Washington Court in Edgewood sits vacant today, the only difference between now and two years ago is the 55, World War II era Wherry buildings that occupied the property for 60 some odd years are gone.

To some Harford County officials, clearing the property of what one described as a "slum" is progress enough. Still, it begs the question of how much have the taxpayers forked over for a redevelopment of the Washington Court property that has gone nowhere. The presumptive developer has backed out of the deal, citing the bad economy. As a result, the county really has nothing more to show for its efforts — and its money — than a demolition job that, frankly, should have been the developer's responsibility in the first place. There are no new proposals on the horizon. In the words of the area's county council representative, the redevelopment of Washington Court is "stalemated."

We warned in 2009 that the county should not be in the business of underwriting private development. We've said this over and over and over and over again, whenever some private outfit comes to Bel Air with its hand out seeking cut rate loans, tax abatements or outright gifts of money, all picked from the pockets of our county's citizens.

Millions have been spent on the Washington Court project, to acquire the land, to clear the buildings, to pay lawyers for loan paperwork. While it's true some of this money came in the form of grants from the state and federal governments, there's no such thing as free money. It all gets paid by us taxpayers in the end.

We're not sure what the right approach is with Washington Court. It's tempting to repeat what we said two years ago, namely that if and when the market will support housing on that property, then someone will build it — without taxpayer subsidy. We do know from this particular exercise that the supposed BRAC bonanza isn't transforming Edgewood or its housing market anytime soon. Unfortunate as it may be, those coming to Harford County to fill all those high-paying BRAC jobs, if they are relocating here at all, are choosing to live north of Route 40 where there is an ample supply of housing at competitive prices, in no small part thanks to the glut of foreclosed properties.

The county government could do us all a favor if it would take the time and effort and money to come up with a sensible, realistic master redevelopment plan for Edgewood that envisions replacing the 1970s-1980s era low income housing with market rate housing and eliminates forever cut-rate loan deals to fix the existing rental housing stock. This is not unlike what Baltimore City finally did with many of its low income developments over the past 15 years, sending many of those problems to Edgewood in the process.

The Edgewood situation can't be fixed with Band Aids. You can't drop a new development in the middle of a bunch of older ones and think the entire community will be instantly transformed, not when it is already overpopulated with Section 8 units. At the very least, the Washington Court situation should have demonstrated the old truism that you can't throw money at a problem and hope it will go away. It never happens.