Howard County homes are among the most expensive in the state, but Census 2000 data suggest that most residents are not reaching beyond their means to pay the mortgage.

Two-thirds of county homeowners are paying less than a quarter of their household income before taxes on mortgages and related costs, according to recently released statistics. The same share of the state population pays the same slice of income but for houses that are typically much cheaper.

The information, culled from responses to the "long-form" questionnaires completed in April 2000 by one household in six, surprised some county residents and planners. They thought that Howard housing prices had soared out of the realm of reason, even for a county that ranks among the 10 richest in the nation.

That is not to say that Howard housing is affordable for the average person - only for the average person already in the county.

"People in Howard County can afford to live there," concluded Jeff Bronow, chief of research for the local Department of Planning and Zoning.

All the $400,000-plus homes built in the past decade had made him suspect the opposite - that "people were really stretching it and pushing it" to move in.

Fewer people in Howard are spending 35 percent or more of their income on housing costs than residents statewide - 14 percent vs. 16 percent.

That is more often the case in Baltimore, which claims some of the cheapest residential units in the state. One of five city residents is spending at least 35 percent of household income on mortgages.

It is not simply about salaries. In Howard County, median household income levels outpaced inflation in the 1990s while housing values did not.

Adjusted for inflation, the median household income in Howard rose about 5 percent from 1990 to 2000, according to the census. But housing values in the county fell by 3 percent, when adjusted for inflation, so what appeared to be a $40,000 gain on the cost of a house priced at the median was actually a $6,500 decline.

The median is in the middle: Half the numbers are above and half are below.

In 2000, the median monthly mortgage in Howard County was $1,559, according to the census, about $43 more than the total a decade before, when adjusted for inflation. Statewide, the median mortgage was $1,296 - $122 more a month than in 1990 if inflation is taken into account.

The median home in Howard - counting cheaper townhouses and more expensive detached houses - was worth $206,300. That remains one of the most expensive prices nationwide, in the top 100 out of 3,141 counties.

But the typical Howard resident is well off. The median household income in 2000 was $74,100, and nearly a third of the county's population claims a household income of $100,000 or more. Glenwood residents Betty and E. Alexander Adams, both attorneys, fit into that well-heeled category. Betty Adams figures the county's numerous dual-income, baby boomer-headed families are helping raise the salary bar - without having to spend a huge chunk of their income on housing.

"When you get two people who have never stopped working, that does make a difference," she said. Families who don't count themselves in the upper tier financially make do on mortgages. Some do well.

Debbie DiBenedetto, a retired paramedic who has lived in Lisbon for 16 years, considers herself very lucky that her mortgage takes about 17 percent of the household income before taxes. She and her firefighter husband did not have to buy the land - it was subdivided from her mother's 20-acre homestead.

"Out here, it seems there's a lot of ... multigenerations of families living on land they subdivided," said DiBenedetto.

DiBenedetto, who has two school-aged children, is holding onto the family property. She does not want her daughters to be priced out of the county when they grow up.

"I don't think they're building any affordable housing - at least for the regular middle-income people - out here," DiBenedetto said.

Vicky Green wants everyone to remember that. As president of the county chapter of Habitat for Humanity, she frequently gets heartbreaking calls from people spending half their income on shelter.

What the census does not show are the families squeezed into too-small spaces - as she, her husband and their six children were until they moved out of a three-bedroom townhouse last year. And it also doesn't take into account those working in Howard who would like to move here but cannot afford to, she said.

"The people who help to build this community up - that serve here - cannot live here," Green said. "We've got a problem."