Lexington Terrace

Stop the presses: City Council President Mary Pat Clarke spent a night at a troubled public housing high-rise and lived to tell about it. Saw trash, smelled decay. Got stuck in an elevator.Meanwhile, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who is to spend Thursday night at a public housing project, apologized to tenants for the conditions at Lexington Terrace. "I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing," he said. "No wonder you're angry. It looks like a place we forgot."Political theater is an essential part of the American democratic process.

City Council President Mary Pat Clarke said she will spend tonight in an apartment in the crime-plagued and rundown Lexington Terrace public housing complex in West Baltimore, where residents have voted a rent strike beginning Feb. 1.On Thursday, Ms. Clarke accepted an invitation from tenants to move in for a night to witness first-hand the unsafe and unsanitary living conditions that prompted the rent strike voted by the tenants' council and residents of...

After concern was expressed this week about Baltimore's plans not to include middle-income people in replacement housing for the Lexington Terrace high-rise housing project, a federal housing official now says those plans are fine.Alex Sachs, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said yesterday that the plans represent no change from the city's original application for a $22.9 million federal grant, so there's no need for a federal review."We were reassured [by city housing officials]

Shanta Davis has been to pajama parties before -- but none like the one she attended this weekend on a basketball court in the Lexington Terrace section of West Baltimore."

The parents call it "the lovely Lexington Terrace Elementary School," and they mean it.Parents have decorated the school's halls with plants, posters and pictures and they make sure the building stays clean. Some of the parents sacrifice time from regular jobs to work at the school and others are involved full time."Our school is lovely. It's a warm and welcoming place," said Barbara McKinney, 38, who has lived in the Lexington Terrace development for 32 years. "We have some very faithful volunteers who are here every day."

Public housing residents will soon be learning to transcribe doctors' notes for medical records in a new program designed to teach job skills to welfare recipients.In a yearlong program scheduled to begin next month, Back to Basics will train 18 residents of Murphy Homes and Lexington Terrace in medical transcription, preparing them for job opportunities at the University of Maryland Medical Center and other hospitals."The most valuable social program we can provide is a job," Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday morning at Lexington Terrace, in a ceremony announcing the program.

The scramble is on at the city's high-rise housing projects. After visits to Lexington Terrace, first by City Council President Mary Pat Clarke and then by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, cleaning and fix-up crews are working double-time. Trash is being removed, long-standing problems -- exposed wiring, broken windows and the like -- are at last being addressed.Not surprisingly, the word has spread throughout the public housing projects that this is a good time to get things done. At Lexington Terrace, one tenant wanted to have her bathtub replaced.

Donnie Andrews' life is one that David Simon and Ed Burns would have had to invent if he hadn't already lived it. "I am the real Omar," Andrews tells me by way of introduction, referring to how he was the inspiration for the ruthless yet moral stickup man in the Simon and Burns HBO series "The Wire. " Omar Little didn't make it through "The Wire's" five-season arc. He was shot to death in the final season — as was a member of his crew, Donnie, who was played by Andrews himself in a bit part.

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."

The late March wind gave me a slight chill as I walked from my car and strode down Fremont Avenue. I heard footsteps behind me and, several seconds later, the voice of a man serenading the night air with a Marvin Gaye tune.At this point, according to that esteemed black leader Jesse Jackson, I should have looked behind me and felt relieved if the man was white. If he was black, I should have been struck numb with terror. Jesse said this to highlight the problem of black-on-black crime, not realizing he was buttressing the stereotype of the Negro as thug.