NEWS
By Emeri B. O'Brien and Emeri B. O'Brien,Sun Staff | February 6, 2005
Outsiders may say there is no reason to sing God's praises in Sandtown. The place that in its heyday was known as the Harlem of Baltimore and the home of Billie Holiday is singing the blues of drugs, crime and unemployment. But for the past 12 years, hope has lived in Sandtown through the voices of children in a gospel choir named after their neighborhood. "We are a bunch of kids," says Sade Douglas, 14. "We can praise God instead of being on the streets." Sandtown choir's 55 members face a struggle daily to stay on the right path.
NEWS
By James Bock and James Bock,Sun Staff Writer | July 22, 1994
House by house, family by family, LaVerne Cooper wants to rebuild the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown as she remembers it from childhood: safe, close-knit, hard-working.The renewal of Sandtown, a community of more than 10,000 people southwest of North and Pennsylvania avenues, has already changed her life. She became a homeowner two years ago through Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, took a job with the nonprofit group and in April was named its co-executive director.Today Sandtown Habitat caps its third annual "blitz-build" week.
NEWS
June 16, 1992
The Enterprise Foundation has received a $500,000 grant from the Fannie Mae Foundation for its "neighborhood transformation project" in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester area.The grant will be used as the Enterprise Foundation and the city, in partnership with community leaders, try to improve housing, schools, health care and other services in Sandtown.The gift comes as former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are to be in Sandtown today to help renovate vacant houses as part of a Habitat for Humanity International project.
NEWS
By James Bock and James Bock,Staff Writer | December 3, 1993
VISTA, the 1960s-flavored anti-poverty agency, is coming to the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester to aid a 1990s-style assault on urban problems.The Enterprise Foundation and Volunteers in Service to America are to announce in Washington today a partnership that would bring 17 VISTA volunteers to Sandtown, a community of 10,000 people beset by poverty, joblessness and crime. Seven other cities would receive two volunteers each under the plan.Most or all of the Sandtown volunteers would be recruited from people already living in the neighborhood, said F. Barton Harvey III, chairman of Enterprise, the Columbia-based nonprofit group founded by developer James W. Rouse.
NEWS
By James Bock and James Bock,Staff Writer | January 7, 1994
The city housing commissioner has selected a Pasadena operator of three suburban nursing homes to complete and manage a boarded-up West Baltimore facility that was originally to be Baltimore's first black-owned, nonprofit nursing home.FutureCare Health and Management Corp. was chosen over four other developers -- two of them nonprofit -- to run the N. M. Carroll Health Care Facility at 1000 N. Gilmor St. in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood."The city's priority was to provide quality health care to the community while avoiding any drain on the city's coffers," Daniel P. Henson III, the commissioner, said through a spokesman.
NEWS
By Art Kramer and Art Kramer,Sun Staff Writer | April 20, 1995
Twenty-eight young people started rehabilitating homes and building their leadership skills yesterday as part of an effort to revive the troubled, 72-square-block Sandtown-Winchester area of West Baltimore.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke stopped by yesterday for the ceremonial opening of YouthBuild Sandtown's first two projects, rowhouse renovations in the 700 block of Cumberland St."This project shows that what others see as signs of despair, we see as signs of hope," the mayor said.YouthBuild Sandtown is a two-year project funded by a $995,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.