Taken from the Capital, March 23 

For decades, Annapolis leaders have mostly talked around the edges of the city’s public housing problem, never really asking, let alone answering, the toughest questions.

That might be starting to change.Some people are talking about a radical solution: spreading subsidized housing throughout the city, rather than concentrating it in designated neighborhoods.

There are a million questions to be answered about how it could happen. But the best argument for such an approach might be the simplest one: Nothing else has worked.

“We’ve got people on reservations of poverty and crime. We need to stop it,” Alderman Sam Shropshire, D-Ward 7, said last week.

Mostly occupied by hard-working, law-abiding people, Annapolis’ 1,104 public housing units are nonetheless plagued by open-air drug markets and the resulting violence.

When there’s a homicide – like last week’s shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Robinwood – there’s an immediate response. Police trumpet a few low-level drug arrests, like the teens rounded up in Robinwood four days after the slaying. (Of course, officially at least, the raid and the shooting were unrelated.)

People toss around ideas like surveillance cameras, license plate scanners or a curfew. Politicians solemnly “crack down” with programs with catchy names like HotSpots and C-SAFE, both statewide initiatives, and the new Annapolis-specific Capital City Safe Streets Coalition.

The police are doing their best at an impossible job, and the politicians are well-intentioned. Give them credit for trying, and let’s hope the new federal-state-local partnership has positive effects. But it won’t be enough.

Alderwoman Julie Stankivic, an independent whose Ward 6 includes many public housing neighborhoods and was the backdrop to all four homicides so far this year, agreed that the city can’t continue clustering its poorest people in enclaves. And she said the big ideas for change have been ignored for too long.

Would this change solve all the city’s problems? No. The same underlying problems of family and educational dysfunction that lead to poverty, drug abuse and crime will still be present and have no easy solutions.

Ending the isolation of the poor won’t eliminate crime. But it could largely eliminate the open-air drug markets that lead to the worst violence.

The cold, hard truth is that open-air drug markets wouldn’t be tolerated for an hour in Murray Hill or Admiral Heights. But they’ve existed for decades in public housing, where residents have little political pull.

It’s not an accident that Mr. Shropshire uses the word “reservations.” It’s easier to look the other way when you can feel safely isolated. Too few middle-class and wealthy people in Annapolis see violent crime as their problem.

Sandra Newman, a Johns Hopkins University professor who has studied public housing, said many cities have experimented with such income mixing, in very different ways. She said there has been little research, though a study in Baltimore showed some increase in property crime, but no increase in violence, after poor people were moved into a “low-poverty” neighborhood.

The idea would likely meet resistance from both sides in Annapolis. Public housing residents would feel they’re being uprooted from communities and cry gentrification, while the mostly white residents in the rest of the city would fear that a criminal element was being transplanted in their midst.

Even though the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development oversees the Annapolis Housing Authority, the city could force changes if it pushed hard enough. For now, the housing authority is wary of such sweeping change.

Executive Director Eric Brown said he’s committed to fundamental reform – renovating the aging housing stock and urging private ownership. He hopes a pilot program will lead to as many as 50 private owners in the Clay Street area in the next four years.

But he said it’s not realistic to spread public housing residents throughout the city, partly because there’s so little affordable housing elsewhere in Annapolis in which to put them.

But consider today’s housing prices, and then consider the land and homes owned by the housing authority in Eastport, downtown and elsewhere. What would the land under those 1,104 units fetch at market rates? The mind boggles.

Some of that money could put residents elsewhere, and the communities could be rebuilt – as in other cities – with a mix of subsidized housing and market-rate homes.

Mr. Brown hit the nail on the head when he acknowledged after some prodding: “In a financial sense we could probably make it work. The practical and political reality, that’s another thing.”

Everyone knows things need to change, but no one in power stands to gain politically from the kind of real change that’s needed. So who will take the lead on a problem no one wants? Who has the political capital and the will?

That – not plastic bags and the Market House – should be the central issue of next year’s mayoral race.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Mark your calendars party people we got a lot in store for you…

 Friday April 4th at 6pm at the Stanton Center we will be showing “Pip and Zastrow: An American Friendship”.   The party will start with refreshments, some good food and drink to help you non social types loosen up the collar. 

After the reception, we are going to be getting down to serious business.  Capital X aka 305375 will be arriving in Annapolis.  X is walking from Trenton, NJ to Austin, TX, yes I did say walking-as in one foot in front of the other, to raise awareness of a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty.  Someone notify the govenor that we are requesting his attendance for this Friday night. 

After X gets his minutes of commentary and poetry, we will introduce none other than Mr. Zastrow Simms the star of “Pip and Zastrow: An American Friendship”.   Zastrow will kick things off for the film portion of the evening and start the special screening of the film of his namesake.  

Following the film we are going to welcome none other than Annapolis’ own FLAWLESS!!!   The hip hop/rnb crew has been tearing up stages from Annapolis High to Truxton Park and will be headlining a set featuring music that was heard in “Pip and Zastrow”!  

It starts at 6pm, it ends around 9pm.  Its Friday night, one week from today.  Mark your calendar.  Come to Clay Street!!!! 

Peace from Clay Street.  Its a Jazz Thing baby. 

Popularity: 7% [?]

It goes down this evening at 730pm in the Stanton Center, which is located at 92 West Washington Street.  Tonight’s agenda includes:

 -updates on the neighborhood clean-up planned for April 19
-updates on the door decorating contest planned for April 26
-public safety initiatives
-adopt a corner program
-Pip and Zastrow screening at the Stanton Center on April 4th!!!

Please come prepared to discuss these items and others! 

If you are new and looking to get brought up to speed, please hold your questions till the end so we can make progress during the meeting time.  After the meeting time we will be more than happy to answer any inquiries. 

Thanks, see you tonight.

Clay is Good. 

Popularity: 6% [?]

Star Theater Nights presents!!! 

“Pip and Zastrow:  An American Friendship” 

That’s right, Pip and Zastrow will be shown at the Stanton Center on April 4th starting at 6pm.   There will be drinks and food, a talk by Capital X, a very special screening of the film, and a performance by Flawless!!  

Friday night, April 4th, 6pm at the Stanton Center is the place to be…

Popularity: 7% [?]

Somewhere Sandy Koufax is proud.   In a 7-0 shutout Clay Street has triumphed again in its march for the creation of the Capital City Cultural Arts District.  This win while by a wide margin wasn’t decided till the last at bat.   Yes party people, this one was not without some nail biting. 

For those that don’t know (and prior to tonight I was certainly in that camp), the setting of the county council is very chamberlike.  The seven alderpeople for each section of the county sit up in big leather chairs, high and mightly like, occasionally they sneak off to the back room, but for the most part they tower over, staring down at the constituents. 

Quick side note, I have not heard the word constituents at all before I got involved with Clay Street, now I hear it in almost every sentence that’s uttered.  You know what that means right?  I am hanging around those politicos a bit too much, someone please do me a favor and if you start to hear me sounding like a politician step to me and say “ayo Grins, you needa lean back”.  Not that there is anything wrong with the politicians, they are playing their role and that is necessary for order to continue. 

Taking another side note, I have to give a special shoutout to someone tonight, a certain politico, someone who was not present but, made his presence felt nonetheless.  Surprisingly his presence was on our side.  I want to send a special Clay Street shout out to my man Dick Israel.  You see, in the words of a certain esteemed City Administrator “tonight was not only about what occured in the council meeting but, it was also about what didn’t occur’.  

Let me set this up, Dick represents Ward 1, our arch nemesis throughout this entire process, and during the City Council battles Dick was slick, a worthy enemy.  He was in EVERYBODY’s ear, I could tell everywhere I went that he had been there because they would be bringing up his arguements to me.  I am definitely impressed by that man’s ability to represent an issue to the fullest.  Going into tonight I was worried about Dick and his bag of tricks. 

Funny thing happened, Dick sent a letter to the Ward 1 people telling them to stand down and not to organize and come to the meeting to attempt to slow our resolution, he said he couldn’t do battle any more on the issue because he respects the process.   His feeling was once the battle was lost at City Council, it was then his job to get in behind the initative and no longer line up across the scrimmage from it.   This is a complete third hand paraphrase so I could be off a bit, however the sources that I got it from are quite respectful.  When I arrived tonight the first thing I did was survey the battlefield to see who would be lining up and I was somewhat shocked when I didn’t see anyone.  I kept thinking that they would be there at any moment to attempt to pull us down.  They never showed.  Thank you Dick, I admire your sense of government and I feel you have taught me a lesson about the process.  Last thing, I would like to let it be known I thought you were a major pain in the ass and simultaneously I was secretly wishing you were on our side. 

All this aside, CLAY STREET WINS!!!  Next stop the state approval of our application.  We have 60 days till the jumpoff, somewhere around May 15.  You know I will keep you posted every step of the way. 

Party people, stand up.   One way or the other we are going to make the change necessary to reclaim the soul of Clay Street. 

Peace from Clay Street, its a Jazz Thing. 

CLAY IS GOOD.

Popularity: 6% [?]