ONE PROBLEM with being poor in Maryland is that there are few safe, cheap places to live.
Twenty years ago, it was common to hear complaints about the poor families who lived in outhouse-equipped shacks within 25 miles of the White House.
Supposedly, this made us appear backward to the rest of the world. The outhouse was a symbol of poverty. So the shacks with outhouses were torn down and replaced by tract houses that sold for over $100,000 each.
I bring all of this up because of the recent clamor over the Moving to Opportunity program which seeks to relocate a tiny portion of Baltimore City's poor to better city and suburban neighborhoods with the help of federal rent subsidies.
This program is just a small-time attempt to remedy a situation that's been building for decades. It reflects the fact that, increasingly, the poor are forced into a few declining blue-collar suburbs or the drug-ridden inner city. For the crime of holding a job that pays little, either by choice or because of a lack of marketable skills, the sentence is living in neighborhoods where no sane person wants to live.
I first became acquainted with some of Maryland's suburban poor in 1979 when I was stationed at Fort Meade as a soldier. Then, there was a development behind the Laurel racetrack, just north of Route 198, where you could rent a shack for $100 a month.
People typically lived there because it was cheap. A family that only paid $100 in rent could live decently with just one adult working full time, even if that person only earned minimum wage.
That same one-wage earner, poor family could not make it in Laurel today where rents for most one-bedroom apartments are at least $600 a month.
Closer to Baltimore is Oella which at one time was known for the many artists who lived there and the many houses that lacked indoor plumbing. Now Oella is advertised by chi-chi builders as an "undiscovered" spot on the Patapsco River in Howard County to purchase $200,000-plus "executive homes."
The artists have been forced to move; they've been priced out of the market in Oella.
The rush of the middle class from the city has not only pushed poor folks out of apartments and houses, but also they've lost other living possibilities. Swept away with Oella's shacks are many of the mobile homes that dotted Howard County farms and were filled with farmhands or other low-wage workers. Most suburban zoning laws now forbid mobile homes on land that's not specifically zoned for mobile-home use.
Land zoned for such use is increasingly being replaced by town homes, and farms are gradually being bulldozed for more $500,000 "estate homes." When was the last time you saw a trailer park?
If you were poor, which would you prefer: a subsidized "modern" apartment in an area full of drug dealers and prostitutes or a run-down house trailer in the country?
Not that most poor people have a choice.
Further limiting the poor's choice in housing is that "home-built" houses, typically houses built by their owners, are now largely illegal. Such houses usually don't meet strict, arbitrary code requirements which are enforced by zoning boards that are often dominated by representatives of construction and real-estate businesses.
Boardinghouses and other shared-living arrangements also are illegal in most Maryland jurisdictions. The American stereotype of the widow providing low-cost housing to others as a way to keep her house is dead, killed by laws that prohibit house sharing by people who are not related by blood or marriage.
Back to the Moving to Opportunity program, which is supposed to help poor families leave the ghetto. We don't need a Moving to Opportunity program. What we need are fewer zoning regulations and more relaxed housing codes. That way we could provide more housing for poor families who have been regulated and redeveloped out of the marketplace.
Robin Miller is a Baltimore taxi driver.