Population

Up to half of sexually active young people will get a sexually transmitted disease by the time they are 25, yet many don't seek testing because it may be difficult, costly or embarrassing. Public health officials nationally and in particularly affected cities like Baltimore, however, say they've found a method that seems to address the major hurdles — a website that supplies free in-home testing kits for three of the most commonly reported STDs. "The highest prevalence is in young adults, and we knew we had to reach these kids," said Charlotte A. Gaydos, a professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Harford County was recently awarded nearly $867,000 in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care, or CoC, Program to help homeless people find shelter and other services. The funding increased about 6 percent from the previous year and last year's funding and will account for the increased fair market rents, the county government said in a news release. "We are very pleased with HUD's decision to increase CoC funding in Harford County, allowing us to give more to the nonprofits who serve our most vulnerable citizens," stated Harford County Executive David Craig.

On April 16, leaders from county and state agencies, the court system and elected officials met for a briefing regarding the increasing number of seniors in Harford County, and the community support families need to care for older family members. Harford County Executive David R. Craig spearheaded the Aging Summit, focusing on the needs of vulnerable senior adults in Harford County. The summit was held in partnership with the Harford County State Attorney Joe Cassilly and the Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane.

Maryland moved Monday to reduce the commercial harvest of female blue crabs in the aftermath of a survey finding that the Chesapeake Bay's crab population hit a five-year low last winter. The Department of Natural Resources announced that it was lowering the daily allowable catch of female crabs, effective Thursday. The move comes nearly a month after Maryland and Virginia officials announced the results of their annual winter dredge survey, which found that the bay's crab population had declined by nearly two-thirds over the previous year, to around 300 million, with juvenile crabs plummeting 80 percent.

Peter DuVall's column regarding Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's policy goal of increasing the population of the city is well done ("Grow city's population, but don't stop there," Nov. 28). It gently chastises the mayor for lacking detail. He is right . But the simplicity of the mayor's goal does not make it wrong. I have written several times about the value of establishing the goal of increasing the population of the city. As the column correctly points out, the city has lost population in the last 50-plus years.

Overall population has declined in Baltimore since 2000, although some communities have flourished, according to Vital Signs, an occasional report that charts trends in neighborhoods by a variety of measurements. The report analyzes data from 80 indicators provided by the city's planning department. About 270 city neighborhoods are broken down into census-tract boundaries, and while the city has lost about 3 percent of its residents since 2000, several communities have experienced a population boom, including downtown (22 percent growth)

If I drove around Baltimore long enough, I probably could find enough discarded wrapping blowing along the streets to wrap all our family's holiday gifts. In the best-case scenario, all this trash came out of someone's uncovered recycling bin; in the worst case, it's from someone unwrapping presents in a car or outside their home and throwing it in the street. In Baltimore, either of these is a possibility, and because of this and other uninviting features of city it will be hard to add 10,000 new residents over any period of time.

I'd love to see Baltimore grow, and if immigrants are the answer that's fine with me, as long as they're here legally ("Immigrants key to reaching mayor's population goal," Jan. 9). Yet no matter how hard the mayor tries to increase population, it will be meaningless unless there are good jobs. It's fine Elsa Garcia's husband found some construction work, but it doesn't sound like full-time employment to me. Why is no one suggesting a greater emphasis on vocational training in our schools?

Baltimore's population continues to drop, losing 3,231 people during the year that ended July 1, 2008, according to new census estimates released Wednesday. Except for a small uptick in 2006, the city's population has been on a half-century decline. The most recent census figures put Baltimore's population at 636,919. The number is an estimate, calculated by using data from the 2000 census and taking into account births, deaths and immigration. City leaders have annually disputed the census' initial estimates, arguing the numbers are too low. The preliminary count for 2007 was 637,455, but the bureau readjusted the figure to 640,150.

WASHINGTON -- Finally, after all these years of demographic doom-saying, population proliferationism and exponential extrapolated explosionism, comes a new report from the United Nations and a headline in the New York Times: ''World Is Less Crowded Than Expected.''Really? Than expected by whom? Than expected when?Apparently, not expected when it should have been expected by Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations Population Division, who is quoted in the Times story: ''We had some glimmer that this was occurring several years ago, but we weren't sure if it was simply a blip.

I harbor high hopes that Columbia can blossom to the next level in creating a "go to" environment that supports and nurtures art and artists. Recently the Columbia Association has stepped up offering public forums on this and Jane Dembner of the Association has been doing a wonderful job. But Columbia needs just a little bit more than just the enthusiasm. We need more residents to spread the support around. Redevelopment is helping this with new residences downtown. I have sat in Barbara Kellner's "Columbia Archives" and watched old grainy films of James Rouse lecturing a group of urban architects at a conference in the '70s - saying he full well expected Columbia's population to be around 300,000 residents by the late 1990s.

On April 16, leaders from county and state agencies, the court system and elected officials met for a briefing regarding the increasing number of seniors in Harford County, and the community support families need to care for older family members. Harford County Executive David R. Craig spearheaded the Aging Summit, focusing on the needs of vulnerable senior adults in Harford County. The summit was held in partnership with the Harford County State Attorney Joe Cassilly and the Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane.

With the city putting together a plan for adding 10,000 families to Baltimore, this is a good time for interested Baltimoreans to weigh in. I'm told that the plan will be driven by the best possible data - a great place to start. But the plan needs to address a critical question: Who is going to want to live here during the next decade? Some of the trends that are driving Baltimore's nascent revival will prove almost impossible to determine based on the opinions of the city's current population, many of whom live here because of ties to family and friends or because housing is relatively affordable, not because they particularly want to live in a city.

We baby boomers get blamed for just about every economic hiccup, because there are so many of us. And our children are particularly furious because they believe the crisis in Social Security, which may affect their ability to retire, can be laid at our feet like kindling for a burning at the stake. They are convinced we boomers, with our outsized appetites and sense of entitlement, are going to consume everything on our way to the cemetery, right down to the amount of ground we leave for those who die after us. But data from the Social Security Administration itself, provided by chief actuary Stephen Goss, demonstrates that boomers are not the pig-through-the-python that we have been described as being.

With a new survey finding the Chesapeake Bay's crab population at its lowest level in five years after a poor spawn last year, Maryland officials announced Friday they would move to tighten catch limits on the region's iconic crustacean. The annual winter survey of Maryland and Virginia waters tallied 300 million crabs, the Department of Natural Resources reported. That's down nearly two-thirds from the number seen last year, when Gov. Martin O'Malley held a press conference at a crab house in Annapolis to declare crabs had rebounded from near-collapse in 2008 and were more plentiful than they'd been in nearly two decades.

When cities become dysfunctional, we do not quickly abandon them and our established social networks and routines. And after a city puts itself back together, we may take years to become convinced that the bad old days are over. Awareness of these facts likely accounts for City Hall's mature, muted response to the Census Bureau's latest population report: after six straight decades of embarrassing shrinkage, Baltimore has grown by about 1,100 residents since mid-2011. But there has been no triumphant rhetoric from Mayor Rawlings-Blake.

Recently, the population of the United States reached an estimated 300 million, according to the Census Bureau. In four decades, it is projected to reach 400 million, with immigration the biggest factor driving that growth. More people means greater strains on the environment, and potentially greater strains on the economy. Given that the immigration juggernaut seems politically unstoppable, how can the United States absorb more people while maintaining its quality of life? The key is to increase our land's carrying capacity - the population level that a particular geographic area can support.

As I walk around Baltimore, it has become apparent that the city is on an upward swing. I see more people out on the streets and living in places that once seemed underused or headed for trouble. Streets and places I once considered dangerous are not scaring people away. I was not surprised at this week's news that Baltimore, after losing population for decades, has added about 1,000 new residents. I asked myself: Who are these people? Then I sought some help from city planner Chris Ryer, who heads Southeast Community Development Corp.

Not too long ago, Carroll County faced a problem: Rapid growth had brought crowded classrooms to the northeastern part of the county, and planners expected many more homes to be built in the area. "At one point, they were 400 kids over capacity at North Carroll High," said Bill Caine, facilities planner for the school system. It seemed inevitable that a new high school would be filled within a few years, so the county decided to build Manchester Valley High, which could accommodate 1,300 students -- at a cost of $80 million.

The Census report this week showing that Baltimore's population grew last year for the first time in decades is an encouraging sign that the long-term hemorrhaging of city residents to the suburbs may finally be turning around. Though the absolute numbers estimated in the survey were small - the bureau found a net increase of just 1,100 residents during the 12 months that ended July 1, bringing the total to 621,342 - even that modest rise after 60 years of continuous losses offers hope that the city need not resign itself to a future of perpetual decline.