"Live Near Your Work" hopes to attract employees to Waverly, west of Charles Village.

"Live Near Your Work" grants housing subsidies to Hopkins employees

By: Daniel Furman

Posted: 10/9/08

Last week Hopkins announced that employees of the University, the Hospital and the Bayview Medical Center will now be eligible for grants of up to $17,000 towards the purchase of homes in select neighborhoods in Baltimore.

The money, available through Hopkins's "Live Near Your Work" program, is a significant increase from the previous maximum grant, which was $2,500.

Hopkins employees have been able to apply for "Live Near Your Work" grants since 1997, and Michelle Carlstrom, director of WORKlife and Engagement at Hopkins, estimates that over 300 employees have taken advantage of it since then.

However, she said the program had stagnated in the last few years due to the rising expense of homes in many Baltimore city neighborhoods.

The increased grant money reflects the increased cost of purchasing homes around Hopkins's Baltimore institutions and has little to do with the recent drop in the national housing market, according to Carlstrom.

While there is no up-to-date record of how many Hopkins employees are currently city residents, the size and demographic diversity of its employee base makes administrators optimistic that the increased grant money will make purchasing a home in Baltimore city an attractive option.

Additionally, the program works as part of a broad strategy currently being pursued by Hopkins, the city of Baltimore, real-estate developers and non-profit organizations to fundamentally reshape and revitalize areas of the city around the Homewood Campus and the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

This plan also works as part of a "smart growth" strategy to build on already existing infrastructure, as well as to promote environmental sustainability.

These efforts include the East Baltimore Development Inc.'s redevelopment of the area around the Hospital as well as smaller scale initiatives by various non-profits in the Barclay and Greenmount communities south and west of Charles Village.

Half of the five million-dollar "Live Near Your Work" fund was provided for through a grant from the Rouse Company Foundation. This non-profit "helps provide reasonably priced, livable housing for low income families and individuals," according to its mission statement.

"One of the primary focuses of [the Rouse Company Foundation] is to provide the resources to community development in distressed neighborhoods in Baltimore," Director of Rouse Company Foundation Tony Deering said. He added that the "areas south of the JHU campus and north of the Hospital certainly are [distressed]."

The grants are available to all eligible Hopkins employees, and can be used as part of a down payment or to cover the closing costs on a newly purchased home.

Employees purchasing homes in the Harwood, Barclay, Greenmount West neighborhoods as well as residential units in the East Baltimore Development Inc.'s (EBDI) housing development are eligible for the maximum grant amount of $17,000.

Homes purchased in four other neighborhoods around the Homewood campus are also eligible for grant money under the program.

These communities include Remington, Better Waverly and Abell, where homebuyers will receive grants of $10,000. Buyers in the Baltimore-Linwood neighborhood can receive $6,000. Grants of $2,500 are available for homes purchased outside these targeted neighborhoods but within a designated perimeter around the Homewood campus, the Hospital and the Bayview Medical center in East Baltimore.

This tiered grant system does correlate inversely to recent home prices in these targeted neighborhoods, with the exception of Greenmount West, which includes gentrified areas along Guilford and Calvert streets and some of the residential units nearing completion in the EBDI redevelopment. In this area, "luxury" condos and "upscale" townhouses are priced at up to $200,000.

For some current employees, it appears that $17,000 will not be enough of an incentive to move into Barclay or other areas west off lower Greenmount Avenue, where the most vibrant feature on some blocks of boarded up row houses is the intermittent flashing of the blue lights affixed above police surveillance cameras.

"I don't think I would be as willing to even look at [the Barclay/Greenmount] area, I don't know if it would be worth it not to feel safe," an employee of Hopkins Hospital, who currently rents in a trendy downtown neighborhood, said.

This sentiment, while held by certain demographics in the Hopkins community, seems to reflect perception rather than reality.

The actual crime statistics show that the areas targeted by the initiative are on the whole less dangerous than areas like Fells Point.

According to the Baltimore Police Department's Web site, there have been 45 crimes reported in the Fells Point area since Sept. 1, while there have only been 10 crimes reported in the Barclay neighborhood since that date.

Carlstrom asserted that Hopkins contracted an expert in urban renewal planning, and that there are precedents and patterns for this kind of incentive-driven housing initiative.

"People will first buy on the perimeter, and then blocks will stabilize and people move into the center. We expect that to be the case in many of our targeted neighborhoods. By 2012, we are expecting to see those areas strengthened," Carlstrom said.

Also, because Hopkins employees make up a diverse demographic, Carlstrom thinks that this will be reflected in the areas in which Hopkins employees buy homes through the program.

"Hopkins has diverse employees, diverse racially, diverse economically. The program offers something for everyone. It's a win-win situation for both employees and targeted neighborhoods," Carlstrom asserted.

Salem Reiner, director for community relations at Hopkins, acknowledged that in order for the program to be successful, many will have to overcome the perception that these areas are lawless no man's lands, but that not everyone would want to take advantage of the opportunity.

"Some people that for whatever reason do not appreciate city living, ["Live Near Your Work" is] not a program trying to convert those people," Reiner said.

Officials at both Hopkins as well as the other non-profits that are working to revitalize the areas targeted in the "Live Near Your Work" program stressed that the current residents have and will continue to be consulted on all projects, and that they have generally been supportive.

An exception to this would be that Hopkins's support of EBDI redevelopment of the Middle East neighborhood near the Hospital has drawn criticism for what some residents perceived to be the heavy-handed manner in which the city used imminent domain laws to seize properties.

"The overall design [of the program], since it is largely about having a good place for Hopkins employees, people associated with biotech and other middle class residents, begs the question of what's in it for long-time Middle East Baltimore residents. They are saying that there is less and less in it for them," Nathan Sooy of the Save Middle East Action Committee said.

Mazepink said that some current residents of targeted neighborhoods might "bristle" at the notion that "the yuppies are not coming." However, "The wise residents understand that these divisions are not relevant, the battles are not relevant, everybody needed to be safe, everybody needs a home."

"There is a need to strike a balance between massive redevelopment and smaller-scale projects which involve area residents," Deering of the Rouse Company Foundation said, which supports both EBDI and Hopkins's "Live Near Your Work" program.

An employee of the Hospital described what changes would need to happen before they would consider buying a home in one of the targeted neighborhoods.

"I would need to see [a revitalized neighborhood] once it was there, I would need to be able to walk around and not feel afraid for my safety," she said.