What accounts for the unfairly sensational tone of your recent article on Baltimore City's legitimate — and sensible — use of affordable housing funds to demolish vacant eyesores ("City 'affordable housing' fund destroys more houses than it builds," Dec. 26)?
Didn't The Sun take Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano to task just six months ago for overspending on affordable housing units in Johnston Square? Johnston Square should have taught us that government bureaucracies are not well-suited to meeting the complicated economic and logistical challenges of developing new housing, affordable or otherwise.
Your article should have taken greater account of how the Housing Department coordinates its affordable housing and demolition expenditures with the use of its code enforcement and receivership powers.
With the benefit of that broader perspective, your readers would have come away with a sense of how good the Housing Department has become in recent years in spotting and supporting investment that, somewhat miraculously, has appeared on its own in a variety of Baltimore neighborhoods.
David Borinsky, Baltimore