Housing Officials

Baltimore housing officials are warning that the city's homeless and others in need are being misled by deceptive fliers offering Section 8 housing vouchers. The fake fliers are circulating throughout the city, according to statement from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. The fliers tell people to bring pay stubs, Social Security information and proof of income to the housing office to apply for a program that actually ran out of money last year. "These claims are not true," the statement from the housing authority says.

It was unusual enough when Baltimore housing officials had to get a search warrant to gain entry to a Canton rowhouse where they believed illegal renovations were occurring. But the owner's son had barred inspectors, and neighbors were complaining of work that was noisy, substantial and ongoing. Then inspectors went inside and were shocked to find that the three-story home in the 2100 block of Cambridge Street had been gutted. Not only had the owner's son failed to pull required building permits, the city alleged in a lawsuit, but the work was so shoddy that the house had to be condemned.

Traveling aboard a trolley bus, city Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano and other housing officials will talk with residents at four community events tomorrow, beginning at 9 a.m. at the New Shiloh Baptist Church parking lot, 2100 N. Monroe St., for a "Christmas in April" volunteer day in the Mondawmin area. The tour will move at 10:15 a.m. to a "chat and chew" at the Bay-Brook Housing Festival in Bayview-Brooklyn, continue with an 11:30 a.m. "meet and greet" at the Herring Run Spring Festival in Belair-Edison, and end with a 1 p.m. stop at the rededication of the Patterson Park pagoda.

By now, Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg says he expected big news from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City - that it had found a way to resolve the millions of dollars in court-ordered judgments it owes former public housing residents who suffered lead paint poisoning as children. Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano told him in early January that the agency was "close to an agreement with the feds to work this thing out," Rosenberg recalled. Based on Graziano's assurance, Rosenberg says, he held off pursuing a remedy in the legislature when the General Assembly's annual session began days later.

Mayor Martin O'Malley yesterday helped topple the roof of the lone building approved to come down in a vacant Southwest Baltimore apartment complex, a large redevelopment project that has been held up for two years by a legal dispute. Attorneys from the Legal Aid Bureau waged a successful fight this week to ensure the demolished unit at Swann Avenue and Old Frederick Road in the Uplands Apartments is the only one razed until a final agreement is reached in a long-running federal court suit on behalf of former tenants seeking assurances that the new project will include low-income housing.

Legislation promising to sweep Baltimore clear of about 40,000 boarded-up rowhouses -- inner-city eyesores that have given cover to drug addicts and dragged down property values -- passed the Maryland Senate yesterday, virtually ensuring final approval. The bill offers city housing officials unprecedented power to seize and demolish abandoned property. It has passed the House of Delegates, and needs only minor adjustments before it gains final approval and is sent to the governor to be signed.

Housing officials have sold more of the city's vacant homes in the first seven months of the budget year than in all of the previous year — but the sales still represent fewer than 3 percent of the 4,000 empty houses owned by the city. As housing advocates, community leaders and developers gather today for a day-long summit on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's "Vacants to Value" program, data from the city housing department indicate that despite incremental gains, officials are far from making a dent in the city's 30,000 vacant properties.

Poor families with children should not be housed in high-rises. It's a cry that has echoed across the country for years.The towers are notorious for violence and vandalism. Filth -- including discarded scraps of food and dirty diapers -- makes life almost unbearable. And drug dealers use the secluded hallways as safe havens from police.Public housing officials complain that the security and maintenance costs make high-rise buildings the most costly to manage. In the 1980s in cities such as Chicago, Newark, N.J., and St. Louis, those complaints turned into action with officials calling the buildings "inhumane reservations" that were dilapidated beyond repair and ordering them demolished.

Federal housing officials are expressing concern over Baltimore's new plan to exclude middle-income residents in the rowhouse communities that will replace the Lafayette Courts and Lexington Terrace housing projects."

While most of the debate on President Barack Obama's jobs bill has focused on taxes, spending on infrastructure and unemployment insurance, housing officials in Baltimore and across the country are monitoring a little-remarked proposal to revitalize vacant and abandoned properties. Though housing officials generally praise the $15 billion program, called "Project Rebuild," they say its impact will depend in large part on whether it is geared to address recent foreclosures or the more chronic abandonment of the sort found in cities such as Baltimore and Detroit.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is proposing a $15 million increase in the state's program to help build affordable rental housing, saying the bump would leverage $285 million in private investment and create 1,100 jobs in Maryland. Surrounded by housing advocates, construction workers and local residents, O'Malley went to the site of a former public housing development in Annapolis to announce plans to double the state's investment in loans to developers to help spur rental housing construction.

The Baltimore sheriff's office began the process Wednesday of seizing 20 vehicles owned by the city's housing authority — part of a move by two siblings who suffered lead poisoning in public housing to force the agency to make good on $2.59 million in damages awarded by a jury. Just after 9 a.m. at an East Baltimore lot, two members of the sheriff's office went truck by truck, verifying information and slapping each with a sticker that said, "A levy has been made on this property by the sheriff of Baltimore City.

Representatives from the Baltimore sheriff's office moved across a city housing authority parking lot Wednesday morning, tagging 20 of the agency's vehicles to be seized and eventually sold to pay part of a court judgment to lead paint victims. The Housing Authority of Baltimore City has resisted paying siblings Antonio Fulgham and Brittany McCutcheon the $2.59 million awarded by a jury in 2010, as the agency appeals the case. But the plaintiffs, who suffered lead poisoning while living in public housing, have filed legal actions to move forward with collecting the debts.

While most of the debate on President Barack Obama's jobs bill has focused on taxes, spending on infrastructure and unemployment insurance, housing officials in Baltimore and across the country are monitoring a little-remarked proposal to revitalize vacant and abandoned properties. Though housing officials generally praise the $15 billion program, called "Project Rebuild," they say its impact will depend in large part on whether it is geared to address recent foreclosures or the more chronic abandonment of the sort found in cities such as Baltimore and Detroit.

Baltimore housing officials are warning that the city's homeless and others in need are being misled by deceptive fliers offering Section 8 housing vouchers. The fake fliers are circulating throughout the city, according to statement from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. The fliers tell people to bring pay stubs, Social Security information and proof of income to the housing office to apply for a program that actually ran out of money last year. "These claims are not true," the statement from the housing authority says.

A federal grand jury has indicted a pair of Washington men, charging them with taking $1.4 million from Baltimore's public housing authority and electronically transferring the funds to a nonexistent business, according to authorities. The men, William Alvin Darden and Keith Eugene Daughtry, were indicted last month on charges of bank fraud, according to federal court documents. The pair transferred money from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City's fund for Section 8 residents to a fictitious contracting company 30 times over a two-month period last year, according to the documents.

The smell of filth filled the small apartment. The couches were overturned, along with a washing machine, and the floors were streaked with grime. A bra lay on the floor in front of Shirley Gilbert's refrigerator. The underwear wasn't hers. Neither, she says, was the mess that drug dealers and junkies left for her to clean up in her one-bedroom apartment in the Latrobe public housing community in East Baltimore. "It's not safe here," Gilbert said. "They come in and do what they want to do. They bust the window.

Yesterday's sweep of a decrepit high-rise in the Flag House Courts complex was inspired by the Chicago Housing Authority, which has cleaned out 170 public housing buildings over the past five years, purging them of trash and drug dealers.Baltimore's two months of planning also took 10 city housing officials to Chicago to see how the experts do it.At the invitation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Baltimore housing employees flew to Chicago for a three-day training session by Chicago housing officials.

Baltimore housing officials hired a man as a housing inspector and promoted him to a supervisory position although he had been fired by the state Department of Corrections for forging sick leave forms and convicted of more than a dozen counts of theft, according to a report released Tuesday by the city's inspector general. Algie C. Epps worked for the city Department of Housing and Community Development for five years after he was fired by the corrections department. He was promoted to assistant superintendent of code enforcement in spite of his criminal record, according to the report by city Inspector General David McClintock.