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Housing Patterns One of the important issues for Annapolitans is the issue of low income housing. This is anything but simple, given that Annapolis has ten public housing projects, with over a thousand living units, an oasis of low income units in a housing market that otherwise ignores poor and working people. If one looks at the housing projects from a need-a-place-to-live perspective, one can see them as a success story. Without them, there'd be a thousand less units available. When I look at the housing issue from an education perspective, though, I see a disaster story. Kids who grow up in middle class neighborhoods - including low income kids - do reasonably well in school. Kids of low income families who also grow up in low income neighborhoods drop out of school at a much higher rate. And that's what happens at Annapolis High School. In other words, these issues aren't easy. I tend to make three points when I talk this over with friends in the Annapolis area. 1. The school system needs to get its act together. It's not easy to educate children from low income neighborhoods, but there are schools - elsewhere in America - that have figured out how. Unfortunately, our school system ignores those successes. Time for the system to track them down, learn from them, and apply them here. 2. The upper middle class needs to get its act together. Creating upper middle class neighborhoods that freeze out the poor is rude and inconsiderate. It also pushes low income children onto a path of failure. It's time for the upper middle class to rethink its ideas about what it means to create healthy neighborhoods. Everyone needs to get behind the idea of a housing market that serves the entire community. 3. Kids from low income families also own a piece of this. Life is governed by a few success rules, and they apply to everyone, regardless of race. Learn. Earn. Marry. Raise. Everyone has something to be held accountable for, and kids have a responsibility to be smart about their lives, the same as grownups do. Learn. Do your homework, every night. Finish school. Homework is worth $200 a night. Every time you skip homework, your lifetime income drops by another $200. Earn. After you have your high school diploma, start working in serious jobs. Show up on time. Dress properly be polite. Do your job. Earn money, and be careful with it. Marry. If you're a young man, don't marry till you've found a young lady you're ready to spend your life with. If you're a young woman, don't marry till you find a young man you're ready to spend your life with. Raise. Once you're educated, once you have a decent job, once you're married to the right person, then you're ready to have children. And raise them well. You haven't been ready before, but now you are. The right time to have children is when a husband and a wife are ready, as a team, to become a mom and a dad. To put the advice to young people in different terms: "Invest in yourself. And when you do, your community will invest in you too. And you'll succeed." Or, as the father of Venus and Serena Williams frequently says, where you come from isn't that important. What counts is where you're going. The larger point is a simple one. Everyone has skin in the game, everyone has to perform. The school system has skin in the game - it has to do a better job educating children. The upper middle class has skin in the game - it has to do a better job making low income housing available in all neighborhoods. And kids from low income neighborhoods? They too have skin in the game. They have to do a better job taking school seriously and taking their lives seriously. In the past, no matter who we are, we've all been part of the problem. In the future, working together, we can all be part of the solution. Public Housing - Brief Profiles The street map below is provided by the County. I've used circles and labels to show the areas where nine of the public housing projects are located. The tenth - a senior citizen high-rise - is not shown. Were it on the map, you'd find it just to the left of Obery Court. |
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[The following information is drawn from Housing Authority data and a long conversation with former Annapolis Mayor Dean Johnson.] College Creek Terrace. 1934. 108 Units College Creek Terrace is the oldest continuously operated public housing in the US, predating the founding of the Annapolis Housing Authority. Its architecture was the middle class architecture of its day. This is the neighborhood that's so often referred to as "Clay Street." In the era of segregation, when it was home to black families of all income levels, the Clay Street neighborhood was vibrant and healthy. In more recent decades, much of Clay Street's middle class has moved on, and the neighborhood has changed. Clay Street's future, though, is as bright as Annapolis wants it to be. Where Clay Street is going counts for much more than where Clay Street has been. Obery Court. 1952. 56 Units. Obery Court was built to provide housing for black families who were displaced when the Gott's Court neighborhood was torn down. It was cheap construction project. It's right next to the railroad right-of-way that passes behind Lowe's Annapolis, and the Lowe's rear parking lot. Eastport Terrace. 1953. 84 Units. When Gott's Court was torn down, white families were displaced as well as black. Eastport Terrace was originally built for the displaced white families. Its population has since flipped. Gott's Court, by the way, was a confined neighborhood whose only access to the street was via a single sidewalk, opposite what is now 49 West, a popular eatery and music establishment. Gott's Court is the birthplace of former Annapolis Mayor Al Hopkins. Its original builder, Winston S. Gott, was also an elder in First Presbyterian Church of Annapolis. [Dean Johnson is also First Presbyterian's volunteer archivist.] Harbor House. 1964. 273 Units. When Harbor House was first built, it was intended to be market rate housing. None of its initial owners, though, stayed with it. After a time, HUD took it over and gave it to the Annapolis Housing Authority. Bloomsbury Square. 1941 (original site). 2003 (current site). 51 Units. Initially built for the Department of the Navy. The site had been a railroad yard. The Housing Authority acquired Bloomsbury Square from the Navy in the early 50's. Bloomsbury Square has a high percentage of seniors as residents. It was rebuilt recently to make room for an expansion of the State's office complex. Bloomsbury Square is thought of as a quiet, stable neighborhood with a low rate of police complaints. Annapolis Gardens. 1961. 100 Units. Annapolis Gardens was built to accommodate families displaced by early 60's state office construction downtown. Bowman Court, built in 1974, represented an expansion of the Annapolis Gardens neighborhood. It was the last public housing project built in Annapolis. I'm under the impression that Bowman Court was named in honor of the late Reverend Bowman of First Baptist Church, who was part of the Annapolis Housing Authority at the time this project was built. The design concept behind this neighborhood: "Give everyone a front door." Robinwood. 1970. 149 Units. Robinwood and Newtowne 20 were built as part of an urban renewal program being carried out by the Annapolis Urban Renewal Authority. Older housing on Cathedral Street (City Gate Lane) was targeted for removal. In its place, we now have the Arundel Center, the Whitmore Garage, 60 West, and 80 West. Town Pines Court at Clay & Washington was another urban removal target - older housing that lacked indoor plumbing. The urban renewal swap seemed attractive to the black community at the time. "Instead of the old housing you're now in, you'll have new housing, just off Forest Drive." Newtowne 20 was built as a three-section project, with affordable housing, Section 8 housing, and public housing. Robinwood and Newtowne 20 no longer have the positive reputation they once had. As former Mayor Johnson observes, both projects are known for high complaint rates. And residents sometimes complain that the police do not respond as well as they should. What might we learn from this? What's the first thing I notice in looking over this history? For one thing, it hits me that, by and large, these projects weren't built by the black community, they were mostly built by whites. Poor people don't create ghettoized neighborhoods - they haven't the means. Ghettoized neighborhoods are created for poor people by people who are not poor. Consider the following thought. It's important to treasure the people of Robinwood. But it's not a good idea to treasure Robinwood as a neighborhood. As local residents and as Americans, we want all the people of these neighborhoods to succeed, just as we want the people of all neighborhoods to succeed. If we're honest with ourselves, we also recognize that concentrated low income neighborhoods frequently handicap their residents and hinder their prospects. Consider, also, the following observation, reported by Malcolm Gladwell in his widely popular book, The Tipping Point:
Pushing poor people into ghettoized neighborhoods is one of the pervasive follies of American life. If Americans are to move toward a future that's not broken anymore, we shall have to apply our wits to this issue and work up something different. Before leaving this issue, let's examine the flip side of the public housing coin. How easy is it - or difficult - for low income minority families to find housing throughout our area? For each census block group in our area, the chart below records the percent of total households that are (a) minority households, with (b) an annual household income of less than $15,000. (2000 census) |
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Sixteen block groups have no low income minority households whatever. Another eleven block groups have only a tiny fraction of their households (<5%) that are low-income and non-white. Most low income minority households - the vast majority of them - are concentrated in just a few small neighborhoods. What does this tell us about the ghettoization of the poor? Who are the ghettoizers? From this map, one might infer that almost everyone who isn't among the poor ends up being against them. That's too simple, obviously. But if you're a minimum wage worker, where do you find housing? And if your minimum wage job is in the Annapolis area, but you live a long way off, how do you pay for the gas to get to work and get home again? What this map shows is a housing market that routinely deprives poor children of the life opportunities middle class children take for granted. A housing market that's broken. We need to do a better job of believing in ourselves, one another, and our common future. And we need to find a way to give our housing market a better compass. Steve Johnson |