Citizens For Greater Centreville

Last Sunday’s story about HUD’s Home Investment Partnership Program (HOME) by Debbie Cenziper, undermines a classic and successful program that provides, safe, decent and affordable housing to thousands of low and moderate income Americans.
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The HOME program provides federal block grants to state and local governments and is designed to produce affordable housing exclusively for low-income families. Local jurisdictions select and supervise individual contractors to build affordable housing. The May 15 Washington Post article contains concerning examples of problems at a small number of HOME projects. (more…)

I don’t know about anyone else, but when someone sends me something that is slanderous or vengeful by e-mail, I simply hit “delete.”

If I receive a letter that is not signed but is threatening me or my place of business, I report it to the Police, and let law enforcement take care of it. Deleting e-mails, or handing over such documents to authorities, is the best course of action in such instances, and it is something needed now.

In every society, there are cowards, and it seems that Centreville has a share of them. These are people who like to spread malicious gossip verbally or in written form to hurt an individual or a group, and yet they never sign their name. These “NO NAME, NO BODIES” are cowards, and they have lost their voice by such actions. They feel that intimidation is the best course of action to stop anything they don’t happen to agree with.
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Below are current the (as of 5/18/2010) listings of houses for sale in Centreville under $200,000.  I left out the known "fix-’er-uppers"

In case you are wondering where the down payment will come from, Queen Anne’s County has a critical workforce program (CWP). for teachers, law enforcement officers and EMTs employed by the County or the Municipal Governments.  The program also includes volunteer firefighters. The program provides a 0% deferred-payment loan up the lesser of $50,000 or 33% of the purchase price.

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Developer Steven Madeoy sealed more than one controversial land deal in 2006.

In addition to his dealings in the District of Columbia, Madeoy also owned an aging, 10-unit apartment building in Silver Spring near two schools and a liquor store. He had bought the property in 2004 for $1 million.

Two years later, Madeoy told Montgomery County that he had a contract to sell the property to a company that was planning to convert it into condominiums. The sales price was $1.45 million — almost 50 percent more than what Madeoy had paid two years earlier.

By law, the county has the right to match offers on rental properties. Housing officials decided to buy the complex using affordable-housing money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Local homeowners at the time questioned why the county would do business with Madeoy, who was convicted of housing fraud in the late 1980s and had been banned for a dozen years from doing business with the federal government. They also criticized the purchase price.

Read more in the Washington Post

It sure looked like a good deal at the time.

A nonprofit developer promised to spend millions renovating three rotting apartment complexes in some of the most blighted neighborhoods of Southeast Washington. It would be one of the largest redevelopment projects in years east of the Anacostia River, helping dozens of low-income renters suffering through roof leaks and winters without heat.
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The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.

Nationwide, nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years, a Washington Post investigation found. Some have languished for a decade or longer even as much of the country struggles with record-high foreclosures and a dramatic loss of affordable housing.
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I have worked in public schools where some of the population lived in “affordable housing projects.”

On a typical school day a handful of students would come to school crying or full or rage because of the things they have to wake up to on a daily basis in their neighborhoods: gunfire, prostitution, physical altercations and drugs deals. Can you imagine being raised in a neighborhood where one of these terrible events occur at least once a week? I can’t and I don’t think any child deserves to either.

As a community we have a responsibility to put our foot down and say this is not an acceptable way to allow our children to be raised. But this is the reality of many children every day in “affordable housing projects.” Yes, I am a proponent of everyone having an affordable place to live but not 59 “low income families in a concentrated area. This strategy doesn’t work. A short 27 miles away in Annapolis is living proof of failing “lower-income communities”: Robin Wood, Newtowne, and Eastport Terrace to mention a few.

If a developer is acting in a socially responsible capacity and genuinely wantes to give back to a community and its lower income families then an approach that is sustainable and beneficial to help them to become productive members of society should be researched and implemented.
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