It used to be called Peabody Heights, as -- a mere two blocks of row houses along St. Paul Street between 27th and 29th streets, plus a few scattered settlements along 25th Street. After the Civil War, developers, tenants and businesses flocked to the rolling hills and glittering lakes, the moderate Mason-Dixon line climate and the opportunity to border some of Baltimore's finest estates. But those were Victorian times, and that was Peabody Heights. Now it's a new millennium, and this urban enclave is Charles Village.
On a Wednesday afternoon in September, on the block north of East 33rd Street, two men chisel the hard ground into dusty smithereens, throwing their weight on top of rumbling jackhammers. Behind them: a construction site, a huge pile of shredded wood and insulation where the Ivy Hall apartments, Homewood Parking Garage and the Royal Farms, better known as Rofo, once stood.
This is the future site of Charles Commons, one of the largest new housing projects in the Charles Village area. The vision: 618 student dorms, new dining halls and a full-service Barnes & Noble bookstore. Struever Bros., a Baltimore-based real estate company, hopes to complete the project by the summer of 2006. And most community experts and prospective tenants agree that in terms of Charles Village housing, something needed to change.
The Johns Hopkins University Off-Campus Housing Department, opened over 10 years ago, provides key information for students facing off-campus options. The department doesn't match anyone up, move anyone in, or hold wary upperclassmen's hands as they brave their first years off campus, but they do provide workshops, an extensive Web site and piles of pamphlets dealing with topics from Keeping a Budget to Getting Along with your Neighbors.
Mireille Miller, a coordinator for the Student Housing Office, offers her analysis. Miller, a lively woman in her thirties and a self-proclaimed optimist, says things like, "It's a question of looking at your glass as half empty or half full," but doesn't shy away from the real issues facing Charles Village.
As a housing coordinator, Miller deals with the nitpicky and the critical, solving problems ranging from getting security deposits back at the end of leases to complaints about dirty apartments or old tenants' leftover goodies; from serious security concerns to heating disputes in winter.
The complaints are familiar: High Rents. Inconvenience. Burglary. Rats. Miller is reluctant to overtly criticize the situation. "I hear what people say about housing in Charles Village," she says. "The best method is to evaluate it on your own." Baltimore is infamous for its socio-economic extremes, often in shocking proximity. The situation in Charles Village is no exception.
Take the experiences of the students themselves. Senior Heidi Joseph works for the Center for Social Organization of Schools, in the Homewood Offices and Apartments on 31st and North Charles streets. A month ago, a coworker heard a distinct rustling as he entered his office, and spied a large rat caught between his desk and the wall. When Maintenance put out poison, the nuisance turned into a catastrophe.
Heidi received an e-mail explaining the new problem: flies. It seems that the stench of the old pests' remains attracted swarms of a new breed to the Homewood building.
Yet in a rowhouse on the 3100 block of Calvert Street, a graduate student named Lisa Ievers has found a comparable paradise. For $500 a month, a sum Lisa finds more than fair, she gets the entire third floor. She also feels a sense of security, hard to come by in the face of Homewood Campus crime statistics: 17 robberies, 4 aggravated assaults, 18 car thefts and 2 forced sex offenses, on and off campus, in 2003, according to the Office of Post Secondary Education's Campus Security Web site. Yet Ievers found her new apartment clean and recently refloored -- her only complaint about the landlord is that he may be "a little too laid back."
According to Miller, these door-to-door variations are part of the rowhouse package, the nature of housing in Charles Village. These brownstones make up most of Charles Village's apartment housing. And with so many independent owners -- Miller calls them "part timers" -- tenants can't count on consistency. What is consistent is the increasing strain put on the neighborhood.
As Peabody Heights evolved into Charles Village, urban sprawl and University growth increased the pressure on the housing market. And real estate in Baltimore has skyrocketed in the past five years. According to The Baltimore Sun's real estate page, the average home goes from $250,000 for a townhouse in Charles Village to $900,000 for a four-bedroom apartment in Fell's Point, and rental prices are following suit.
As a result, part-timers and apartment superintendents are at liberty to set prices and practices as they see fit. "Many people in the area do practice speculation," Miller says.
Still, while many students complain that rents are outrageous and rising with every lease renewal, others say being close to campus is worth the price. In the past year, this figure ranged from around $640 to $1,200 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. The danger, says Miller, is the rent increase that comes with nothing more to show for it. She recalls one landlord who quickly lowered a $1,200 a month rent by $300 when no one took the offer.
On 33rd Street, the jackhammers and demolition machinery start their deafening work again. The Charles Commons project is just one of several new projects in Charles Village and nearby areas. On the East Baltimore Campus of Hopkins, an 800-apartment, $200 million housing project is in the works. Another, called Cresmont Lofts, will be erected just behind Howard Street.
Residents, students, parents and businesses seem to welcome the neighborhood face-lift. Miller is confident that the "trickle down" of these projects will force landlords to re-evaluate their practices. Dominic Wiker, a development director for Struever Bros., told the JHU Gazette, "There will be some noise and dust for the better part of the next two years, but the end result will have a very positive impact on the community."
And Ievers looks forward to positive changes, too: more integration between students and other residents, lowered costs and, she hopes, a greater sense of safety. But can new housing and a Barnes & Noble latte accomplish all this? "It's Baltimore," Ievers concludes. "You can't expect a miracle."
