Public Housing

Howard County housing officials are planning a major overhaul of two Ellicott City public housing complexes and the nearby Roger Carter Recreation Center as plans to redevelop a third, Guilford Gardens, move closer to fruition. Hilltop Housing, the county's oldest public housing complex, just off the Main Street historic area of the county seat, would be transformed into a new mixed-income community able to support itself financially, according to county housing director Stacy L. Spann.

Annapolis police plan to step up their presence this month at two of the city's public housing communities, an effort that police say has helped decrease crime in the past. The program, called Safe Zone, assigns more officers and restricts traffic in troubled areas. The Safe Zone at the Harbor House and Eastport Terrace communities will close the normal flow of traffic on Madison Street for a month beginning April 12. From 4 p.m. to midnight, Madison Street will effectively become a one-way street.

THE recent Housing Authority of Baltimore City task force reports were received with some skepticism by advocates for the poor.The skeptics argue that implementing the recommendations would reduce housing assistance to the poor. This conclusion is the result of confusion about the purpose of public housing and HABC's objectives. Public housing cannot be all things to all people.Until recently, federal public housing policies had favored the poorest of the poor, which meant that people who were not homeless stood scant chance of getting in public housing.

The availability of federally subsidized housing in Baltimore is going to shrink - yet again. City officials say that's the inevitable outcome of the Bush administration's continued draconian underfunding of public housing needs across the country. The city's public housing authority says its federal operating subsidy for this year won't cover its expenses, which are higher because of utility costs. The shortfall means fewer dollars to repair and replenish a compromised housing stock. And people who can least afford market rents will have to fend for themselves.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Thirty years ago, the Kerner Commission Report on urban riots warned of two nations "separate and apart" -- one white and more affluent leaving cities and another poor and overwhelmingly minority, restricted to decaying inner-city neighborhoods. At the turn of the century, and because of unfounded fears, the commission's mandate that America expand housing options for inner-city families remains unfulfilled in Baltimore and other leading cities. The past few years have generated powerful evidence that moving to better neighborhoods can indeed make inner-city families healthier, happier, better educated and more economically self-sufficient.

It is understandable that Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III would disagree with the findings of a federal audit on the city's Housing Authority.Perhaps there are inaccuracies in the audit, perhaps there are misinterpretations. But the main thrust seems unassailable: A $25 million no-bid repair program cost more than twice the going rate to fix 1,136 public housing units, paid some contractors for work that was never done and gave millions to firms run by relatives of managers.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros yesterday announced a $49.6 million federal grant to fund Baltimore's long-discussed plan to raze five high-rises at the Lafayette Courts public housing project and replace them with town homes.A host of federal, state and city officials hailed the Lafayette plan as one that could serve as a model for America's troubled public housing stock, because it calls for less density, more tenant input in management and a better social service infrastructure to support residents.

In the summer of 1969, every heavy thunderstorm brought a deluge of mud from a nearby creek that covered Fels Lane just off Ellicott City's Main Street, where many of the historic town's poorer African-American residents lived in dilapidated rented wooden homes with no indoor plumbing. That same year, then-rural Howard County's governing commissioners replaced those old shacks with a brick public housing complex of townhouses and apartments on a hill above the historic mill town.