Deserved applause for illustrators

I have been enjoying the "Parent and Child" section of The Sun, especially the featured stories. But consistently, the "Story Time" feature only notes the author and only below in the copyright corner is the illustrator mentioned.

As an illustrator, I find it a shame that the illustrator always takes a back seat to the author, when it is the illustrator who makes the words of the author spring to life.

It is the illustrations which get children (and parents) interested in reading the story and help them understand the author's words. Therefore, the illustrator should get equal billing.

I have also noted that The Sun sometimes uses the phrase "drawings by" instead of "illustrated by." This is incorrect. Illustrators do not call themselves "drawers."'

The term illustration comes from the Latin verb "illustrae," which literally means "to light up." Illustrators are doing more than just drawing, they are creating the characters, designing the costumes, the scenery, the lighting, and the mood.

They also help set the story's pace through illustrations which make kids want to turn the page.

The pairing of authors and illustrators helps make the story become whole. A famous pairing of author and illustrator is Lewis Carroll with Sir John Tenniel for "Alice in Wonderland."

Though there have been countless other illustrator's who have illustrated Alice, Tenniel's original illustrations remain the most recognized and beloved.

Kay Thompson's "Eloise" series was always illustrated by Hilary Knight. Mr. Knight truly captures the sassy Eloise.

Local author Jerdine Nolen was paired with illustrator Mark Buchner for Harvey Potter's Balloon farm. Ms. Nolen's story is absolutely wonderful, but it is the imagination of Mr. Buehner that really makes the story a magical children's classic.

So, dear editors, the next time you give credit an author, also give credit to the illustrator on the same line.

Please give credit where credit is due.

Sherrill I. Kuc

Ellicott City

Federal housing programs help bring home the dream

In his Opinion Commentary column "Owning a home no longer just a dream for minorities" (June 4), Ronald Brownstein sounds very much like a shill for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

It is important to understand that the results of its programs are not as one-sided as Mr. Brownstein reports. When we look at the particulars, we see a different, and much less rosy, story.

While the housing policies his article described may well contribute to increased homeownership for minorities, we have to question their effect on our cities, where so many minorities live.

Let's look at the effects of a much-trumpeted HUD program, FHA insurance, and its relative, the secondary market in home mortgages, exemplified by the federally chartered corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae.

FHA insurance and the secondary mortgage market allow people to buy houses with little or no money down, and even create negative equity when settlement expense loans pay closing costs. But these programs actually contribute to urban decline and promote suburban sprawl.

Ordinarily, first-time home buyers couldn't afford a $120,000 home in the suburbs. They might have enough income, but traditionally to buy such a house, they needed $30,000 cash for down payment and closing costs.

Not having that much money, they would either buy a $50,000 house in the city, which they could afford, or rent in the city.

However, FHA and the secondary mortgage market come to the rescue and make the young people's flight from the city possible. Developers recognize this situation and bulldoze cornfields to build $120,000 townhouses, which they promote as a way out of the filthy, crime-ridden city.

How many young people have left Baltimore because federal mortgage programs and state infrastructure development have made it possible?

Tens of thousands, certainly, hundreds of thousands, quite possibly.

Many factors, including the flight of young people for the above reasons, conspire to drive down housing prices in our cities. But consider the situation of a young couple that bought a city house five years ago for $50,000.

They still owe $47,000. Unfortunately, the last five years have seen no inflation, home values have stagnated and after 6 months on the market, the best offer for the house has been $45,000.

After real estate commissions and closing costs, the sellers have to come up with $7,000 just to get out, and don't have $7,000. Federal tax law doesn't even allow them to take a tax loss unless they rent the property first.

So, they move anyway, to some distant suburb, renting their house to the first person with a months rent and security deposit.

Sometimes the tenants are OK, sometimes they're not. When they're not, they can be very bad, driving out a dozen good neighbors and destroying the house, perhaps stealing the plumbing or even the furnace for drug money.

The $45,000 house is now worth $25,000, but who cares? The owners don't; they give up and walk away, perhaps declaring bankruptcy. The mortgagee doesn't care; it is insured by FHA. The tenants don't care; they move and wreak havoc somewhere else.

HUD now faces a loss of over $25,000, but doesn't care; $25,000 is a drop in the bucket to HUD.

Eventually, an investor will buy the house, perhaps employing any one of a number of mortgage scams that often harm low-income, minority people.

These scams exist because of the impersonal nature of the secondary mortgage market that relies on the integrity of appraisers and the originating lenders. When large sums of money are involved, integrity goes out the window.

Mr. Brownstein claims that "homeownership stabilizes neighborhoods." That is true as far as it goes, but I'll bet that for every stabilized neighborhood, there are more declining neighborhoods as people move to the suburbs.

I do not suggest that we eliminate programs like FHA insurance, but I do suggest that we debate whether they do more harm than good.

If they are doing harm, HUD and the federal government have an obligation to explore remedies.

There are a range of remedies, some of which HUD has tried, such as pre-foreclosure sales, and some of which it hasn't, such as mortgage insurance that protects the buyer rather than the lender, or partnerships with non-profits that strengthen neighborhoods.

Fairest of all might be to relax immigration laws and allow more immigrants to come to our urban areas.

They would replace the people who have used FHA insurance and the secondary mortgage market to leave our cities. Cities might then become the vibrant, self-sufficient places they once were.

Ed Rutkowski

Baltimore

The writer is executive director of the Patterson Park Community Development Corp.

Building on Smart Growth The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) would like to thank The Sun for its editorial explaining "What Smart Growth is . . . and is not." (June 9). We would also like to clarify a few points.

Smart Growth is not glib, sound-bite ridden sensationalism.

Smart Growth is more dull, but infinitely more promising: finding workable, realistic solutions to traffic, overcrowded schools and environmental concerns while providing for needed housing.

Smart Growth is not a denial of consumer demand for homes in the suburbs.

Smart Growth is about doing what we can to push U.S. homeownership levels even higher in suburbs and in urban areas, through partnerships such as the one NAHB, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently launched to build a million new homes in urban areas in the next 10 years.

Smart Growth is not just about shaving long commutes.

Smart Growth is recognizing that more and more commutes are from suburb to suburb, because that's where job growth is occurring and where s most people want to live. Smart Growth is not just about education.

Smart Growth is realizing that home buyers will move anywhere to get their children in a better school, and working to slow this education migration by improving all schools.

Smart Growth is not about dictating that more people live downtown instead of in the suburbs.

Smart Growth is about creating vibrant downtown areas that have a mix of retail, office space and homes -- 24-hour cities of pedestrians, shoppers, workers, visitors and homeowners.

Smart Growth is not about finger-pointing and rhetoric.

Smart Growth is about problem-solving and partnerships, the give and take that business owners, community activists and local governments perform every day to secure the jobs, build the homes and preserve the parks that form a community.

Charles J. Ruma

Columbus, Ohio

The writer is president of the National Association of Home Builders.

News about children is far from all gloomy

Recent school shootings in Littleton, Colo. and other places have focused attention on troubled youth throughout the country. Some of the post-tragedy analysis in the media could lead one to despair; seldom do we read of positive contributions of today's youth.

I write to share some good news.

In less than a month (July 10-17), 400 youth with their adult chaperones from as far away as Florida will take up residency at Eastern Technical High School for a week of home repairs in the Baltimore County communities of Aero Acres, Victory Villa, and East Towson. Each participant will pay $250 for the privilege of working ten-hour days to provide home repair for low-income families.

The project, called World Changers, is sponsored by the North American mission board of the Southern Baptist Convention in cooperation with the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware, the Baltimore Baptist Association and Impact Baltimore Inc.

The impetus for this ambitious undertaking came from Impact Baltimore, a non-profit corporation organized by two area business men seeking to improve living conditions of seniors and residents of low-cost housing in metropolitan Baltimore.

This project is the first Impact Baltimore has sponsored. But its founders, David Childs Sr. and Dave Adams plan on-going projects throughout the year using volunteers from area churches.

Twenty-six homes were selected for rehabilitation by the staff of the Baltimore County Office of Community Conservation and representatives of Impact Baltimore. Homeowners who applied for selection had to meet criteria established by county officials.

Impact Baltimore has enlisted corporate sponsorship for this project from such local corporations as Black and Decker, Boardwalk Fries, CEI-Nextel, Keene Dodge and Childs Express. Baltimore County is providing Community Development Block Grant funds for building supplies and materials.

This summer, residents of Middle River and East Towson will see young leaders demonstrating God's love in practical ways.

I hope the local media will give as much coverage to this event as they do to the tragedies that present youth in the worst possible light.

Mike Fahey

Long Green

The writer is pastor of Long Green Baptist Church.

This Father's Day weekend I'd like to note the under-reported accomplishments of the recent graduates of the Baltimore City Young Fathers/Responsible Fathers (YF/RF) program.

This program helps provide young or expectant fathers with parenting skills and a career track. Its goal is to enable participants to be financially, emotionally and socially supportive of their families and encourage them to be assets to themselves, their children and their community.

The YF/RF program was established in 1994 through a collaborative effort among the Baltimore Urban League, Baltimore City Department of Social Services and the Laurance G. Paquin School. More than 2,500 young men have completed the program.

On June 11, the YF/RF program graduated 74 young and responsible men. Several dignitaries and elected officials were on hand to extend congratulations, yet not one television crew or print reporter was in sight.

All those men committed to being better fathers, better partners and better community members, yet not one member of the media was there to capture the story.

The guest speaker, the Rev. Jamal H. Bryant, national youth director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, noted that if one of those men had been involved in a shooting, we couldn't have kept the media away.

Erika Murray

Baltimore

The writer is a marketing specialist for the Baltimore City Department of Social Services.

Needed choices for seniors on Medicare

Concern about the high cost of prescription drugs causes too many elderly Americans either to take less medicine than their doctor has prescribed or stop taking their medicine.

Many of these individuals suffer from chronic, debilitating diseases that medicine can control. Cutting medication often worsens their condition, resulting in an expensive hospital stay or even death.

That's why I recently proposed the "Medicare Chronic Disease Prescription Drug Benefit Act," which would provide fee-for-service beneficiaries with prescription drug coverage for treatment of five chronic conditions that are highly responsive to medication.

It's time for Medicare to enter the 21st century with a common sense drug benefit that won't break the bank.

When Medicare was created in 1965, a prescription benefit was not part of most health insurance policies. That has changed.

For the approximately 65 percent of the non-elderly population who have health insurance through their employer, close to 99 percent have some prescription drug benefit. Excluding Medicaid and military health plans, approximately 151.4 million Americans have prescription drug coverage through their employer.

Yet Congress has never provided a drug benefit for Medicare enrollees. Instead, Medicare beneficiaries -- 80 percent of whom take a prescription drug every day -- must rely on Medicaid, if they qualify, purchase private supplemental coverage, join a Medicare HMO that offers a drug benefit, or pay for drugs out-of-pocket.

This lack of coverage is particularly troublesome because seniors are more likely to require medication than any other segment of the population. Yet we continue to deny this basic health coverage to the Americans who need it most.

Without a prescription drug benefit in the basic Medicare program, seniors are left with a set of poor choices. The Medicare HMOs that offer prescription coverage do so only as an "extra" benefit that they can drop if they choose. And many of them have.

Last October, four of the eight HMOs in Maryland offering Medicare coverage with a prescription drug benefit left the Medicare program, forcing 34,600 seniors to find other coverage. More withdrawals could occur in January 2000, costing more seniors their prescription drug benefits.

The legislation would provide outpatient drug coverage for hypertension, depression, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and congestive and ischemic heart disease.

Beneficiaries would pay a $250 annual deductible. No co-payment would be charged for generic drugs; for non-generic drugs, a 20 percent co-payment would apply.

In the future, this drug benefit could be expanded to include other chronic diseases where drugs improve the quality of life for seniors and reduce Medicare's costs.

Studies have shown that seniors who have prescription drug coverage lead healthier lives and avoid costly hospitalizations.

Inpatient hospital stays cost Medicare big money: $76 million a year for patients with hypertension; $1.8 billion a year for those with depression; $237 million a year for diabetes patients; $3.5 billion a year for those with rheumatoid arthritis and $7.4 billion for those suffering from ischemic and congestive heart disease.

Prescription drugs are an integral part of modern health care. Medicare has succeeded because it has continually been improved to provide services seniors need.

Now it's time to expand Medicare to include prescription drug coverage for chronic diseases that respond well to treatment.

It will save lives and money, and it is the right thing to do for nearly 40 million elderly Americans.

Benjamin L. Cardin

Baltimore

The writer represents Maryland's 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.