Both the waiting list for housing vouchers and the demand for affordable housing continues to grow in Carroll County, but stereotypes about work force housing will have to be shattered before it is embraced, housing advocates say.
People “visualize … 70-year-old black women who are going to come in from Baltimore and shoot up the neighborhood with AK-47s,” said James Upchurch, president of Interfaith Housing Alliance Inc., a nonprofit that has built affordable housing in Westminster, Hampstead, Union Bridge and Taneytown. “But the typical person is more likely to be their Aunt Milly.”
A stagnation in federal funding, combined with the rising costs of houses, has boosted the demand for housing vouchers, known as Section 8 vouchers, to an all-time high.
A total of 957 people are on a five-year waiting list for one of the 549 vouchers available in Carroll, said Loretta Greenwell, housing program manager. About 524 are families with children, 163 are elderly and 351 are families with disabilities.
“The folks we are talking about are those who are working one and two jobs and who are truly just trying to get by,” said Jolene Sullivan, director of the Citizen Services Department.
The key to work force housing is making zoning “inclusionary” ? where developers are encouraged to build a certain percentage of affordable housing in each development ? a model first adopted in Montgomery County 30 years ago, Upchurch said.
“But there?s a lot of [the not-in-my-backyard mentality] unfortunately,” said Rita Zimmerman, Citizen Services deputy director.
“There?s a stigma that the housing is run-down, but they are not at all.”
Affordable housing opponents say it lowers property values, but studies prove otherwise, said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Claiming that mixed-income housing diminishes neighboring house prices is an example of “people coming up with socially acceptable rationalizations for supporting their biases, because they don?t want to live near poor or disabled people,” she said.
kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com
