Abell Foundation criticizes Baltimore Housing authority

The city's housing authority has abandoned its mission to house the poor, according to a new report by the Abell Foundation.

The report criticizes city housing officials for focusing on demolition of properties instead of providing new housing.

"On its seventieth anniversary, the Housing Authority - once on a mission to replace slums with safe homes for Baltimore's poor - is now in the demolition business," wrote Joan Jacobson, author of the Abell report,

The number of occupied public housing units in the city has declined by 42 percent in the past 15 years - from more than 16,000 to less than 10,000, according to the report, which says the authority's plans for new housing are "unclear."

City housing officials have also faced criticism for plans to use a $59 million affordable housing fund, created to provide homes for the poor and working class, to instead demolish units at 15 sites.

The Housing Authority of Baltimore City issued a response that called the report "deeply flawed and biased."

The authority said the report does not take into sufficient account federal funding cuts in the past six years, in which $79 million was cut from the authority's budget, or court orders that have made it harder to build new public housing.

Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano said the housing authority plans 3,700 housing units in mixed-income developments and demolition is needed to eliminate blight and make way for new housing.

"I think there is a failure to recognize that in order to create the viable mixed-income communities that our residents deserve, we need to tear down some of the old," Graziano said.

"These are not places where I feel good about the young children of the city growing up." (The Associated Press, examiner.com)