Public Housing

Not long ago, these houses were the proudest on their blocks, a cornerstone of Baltimore's renaissance in its poorest neighborhoods.The 2,800 newly renovated rowhouses were scattered throughout the inner city. They were supposed to be new homes for public-housing tenants.Today, 22 years after the first houses were rehabilitated, about 300 of them stand battered and vacant, many stripped by vandals, without doors or windows to protect what little is left inside. Once the nicest houses on the block, they are now eyesores.

WASHINGTON -- Henry G. Cisneros, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, yesterday laid out plans that would dramatically alter the face of public housing by giving poor people vouchers that would allow them to live anywhere they choose.The restructuring of HUD is intended to help President Clinton pay for his proposed middle-class tax break, but it's also part of a larger effort at "reinventing government" begun 20 months ago by Vice President Al Gore. The effort took on urgency after the Nov. 8 elections, when President Clinton told Cabinet officers to examine their agencies as part of a budget- and tax-cutting initiative.

Baltimore has corralled $300 million in federal funds to replace dilapidated public housing high-rises with rowhouse communities and to house 3,200 poor black families, many in the suburbs, under an agreement reached in a desegregation lawsuit.The partial settlement, to be unveiled today in Washington, would give two-thirds of the 3,200 families federal subsidies to rent or buy housing in mostly white, middle-class neighborhoods between this year and 2001, say sources close to the deal.The accord makes profound changes in the way Baltimore houses the poor, and it obligates the federal government to pay for giving families a wider choice of where to live.

Should we help distressed inner-city neighborhoods? Or just encourage poor people to escape them?Franklin D. Raines, vice chairman of Fannie Mae and a lead economic adviser on the Clinton transition team, warns that the ''people or places'' question, which bothered and sometimes confounded advocates for the urban poor through the '60s and '70s, is about to resurface.There are signs that he is right. Virtually all President-elect Clinton's urban-initiative ideas, starting with community-development banks and proceeding to enterprise zones and targeted infrastructure projects, seem oriented to people in the neighborhoods where they live.

THE ACLU and others who support helping some of Baltimore's public-housing families move to the suburbs are asking people who live in the counties to swallow their fears and do the right thing.To which suburbanites respond: Why should we?Most are not -- at this point, anyway -- kicking and screaming over this plan, part of a $400 million settlement of a racial-discrimination suit filed by the ACLU against the city housing authority. The ACLU and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development realized last fall, when the settlement was preliminarily announced, that they were going to have to make it more palatable to the counties if they were to win the cooperation of their elected leaders.

Antonio Fulgham can barely read or write. The 21-year-old from West Baltimore has been deemed "mentally retarded," with bleak job prospects. He blames his plight on lead poisoning he suffered as a toddler while growing up amid flaking paint in two Baltimore public housing units. Last fall a city jury agreed, and ordered the Housing Authority of Baltimore City to pay him damages that amount to $1.27 million. Although nothing can undo his brain damage, Fulgham says the money will mean "a better change in my life.

Baltimore will demolish Murphy Homes public housing in West Baltimore on July 3, the third of the city's four public housing complexes to be knocked down.City Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III made the announcement yesterday during his monthly news conference. Henson also discussed city plans to acquire private property adjacent to the Flag House Courts complexes in East Baltimore, which the city hopes will attract business developers and create jobs.Flag House Courts, which is scheduled to be demolished in July 2000, will be the last of the city's high-rise public housing to come down.

What happens when cities tear down public housing? The issue has played out in Baltimore and major cities across the country (remember the controversy surrounding HOPE VI, or Opportunities for People Everywhere? More here on that). A new study out this month by the Urban Institute and Emory University reveals the latest on the subject. It's an attempt to answer with "empirical evidence" whether a common perception is true: that teardowns contribute to crime waves in the neighborhoods where the former public-housing families settle.

jbayne The private company managing an Annapolis public housing complex has imposed a series of rules that tenants and their lawyers contend are unfair, unclear and violate federal regulations. The tenants of Annapolis Gardens are upset over provisions that bar large groups from congregating in many outdoor areas and make residents responsible for guests' behavior. They also question why property managers are requiring tenants age 10 and older to carry a photo identification in the complex or face being thrown off the property, and have set a $300 pet deposit that is four times higher than those charged at other city public housing developments.

Talk to some of the old-timers along Annapolis' historic Clay Street, and they'll say the neighborhood has seen its ups and downs: Once a vibrant African-American enclave, replete with black-owned businesses, the neighborhood struggled in the wake of civil rights-era rioting and the crack epidemic. The area is changing again, with a $24 million revitalization of the city's two oldest public-housing complexes, Obery Court and College Creek Terrace. The structures are being torn down and rebuilt with the help of a private developer.