba has become another target of a renewed City Hall campaign to force owners to pay for work done on their property.Last October, two months after the mother of eight declared bankruptcy, the city sued Ellerba for the $10,000 cost of tearing down the house, plus interest, penalties and unpaid taxes.

Maryland's top judges urged legislators yesterday to kill a bill that would create a housing court in Baltimore with two new judges, citing a lack of cases to warrant the new court or the extra positions."