Houses In Baltimore

Citing "disturbing real estate practices in Baltimore City," two lawmakers are seeking legislation that the General Assembly could adopt next year to curb profiteering from the quick resale of houses, known as "flipping."Dels. Samuel I. Rosenberg and Carolyn J. Krysiak, both Baltimore Democrats, asked General Assembly policy analysts on Monday to recommend legislative remedies, after The Sun reported Sunday that hundreds of city houses, mostly in poor neighborhoods, have been purchased in recent years at low prices and sold quickly to first-time homeowners and aspiring investors at two to 10 times the purchase price.

Amid an outpouring of concern over drug dealers buying up slum houses in Baltimore, city and state lawyers are preparing legislation that seeks to give officials broad new powers to seize private property.Two bills expected to be introduced soon in the House of Delegates would attack the city's rampant blight by making it easier for prosecutors to confiscate houses owned by criminals and by bolstering the city's authority to seize 40,000 abandoned dwellings.With millions of dollars in urban-renewal projects pending in the city's worst slums, the stakes are high.

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. plans to use funds from the settlement of a national tobacco lawsuit to investigate fraudulent real estate practices in Baltimore that involve the quick resale of dilapidated houses for huge profits.Curran said he is earmarking more than $3 million from the tobacco companies for his criminal investigations, consumer protection division and the office's Medicaid fraud unit.Curran has about five lawyers looking into the quick resales, known as "flipping," and said "that's simply not enough."

Law day for elderly will include light breakfast and lunch"Important Legal Papers to Protect Yourself and Your Property" and "Rights and Responsibilities of Nursing Home Residents and Their Families" will be discussed at the Seventh Annual Law Day for the Elderly.Scheduled for 9: 15 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 2 at the Edward F. Borgerding Court Building at 5800 Wabash Ave., the program is free to Baltimore senior citizens, their families and caregivers.This event, sponsored by the Bar Association of Baltimore City Legal Services to the Elderly Program and the Baltimore City Commission on Aging and Retirement Education, will include a continental breakfast and lunch.

Lucky Realty Homes Inc., a Baltimore-based firm known for buying blighted houses, refitting them and selling them to low- and moderate-income buyers, is opening offices for the first time outside Maryland with hopes of nationwide expansion.Arnold Politzer, president of the company, has targeted Dallas to be the first city for its expansion. The firm will open its Dallas office later this month and plans to add two more in the Dallas/Fort Worth area by year's end."We never set out to be as large a company as we are. It happened," Politzer said.

Cliffholme, the 14,000-square-foot Green Spring Valley estate on 9 1/2 verdant acres scheduled to be auctioned Thursday, has been described by architects and historians as one of Baltimore's great houses.The three-story house, capped by three large chimneys, sits atop a ridge with a spectacular view of the valley floor and environs. The home, with nine bedrooms, seven bathrooms and seven fireplaces, looks as though it could be a setting for a Jane Austen novel or a "Masterpiece Theater" production.

IT IS DOUBTFUL that anyone has ever counted every one of them, but there are about 40,000 vacant houses in Baltimore City out of a total housing stock of 304,000 units, according to housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III.Even more shocking is the fact that 11,242 of them are open to the elements, posing a tremendous fire hazard and nuisance problem to themselves and to neighboring structures. More than 95 percent of these houses are privately owned.The city is now planning to go after these problem houses with new vigor.

ANYONE WHO has dealt with the housing court in Baltimore City knows it is a nightmare. One judge, working half-time, is trying to handle an avalanche of complaints. Because of incessant postponements, many cases are never resolved. Thus the housing court does not have the muscle that it ought to have as the adjudicator of criminal cases.An unusually broad-based task force of city interest groups -- including landlords as well as community activists -- is now asking the Maryland General Assembly to make the system more workable.

AFTER YEARS of passively watching the number of vacant houses in Baltimore skyrocket and deteriorate, the city's housing department has sprung into action.Under Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III, it has started a large-scale demolition of residential structures deemed unsafe or unsalvageable. Last year, 529 such buildings were torn down; this year's goal has been set at 1,000.This kind of demolition derby is understandable. The city has lost about 250,000 residents since the 1950s. The number of vacant houses may be as high as 30,000.

THE FIRST scaffolding of the spring is going up -- a sign that gives as much hope to urban residents as the first daffodils.We live in distressing times. The number of vacant houses in Baltimore has never been so high.Look at the 600 and 700 blocks of North Carey Street, near Lafayette Square. Once, vandals would have been content to steal the copper pipes and architectural artifacts from these once-grand houses. These blocks have been stripped of everything. What was not taken was broken.

Joseph Armando Liberto, a 54-year veteran of Baltimore movie houses who managed the Stanley, once Baltimore's largest cinema, died of Alzheimer's disease complications Sept. 19 at the Northwest Hospital Center. The Catonsville Manor resident was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised on Greene Street in downtown Baltimore, he attended St. John the Baptist Parochial School and was a 1944 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School. While in high school, he worked summers in his family's Lexington Market produce business.

Clyde Nelson beamed as he held the keys to his new home. He is one of two future homeowners who have worked the past five months with volunteers and construction crews to gut and remodel the two East Baltimore homes they plan to move into in February. Yesterday afternoon, a crowd of about 60 people gathered outside the North Washington Street homes to celebrate their completion with Chesapeake Habitat for Humanity, the local organization that coordinated the program, and Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, the homes' sponsors.

Chet Pajardo talked sports with neighbors, grilled in the back yard and played basketball with children in the street, neighbors said. He drove a red minivan and puttered inside his red brick house at the end of an Owings Mills cul-de-sac. "Typical everyday nice-guy neighbor," said John Parham, who lives next door to Pajardo on Kentbury Court. Only the swarm of police cars that surrounded Pajardo's red-brick house this week gave his neighbors an inkling that the friendly father of three might have legal problems.

Pigtown in Southwest Baltimore has gentrified to the point that City Hall has tried to give it the ritzier name of Washington Village, but dozens of vacant houses continue to blight the area still best known for its slaughterhouse past. Turning abandoned houses into livable homes can be almost as difficult as shaking an unflattering-but-catchy nickname, but that is expected to happen to 24 properties in the neighborhood. The city plans to sell the rowhouses to Chesapeake Habitat for Humanity as part of Mayor Martin O'Malley's Project 5000, a plan to return 5,000 vacant homes to productive use. Terms of the deal have not been worked out, but city officials say the plan shows the value of the project, which for three years has sought to obtain ownership, or clear title, to abandoned houses so that they can be sold and redeveloped.

Perhaps you've seen it: a well-framed rowhouse in a quiet Baltimore neighborhood. Inside, peeling paint, chipped plaster and rotted floorboards hint at the age of the 80-some-year-old house. It could be the home next door. Then again, it could be home. For Thayer Young, a reserved 32-year-old science teacher, it is. And it all began with a bid. Last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sold 65,986 properties nationwide. Of those, 1,729 were sold in Baltimore for $61.8 million, for an average price of $35,700.

In Baltimore City Groups announce plan to renovate abandoned houses With Mayor Martin O'Malley's promise to reclaim 5,000 abandoned houses serving as a backdrop, a consortium of nonprofit groups and government lenders announced yesterday an initiative to find owners for at least 50 such properties. Under the Keys to Success Homeownership Initiative, the nonprofit Greater Baltimore Opportunities Industrialization Center will acquire foreclosed properties at little cost from federal, city and state housing agencies.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is granting $10 million nationwide to defray the cost of lead testing on houses to assist compliance with new federal safety regulations. Baltimore conducts more than 1,000 lead abatements every year, of which several hundred are eligible to receive money toward post-abatement dust testing. The city has not calculated how much it will get, said Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, Baltimore health commissioner. "We're already doing clearance tests," said Beilenson.

John Henry Miller, a former restaurateur who founded a stained-glass business, died of heart failure Feb. 8 at a hospital in Billings, Mont. He was 88 and lived in Kingsville for nearly half a century before moving to Cheyenne, Wyo., 15 years ago. A member of the family that founded the now-defunct Miller Brothers Restaurant in downtown Baltimore, he managed the Kingsville Inn on Belair Road from 1950 to 1962, and owned Perry House in the Perry Hall...

A $5 million pledge of private financing for the renovation and sale of vacant government-owned houses in Baltimore was announced yesterday. Freddie Mac, one of the nation's largest suppliers of mortgage money, promised to finance the rehab and sale of about 100 houses that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has been unable to sell for six months or more. The houses will be bought for $1 each by St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, which will use the Freddie Mac funds to rehab and sell them to buyers who will be able to get mortgages financed by Freddie Mac. A 31-year-old company chartered by Congress, Freddie Mac does not make loans directly.

A man who bought and resold dozens of houses in Baltimore in recent years faces federal arson and mail fraud charges involving a 1999 fire at a city house he was allegedly unable to use in a failed property flip. Scott Dunning Mead, 30, was charged June 20 in a sealed six-count indictment that was made public yesterday after his arrest Wednesday night in Big Sky, Mont. A federal magistrate judge in Great Falls ordered him held yesterday until a hearing Tuesday to determine if he should be ordered back to Maryland on his own or in federal custody.