Sandtown Winchester

Sandtown Habitat for Humanity kicked off a campaign yesterday to rehabilitate 20 homes for low-income families in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood in the coming year. The week of July 18-22 has been set for a concentrated construction effort called "Building on Faith," which will bring together more than 500 volunteers from Sandtown and the metropolitan area.Sandtown Habitat was begun in 1988. It is one of 1,000 local chapters of Habitat for Humanity International, an ecumenical Christian housing ministry dedicated to providing decent, affordable housing for all.Using volunteer labor, donated materials and 300 hours of "sweat equity" from each future homeowner, Habitat has restored 30 vacant homes in the Sandtown area.

An ambitious plan by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to rid Sandtown-Winchester of nearly 700 boarded-up properties within a year will begin soon with the demolition of blocks of dilapidated rowhomes.Wrecking crews will tear down all the vacant, blighted homes in the 1300 and 1400 blocks of N. Bruce St., the 900 block of Whatcoat St., and the 900 block of N. Woodyear St., housing officials confirmed yesterday. Some of the blocks are almost completely empty.Razing 136 of the small row- homes lining extremely narrow streets is expected to cost about $615,900, said Zack Germroth, a spokesman for the city Department of Housing and Community Development.

BALTIMORE -- Winter's cutting cold acquires a serrated edge from the harbor's dampness, and in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood winds whipping through gaping empty windows in abandoned row houses suggest spring never comes here. These 72 square blocks of blight give the impression that all commercial and social energies have congealed like oil in the crankcase of a jalopy: Ignition will be impossible.That impression is wrong. There is a quickening of community life because Jim Rouse willed it. He knows a thing or two about urban resuscitations.

Three months ago, Roosevelt Grandy paid $390 a month for a three-bedroom, one-bath rowhouse on Carey Street. Now Grandy, 44, owns a renovated three-bedroom, 1 1/2 -bath townhouse on North Calhoun Street, and his mortgage is $60 less than his rent. Grandy, who grew up in West Baltimore, is among scores of residents who are realizing homeownership through programs that provide low-interest loans, require nominal down payments and keep people in the city. He lives in Sandtown-Winchester Square, a $30 million redevelopment project that when complete will include 322 rehabilitated townhouses in one of Baltimore's most depressed areas.

Marvin Hill escorted his grandmother up three recently poured concrete steps and over the threshold of his home. Then the neighborhood was invited in for punch and cookies.The place where Hill used to rummage for aluminum and tin cans to sell for pocket change is now his back yard. The corner once known for drug deals and discarded booze bottles is now Hill's driveway."This used to be a junkyard," Hill said yesterday, minutes after a ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the opening of the new project called Sandtown Manor.

Drive down any number of blocks in the Nehemiah community in West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and you will find something noticeably absent from the windows and front porches of the community's well-kept homes: Foreclosure signs. Despite the conventional wisdom, this neighborhood is living proof that it is possible for low-income homeowners to avoid foreclosure. There's a reason why more than 500 residents in Sandtown-Winchester enjoy stable homeownership despite annual incomes of only $14,400 to $44,600.

A church in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood that is offering $25 to residents who turned in handguns %J received 27 weapons yesterday, including several sawed-off shotguns.The weapon turn-in at St. Gregory the Great church on Gilmor Street was the second for the poor West Baltimore neighborhood. On May 22, the church received 35 guns."It seems that people were looking for ways to turn in the guns," said the Rev. Gregory Napela, pastor of the church."We stress there are no questions asked.

Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester is one of America's toughest neighborhoods. Racked by crime and joblessness, pocked with run-down row houses, abandoned buildings, seedy liquor stores and weed-filled lots, it offers hardly a scintilla of hope for its 10,000 residents.But with a little luck, this bleak 72-square-block stretch of West Baltimore, an African-American community, could turn into one of America's most startling recovery stories.The inspiration began with James Rouse, the inventor of America's urban festival marketplaces, who founded the Enterprise Foundation to promote affordable housing for ''the poorest of the poor.

What the federal government couldn't do for Americans, a group of public and private agencies is doing for the residents of a West Baltimore community: Provide universal health care.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke led the cheers yesterday at the lively grand opening of the Gilmor Elementary School clinic in Sandtown-Winchester. The clinic at Gilmor and two others at nearby George G. Kelson and William H. Pinderhughes elementary schools are pieces of a health care quilt beginning to blanket the West Baltimore neighborhood.

Michael Randolph walks daily among the drug dealers and addicts of Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, knocking on doors and rallying residents to stand firm against drugs and crime in their community.The slender native of the West Baltimore community travels its grim streets with a goal of recruiting a volunteer block captain for each of the neighborhood's 280 blocks."People want to do something, but a lot of times they just aren't organized or didn't think they could do anything," Mr. Randolph, 37, says as he slowly walks through the community.