As the largest monthly expense for just about all of us, it is no surprise that housing plays an outsized role in our regional and national economy.
First, there is the robust construction industry and all it employs.
We see the workers every day as we make our way around Frederick. It is no surprise that housing construction and allied trades are a large economic engine for most localities, including Frederick County.
Nearly 10% of employees in Frederick County work in the construction and allied trades industry. It is one of the largest industries in our diverse local economy. Any disruption in the construction industry, or any of our top industries, would be harmful to Frederick’s overall economy.
Second, there is the menace of inflation.
The wide gap we see now in the supply of and demand for housing that has driven up housing prices to historic levels had its origins in the recession of 2007.
Later, supply chain woes caused by the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 drove up the cost of housing even more. The lack of balance in the housing market and the higher prices that come with it have been a major driver of inflation.
Even as food and fuel prices begin to moderate, housing prices remain stubbornly high. Mortgage interest rates that rose exponentially over the past year have only cooled demand slightly.
Rents remain artificially high, too, as folks get priced out of the home-buying market and increase competition for rentals. It seems clear, and most experts agree, that the best way to make a meaningful and long-lasting dent in inflation in the U.S. is to create more moderately priced housing.
Thirdly, our current lack of affordable housing may have a profound economic impact on the future if it’s not proactively addressed.
Research has shown that increasing access to affordable housing is the most cost-effective way to reduce childhood poverty and increase economic mobility in America. If we can somehow condition ourselves to take the long view on increased affordable housing instead of focusing on the short-term problems that can be solved with government action and political will, society will be better off.
In a large multi-year study, Stanford economist Raj Chetty found that children living in stable, affordable homes are more likely to thrive in school and have greater opportunities to learn inside and outside the classroom. Children who moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods saw their earnings as adults increase by approximately 31% and had an increased likelihood of living in better neighborhoods as adults.
Indeed, the lack of safe, affordable housing is costing U.S. cities in many ways we don’t always see. It forces families to live far from work, increasing their carbon footprint. It lowers tax bases that fund the amenities we take for granted. And, perhaps most painfully, we lose potential workers and customers that keep our local businesses thriving.
You don’t have to look any farther than our Maryland neighbor to the west, Cumberland in Allegany County, for a discouraging example.
Cumberland has long embraced a very slow-growth housing policy. With little excess housing stock, Cumberland cannot grow.
Young people who may want to stay cannot find entry-level housing. Older folks who wish to sell their large family homes in hopes of downsizing to a smaller, more manageable home cannot find buyers or more modest homes to move to.
Businesses that come to town cannot find appropriate housing for their employees. It is a self-fulfilling cycle that Cumberland has found itself in for years.
Prosperity for the Frederick region depends on decisive action now to make sure our housing stock meets the needs of the future.
We are pleased to see both Frederick City and Frederick County taking steps to make building moderately priced dwelling units more appealing to developers, and if they don’t build them, a revenue base so government can fund affordable housing programs.
For Fredrick businesses to grow and stay vibrant, they need more customers and reliable workers who have housing. To succeed, Frederick County must remain a diverse place where all people have decent, safe, affordable places to live in thriving communities.
Editor’s note: Gary Bennett is a retired marketing executive. Hugh Gordon is the association executive for the Frederick County Association of Realtors and has decades of experience in the real estate world, including 24 years as a mortgage banker. They are longtime Frederick County residents and members of Frederick’s Affordable Housing Council.
In our column of Oct. 21, we discussed the overarching supply-and-demand cause for the nationwide affordable housing shortage and the role that single-family-only zoning plays in exacerbating this shortage.
In this column, we look at other limiting factors for building affordable housing and some possible solutions.
***
Single-family-only zoning is one way local zoning boards limit how much housing can be built.
Many places also employ height restrictions. Some areas are zoned for multifamily buildings, but don’t allow any building over two stories high. This drives down supply.
Parking requirements are often written into zoning laws, too.
Many laws require two parking spaces for each unit of multifamily housing. A 100-unit apartment complex would need 200 parking spots. This usually means buildings of that size don’t get built.
Builders must lower the number of units to save space for parking, even in areas with effective transit systems. Those units become more expensive because the land is still the same cost to the developer. What could have been reasonably affordable units become units for those with higher incomes.
Another feature of many zoning laws is minimum lot sizes. Builders are legally required to allot land for each home, often a large amount.
These “exclusionary” zoning laws push builders to focus on bigger luxury homes instead of smaller starter homes or multifamily homes.
Zoning boards are essentially only allowing people who already benefitted from the wealth of this country — who built their incomes with access to high-opportunity jobs and education and generational wealth — to live in neighborhoods.
Historically, some of the first zoning laws in our country were engineered to block people of color, particularly Black Americans, from living in predominantly white neighborhoods. This was known as redlining.
Today, laws don’t explicitly mention race, but they continue to worsen segregation. In most municipalities, the more single-family zoning for a neighborhood, the whiter it is.
Shrinking the pot of new housing getting built, while demand keeps rising, drives up the cost of housing for everyone.
The old code phrase “changing the neighborhood character” gets thrown around.
People are confused when they hear that affordable housing is coming to their neighborhood. They say they don’t want giant apartment buildings.
And they’re right — not every neighborhood should have giant apartment buildings. But affordable housing is much more than that.
Even small gradual changes to zoning laws can have an impact.
Increased automation of the construction process can help, too.
There’s some innovation now with modular construction and 3D printing, but productivity growth is slow. States can help by mandating that manufactured housing is permitted housing in any zoning code.
The federal government isn’t blameless, either. Many incentives have been written into the tax code to encourage home ownership over other asset classes as our country’s primary wealth-building mechanism.
Most American homeowners expect the sale of their home to finance a large part of their retirement. This means property values must be maintained at all cost.
The Biden administration is attempting to help at the federal level by tackling exclusionary zoning through a $5 billion program to give money to localities that remove exclusionary zoning policies. This is more than any presidential administration has done on this topic.
The act would incentivize local governments to promote building new homes in and around transit corridors. The bill adds pro-housing policies to existing law, so local governments will be incentivized to make the following changes near transit corridors:
• Eliminate parking minimums
• Establish by-right permitting for projects that meet objective standards
• Reduce minimum lot sizes
• Create and preserve homes affordable to low-income households
• Raise or eliminate height limits
Ending America’s housing shortage will require real political willpower. And it will take people across the country taking a hard look at their own neighborhoods and understanding what gets built and who gets excluded, and how to make home ownership achievable for millions who are shut out.
Editor’s note: Gary Bennett is a retired marketing executive. Hugh Gordon is the association executive for the Frederick County Association of Realtors and has decades of experience in the real estate world, including 24 years as a mortgage banker. Theyare longtime Frederick County residents and members of Frederick’s Affordable Housing Council.
As members of the Affordable Housing Council in Frederick County, we spend lots of time looking at houses on Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and The Frederick News-Post.
This is no news to anyone, but we can assure you that houses are more expensive than ever. Here in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., region, it’s shocking.
In Maryland, according to Zillow, more than half of all buyers in June 2023 paid above list price for their home. Buyers are paying, on average, 1 to 2 percent above asking price now.
That may not sound like a lot, but on a $500,000 home, that may be another $10,000. One Realtor friend told us that for one of her listings, there were 32 offers, all above asking price. That means 31 unhappy, unsuccessful home seekers.
Renters have it no better.
In Maryland, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that a renter working 40 hours per week and earning Maryland’s minimum wage of $13.25 per hour must work 79 hours each week to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment and not be cost burdened (not spending more than 33% of income on housing costs).
But it’s not just Maryland and the D.C. area. The lack of affordable housing is a nationwide problem. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen housing prices reach a level they’ve never reached before.
According to the National Association of Realtors, the median price for a house in America is now $414,000. That is the second highest median price recorded, after June 2022.
In Maryland, it’s worse. Maryland Realtors, a nonprofit membership organization, reports the average sales price in Maryland is up more than 3 percent from last year to over $486,000. Our proximity to Washington, D.C., has a lot to do with this.
That price may not sound like a lot for this region, but keep in mind it includes all areas of Maryland, rural and urban. Those prices make rents more expensive and home ownership unobtainable for millions of Americans.
How did this happen, and how can we fix it?
We can think of today’s exorbitant housing prices as a result of a supply and demand problem. The housing supply isn’t matching demand.
On the demand side, there has been a generational shift in who is buying homes. Millennials are now the largest generation in American history, and they are aging into their prime home-buying years.
On top of that, until recently, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were at an all-time low, which meant it was relatively cheap to borrow the money to buy a house. That enticed people to buy if they could, making demand for houses even greater.
Over the last two years, interest rates rose past 7 percent, but because of low inventory, that has yet to substantially cool demand in the housing market.
From 2010 to 2019, there were fewer homes built in the U.S. than in any decade since the 1940s. In particular, the construction of smaller, entry-level homes, for first-time home buyers, has dropped more dramatically.
In the 1980s, those “starter” homes made up about 40 percent of homes built. Today, it is closer to 8 percent.
Currently, the National Association of Realtors says the U.S. is down anywhere from 5.5 million to 6.8 million starter homes needed to satisfy demand.
Moreover, according to Pew Research in 2021, 55 percent of adults under age 30 said the lack of affordable housing is a major problem, up from 39 percent in 2018.
This housing shortage drives a big part of the problem for renters and prospective homeowners. It is worse where demand is highest, such as near good jobs, transit and schools like Frederick.
One straightforward solution is to simply build more affordable homes in desirable places. For years, however, there has been one big obstacle — builders aren’t allowed to.
Zoning or local regulations that decide where things can be built overwhelmingly favor single-family homes over multifamily homes. Zoning boards have banned the ability for anyone to build anything other than a single unit of housing on that land.
In many towns, zoning boards exclude all types of multifamily housing from their neighborhoods.
And not just large apartment buildings. Things like duplexes and fourplexes are illegal on most residential land in many American cities.
Single-family housing is the law in 70 percent of Minneapolis, 75 percent of Los Angeles, and 84 percent of Charlotte, N.C., to name a few. This is a huge determining factor for the housing shortage in the U.S.
We need states to step in and preempt municipalities from enacting and enforcing land-use restrictions that raise housing costs. Land-use control is constitutionally guaranteed to states, not municipalities.
States often delegate the authority to municipalities. But they can and should take it back when cities don’t use it for public benefit.
Gary Bennett and Hugh Gordon are longtime Frederick County residents and members of Frederick’s Affordable Housing Council.
I am a volunteer with Frederick County’s Office of Highway Operations Adopt-a-Road program. I pick up litter on about a mile stretch of Crestwood Blvd. between Ballenger Creek Pike and New Design Road.
It’s one of the best and worst things I’ve ever done. It is undoubtedly a needed function and I’m proud to help. But trash is never-ending and wearing me down.
I don’t do it to be a hero, although many people honk and yell thanks to me as they drive by. I do it because all this trash truly offends me. I hate looking at it so I try to eliminate it. I know it harms the environment and animals and decreases property values. But, I’m almost ashamed to say that it is mostly aesthetics that gets me out on the highway almost every day.
I also do it for exercise. I know that sounds crazy but my mindset is: “I’m taking daily walks anyway so why not bend over and pick up some trash while I’m at it?” All these ‘bend-overs’ approximate sit ups but accomplish a public good while I’m doing them. You can’t say that about exercising at a gym or in your basement.
Adopt-a-Road Stats
Highway Operations staff tells me that approximately 85 miles of county roads have been adopted. That means volunteers (individuals and teams) have agreed to pick up trash on their adopted roads at least four times per year and report their efforts back to the county. This sounds impressive until you consider that the county maintains over 1,300 miles of roadway. Unfortunately, we’re picking up just a drop in the bucket of the available roadway trash.
If you are so inclined, you may volunteer to adopt a stretch of road in Frederick County by contacting the Department of Highway Operations at 301-600-1564 or by emailing extremely helpful staffers Mike Ramsburg (mramsburg@frederickcountymd.gov) or Casandra Fitzpatrick (cfitzpatrick@frederickcoungtymd.gov). Both can explain the program and help you get started.
There are currently 45 teams in the program which are comprised of hundreds of volunteers. Approximately 70 percent of the teams are civic or neighborhood groups and about 20 percent are religious groups. Ten percent are families or individuals like me.
My experience
Some stretches of road are easier to pick up than others. Judging from what I’ve seen, mine is not so bad.
It helps if your road is close to a residential area. Residents, at least in fairly affluent areas, tend to pick up their own trash or not throw it in the first place. Much of my road is residential but is unfortunately bookended by two strip shopping centers with a Wawa and an Auto Zone along the way. Trash from these establishments is plentiful, to say the least.
I also have several schools nearby. I’m not blaming all students who walk this stretch. I know many are fine, young people. But I have personally seen some go into Wawa for a drink and candy bar, finish it, and promptly throw their trash on the ground. They don’t even try to hide it. It seems second-nature to them.
When people honk to thank me, I usually don’t pay too much attention. My feeling is I’m going for a walk anyway. Why would I not pick up trash along the way? Other times I am annoyed because I don’t want thanks, I want help. Or better yet, I want people to stop throwing their trash out. Unfortunately, I am beginning to see most people as potential trash throwers, not thankful citizens.
A few walkers I pass by when picking up trash thank me and claim to do the same thing in their own neighborhoods or in a past locale. I find this sad and funny at the same time because I’ve never, ever seen anyone bend over to pick up any trash they are walking over. Not once.
Why is this? Such a simple act could help so much.
Could it be that there is a sense of futility in picking up litter?After all, as soon as you pick up one batch a new one blows in. I frequently feel this futility. Could it also be the old elementary school mindset that “I didn’t do it!” Most likely, people just don’t notice trash like I do, or they don’t care. I probably expect too much.
The author by his Adopt-a-Road sign in Frederick.
The psychology of littering
The psychology of littering fascinates me. And why not? I can’t figure out what could possibly motivate us to do such an antisocial thing when it is so easy to do the right thing.
Studies show that some littering is accidental – like the trash that blows out of dumpsters and garbage trucks – but most is indeed intentional.
This fact is stupefying to me. I can think of nothing simpler than bringing my trash home and throwing it in the garbage can where it belongs. It is second nature. I do this not because I am some kind of do-gooder, but because, to me, this is the simple nature of things. At the risk of sounding terribly old-fashioned, I don’t have other people shop for me, clean my house or deliver my food. Those are my jobs. And I sure don’t want other people picking up my trash for me.
According to a report done by Keep America Beautiful, people are more likely to litter when they feel “no sense of ownerships for parks, walkways, beaches, and other public spaces.” This sense of ownership, instead, is found around people’s homes and neighborhoods.
“It seems the reason people litter is not because they think it’s OK,” says Joshua Rottman, assistant professor of psychology at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “It’s because they think it’s the easy thing to do. It’s a moral hypocrisy. People know it’s wrong, but they do it because it’s easy.”
Who are these trash throwers? (Litterbug is too cute and polite a term)
In the 1980s, the Institute for Applied Research found that people most likely to litter were 18-to 35-year-old males. Not a big surprise, right?
In more recent surveys, this finding was corroborated. Seventy-two percent of people observed in the act of deliberate littering were found to be under the age of 30. Nationally, males were found to be responsible for 72 percent of all intentional littering.
What could be driving this young male carelessness?
Could it be a youthful disdain for authority? A not yet fully developed brain? The lack of consequences for this seemingly minor act of civil disobedience? The inability to trace their actions to eventually harming the environment? A sort of hopelessness to ever being a functioning part of society? Unfortunately, pinpointing the reasons for littering have proved elusive to the research.
Observations
I hate to say this but my findings are iron-clad, largely corroborated by the available research and were developed over several years of picking up trash along my stretch of highway: the lower the economic status of the area, the more trash is strewn about. There is much more trash around apartments than around single-family homes or townhouses in my area. And there’s much more around subsidized housing.
I drive around Frederick quite a bit for my part-time job. Obvious lower-income areas have much more trash than their share. Psychologists have observed that the presence of existing litter was strongly predictive of littering behavior. It’s a vicious circle—if you’re in a place that’s already got a lot of litter, you’re much more likely to litter. That’s one reason I’m out there almost every single day. I hope to make littering stand out and perpetrators feel just a little bit bad.
Of course, before people can throw out their trash, they need trash to throw.
I’ve had my hands on what seems like tons of trash, and I can tell you one of the biggest sources of trash is our old friend McDonald’s. It seems intuitive. The food at McDonald’s is among the cheapest and lowest quality available so of course the folks at the lower ends of the economic spectrum disproportionately get much of their food there and are disproportionately willing to throw the residual trash on the ground.
In my little area I’ve got two liquor stores nearby and they are the next biggest offenders. Miniature bottles of liquor seem especially made to be thrown out. They are not very visible, consumed quickly and may not be welcome at home in the trash. I’d like to see them outlawed.
I even stopped in at one of the liquor stores on my route to ask if they would be interested in helping me pick up the trash their customers make. They looked at me like I had two heads.
Other major offending items are plastic grocery bags, napkins, fast food bags, soda cups and bottles, beer cans, cigarette packs, water bottles, Slim Jim wrappers (of all things) and candy bar wrappers. It’s probably not a coincidence that many of these items aren’t good for you.
One person on my route is so brazen they tear up their junk mail with name and address clearly visible and throw it in the median of Crestwood Blvd. in the very same spot every day. Naturally, I’ve called the sheriff’s department on this person many times. Deputies are sympathetic and try to talk with this person, but when they show up at his door, he simply refuses to answer. The deputies tell me there is nothing they can do in that case. I don’t particularly want to get this person in trouble, I just want him to stop.
Another person (or maybe the same one) disposes of a Wawa coffee cup, a Sizzli ™ package, two or three empty snack pie packages, napkins, and get this—a bottle of laxatives—every single day. I’m sympathetic but fearful. This person has some serious problems and may not be around much longer to litter. How do I know it’s the same person? The same items are in the very same spot every day. They must walk to work and gleefully eat and dispose of breakfast packaging along the way.
I do get a little humor out of this.
One time I found a shopping cart along my route so I just started pushing it and throwing my trash in there instead of the kitchen garbage bags I usually carry. I was dressed in my rattiest clothes of course, so I’m sure I must have looked homeless. Wouldn’t you know it that about that time my son drove by and honked. Later, I found out he asked my wife if I was okay.
I suppose I’ve made my corner of the earth a little better. My stretch of highway is in pretty good shape and better than most but never perfect. The truth is, before I started doing this, I was pretty much oblivious to all the trash along the highways. I suppose most people are. Now I am super-sensitive to it and it disgusts me. I guess I’ll keep doing it, but I have to say I’m a bit sorry I ever started this in the first place.
Five Facts about Littering
1. U.S. roadways accumulate over 51 billion pieces of litter per year.
2. There are an estimated 6,729 pieces of litter per roadway mile.
3. On average, there are 152 pieces of litter for every U.S. resident.
4. Litter cleanups cost the U.S. an estimated $11.5 billion annually.
5. The presence of litter in your neighborhood or community lowers property values by 7%.
As we all know, we live in a very high cost-of-living area. Our incomes, however, have not kept pace.
In 2020, United Way of Frederick County completed its ALICE (Asset-Limited, Income-constrained, Employed) report. It is almost inconceivable, but they found that a third of our families really can’t afford to live here.
The struggle is even worse for seniors.
According to the same report, 47 percent of those 65 or older have difficulty living in Frederick County and must make tough choices every day on how to juggle paying for medicine, housing, taxes and food.
Housing, as virtually everyone’s largest individual expense, drives this struggle. It is no secret that finding safe, decent and affordable housing for many seniors is often a challenge.
Retired Frederick County school teacher Judy Kendro shared her struggle in the 2018 video The Faces of Affordable Housing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixwW4onCtUk] produced by Frederick County Government.
“My story could be anyone’s story. It could be you mother’s, your aunt’s, your sister’s, your friend’s, your neighbor’s or even you. My story happens to numerous seniors every month.”
“Three years ago, my best friend, my husband of 44 years, died. While grieving, I had to deal with paperwork, bills, medical bills and finances. My income was cut in half. Then, Uncle Sam said now you are one, which further reduced my income. However, my bills remained the same. In fact, some went up like heat, gasoline, car insurance, taxes and medical insurance. I had to adjust to a new lifestyle and budget.”
“After a year I found that my family house was too big for little old me. So, I did some looking around on my own and then contacted realtors. I thought it would be easy to find desirable, affordable options for senior living in Frederick County. Boy, was I wrong! What I have seen in Frederick County is out of my price range which affects my budget. Or, [I’ve found] fixer uppers, which affects my budget.”
“I am disappointed and discouraged but still looking. So, we need to address affordable, desirable housing for all our seniors and the baby boomers who are becoming seniors.”
Ms. Kendro’s story is not unique.
Frederick County is woefully behind in its housing inventory to serve all who want to live here, and that is especially true for seniors. According to the 2016 Frederick County Affordable Housing Needs Assessment, the housing gap for households making $50,000 per year or less— where most retirees fall—is 11,000 units.
The older population is projected to grow rapidly, and although many seniors wish to remain in their homes for as long as possible, challenges related to affordability, accessibility, and poor access to health services can make doing that difficult.
All is not doom and gloom, however. Seniors do have some affordable housing options they should consider, if at all feasible:
Stay in your own home
This option works well if you are in good health and plan to stay that way. Even if your mortgage is not paid in full you can consider a reverse mortgage, which means you can take some of the equity out of your home in the form of additional monthly income. Or you can consider selling your home to a company like Sell2rent.com who will rent it back to you and possibly include home maintenance as part of the deal.
Live with family
Sharing a home with loved ones if often free or low-cost and has the added advantage of having family members around to help you when needed. Both Frederick city and county have revised their Accessory Dwelling Unit ordinances to make it easier for “granny flats” or “in-law suites” to be built.
Look into public or subsidized senior housing
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offers affordable public housing apartments and even single-family homes for seniors in need. They often come with accessibility features and are priced at 30 percent of your income. Be forewarned, however, that wait lists are often very long, sometimes months or even years.
Consider assisted living and residential care options
This is a good option if you need help with daily activities such as bathing and getting dressed. These facilities offer meals, activities, and help with medication. The average cost across the U.S. is $4,000 a month but the price in Maryland is often more. Frederick offers many reputable facilities:
Buckingham’s Choice
Country Meadows
Edenton
HeartFields
Homewood at Crumland Farms
Montevue
Record Street Home
Somerford House & Place
Spring Arbor
Sunrise
Tranquility
Take advantage of government assistance
Low-income seniors can qualify for HUD’s Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, which helps people afford their rent.
HUD’s Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program provides rental assistance for older adults.
The Section 504 Home Repair Program helps pay for repairs and upgrades to your home so you can age in place.
The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program helps cover the cost of heating and cooling your home.
Ask for help from charitable organizations
Several nonprofits are available to help qualifying seniors such as Good Samaritan Society, HumanGood, Mercy Housing and Volunteers of America.
In the Frederick area, check out Habitat for Humanity, Housing Authority of the City of Frederick, Interfaith Housing Alliance, Religious Coalition for Emergency Human Needs, and United Way of Frederick County.
Frederick County also offers a variety of housing programs seniors can take advantage of. (This may not be a complete list.)
Frederick County Senior Tax Credit
Enacted by the Board of County Commissioners in 2012, the amount of the credit is 40% or 20% of net county real property taxes for qualifying homeowners depending on income.
Bell Court Senior Apartments
Owned by Frederick County and located in Woodsboro, the apartments provide affordable rental housing for the low-income elderly.
Accessible Homes for Seniors
Offers seniors low- and no-interest loan options for home renovations such as grab bars, railing and ramps and has recently been expanded to include grant money for those who do not qualify for the loans.
Maryland’s Renters’ Tax Credit Program
Provides property tax credits for renters who meet certain requirements, with deeper subsidies available to those individuals over the age of 60 or 100% disabled.
Senior Rehabilitation Grant Program
This program provides grants up to $15,000 for emergency repairs and accessibility modifications to very low-income senior homeowners.
Emergency Rehab Loan Program
Provides zero interest, deferred loans up to $15,000 for emergency repairs.
Special Targeted Applicant Rehabilitation Program (STAR)
Preserves and improves single-family properties by rehabilitating the property and updating it to applicable building codes.
Lead Hazard Reduction Grant and Loan Program
Provides funds to assist homeowner and landlords lessen the risk of lead poisoning and preserve the housing stock by reducing or eliminating lead-based paint hazards.
Indoor Plumbing Program (IPP)
Designed to provide indoor plumbing to residential properties. The properties may be single-family, owner-occupied homes as well as rental properties with one to twenty units.
Frederick County offers many apartment housing options geared to seniors. Some are county-funded and some are privately funded:
520 North Market Apartments, 520 North Market Street
Brooklawn Apartments, 1001 Carroll Parkway
Brunswick House, Brunswick, MD
Catoctin Manor/View Apartments, 798 and 800 Motter Ave.
Creekside at Tasker’s Chance, 100 Burgess Hill Way
Lincoln on the Park Apartments, Emmitsburg, MD
Orchard Park @ Ballenger Run, 5234 Black Locust Drive
Ox Fibre Apartments, 400 East Church Street
Seton Village Apartments, Emmitsburg, MD
Sharpe Square Senior Apartments, 820 Motter Ave.
Spring Ridge Apartments, 6351 Spring Ridge Parkway
Parkview Apartments, 750 Carroll Parkway
Taney Village Apartments, 1421 Taney Avenue
Victoria Park, Walkersville, MD
The Village at Worman’s Mill 55+ Apartments, 2470 Merchant Street
Weinberg House, 222 Broadway Street
Gary Bennett is a member of Frederick’s Affordable Housing Council and a board member for Advocates for Homeless Families.
I felt at the time and still do that Frederick County has outgrown this outdated policing model and that it does not serve us well.
It wasn’t hard to come to this conclusion after listening to repeated political sniping from Sheriff Chuck Jenkins and his challenger and Jenkins’ ongoing railing against a majority of the county’s population, which he is sworn to protect.
I asked at the time “Do we really want elective politics playing a day-to-day role in professional law enforcement?”
Last week our sheriff was indicted on five counts of conspiring and making false statements to illegally acquire machine guns.
And what did Jenkins allegedly receive in return for helping his friend get those machine guns? Political support, of course.
I hate to say I told you so but this was not difficult to see coming. Sheriffs are all-powerful constitutional animals. They answer to virtually no one, that is, until they get caught.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We shouldn’t have our county’s top law enforcement officer constantly pandering to their political base, begging for money, pushing back against political enemies and looking for political favors.
It doesn’t matter that Jenkins is a Republican. I’m not naïve enough to think a democrat wouldn’t do the very same thing.
I have no idea if the charges will stick. It doesn’t matter. The damage has been done.
He is at least guilty of extremely poor judgement. How he can take his broken law and order persona into the office each day and look his deputies in the eye is beyond me. But then again, the shameless chutzpa so many politicians posses always surprises me.
While the Maryland Constitution requires each county to have a sheriff, state statutes allow counties and municipalities to form local police departments. This is the path Frederick County needs to start down. I realize this was not a priority for our new county executive or the citizens advising her, but we can’t delay. The time is now.
I call on the county council and county executive to begin studying the costs and benefits of creating a professional county police department.
Did anyone else scratch their head when reading the story with the headline “District 5 residents ask not to be ignored”(The Frederick News-Post, Jan. 30)?
It came a few days after Thurmont residents voted in a referendum to disallow the annexation of 16.7 acres of county land in order to stop a high-density development that would have brought in over $1 million in tax revenue?
Residents from the northern part of the county made their conflicting feelings known at a District 5 town hall held by the new county executive just a few days after the referendum.
They say they often feel left out so they came with a laundry list of spending wishes including repairs and upgrades to roads, new parks and trails, help for emergency services, and more affordable housing for seniors—the very things this nixed high-density development would have aided.
Of course, District 5 includes more than just Thurmont, but one has to wonder if these folks wish to have their cake and eat it, too.
The kicker came when one resident said “the referendum came to a vote because the people of Thurmont want an opportunity to have a development that fits in with their small town atmosphere, not rows of townhouses that looks like Frederick City.”
As a proud resident of Frederick City, I hope the person I quoted does not partake of our many fine restaurants, theaters, cultural activities, parks or trails—all those things that a higher-density tax base allows—because if they do, they have shown their true “not in my backyard” colors.
Perhaps it is time Frederick County adopt a “fair share” law in affordable housing that is now gaining traction in other states and jurisdictions—an approach that assigns each town a certain number of units to plan and zone for, based on the needs of the region and the wealth of the town in question. The towns would then share the responsibility for that need.
Thurmont, I hate to break this to you, but your working-age children and your aging parents simply can’t afford to live in your single-family town and will most likely move to a townhouse in Frederick.
As a proud centrist Democrat, I would like to congratulate Sheriff Chuck Jenkins on his reelection. It was a tight race, but no, I don’t believe the election was stolen. I believe the outcome was what a majority of Frederick County citizens wanted. I challenge the other side to say the same thing publicly about the county executive race.
I certainly wish folks like Cindy Rose would reconsider their rhetoric about fair and unfair elections. I’m sure it hurts to lose, but to cast doubt on our local election without a shred of evidence harms all of us. It especially disparages us regular citizens who served as election judges.
Folks should know that there is simply no way to get away with anything as an election judge. Even if you were so inclined, there are just too many prying eyes, regulations to follow and peer pressure to try anything untoward. Of course, in America, you can hold any opinion you wish and say it out loud without fear of retribution. That’s one thing that makes America great. But, you should know that when it is a reckless, ill-informed opinion, it makes you look, well, less than smart, and perhaps someone who should never be in authority.
If Republicans are tired of seeing their leads slip away as the early votes and mail-in votes are counted, I suggest they take advantage of those tactics themselves. Most of the races were tight and could have gone either way. I believe this means that most Frederick County citizens wish to be governed from the center. I hope Sheriff Jenkins and Jessica Fitzwater are paying attention.
When you meet James Hubbard for the first time, a sense of quiet confidence, competence and thoughtfulness comes through clearly.
And, it’s no wonder after the things he saw and accomplished in Vietnam in the late 1960s. He especially points to the story of his “alive day”—a day he not only remained alive under dire circumstances but proved he could think and function well under extreme pressure.
March 30, 1968 was a typical hot and humid day at fire support base Fels in the Vietnam delta near the town of Cai Lay. The base served as field headquarters for an infantry battalion. Sometime after 5:30 pm, the Viet Cong started dropping mortar rounds onto the base from about 1,000 yards away. Unfortunately, a few of the rounds caused six or seven casualties among the troops, a few very serious.
The battalion surgeon was soon on the phone asking then Lieutenant Hubbard for helicopters to immediately evacuate the worst casualties to a field hospital for treatment. Trouble was, it was extremely dark with no moon or stars to guide the chopper pilots. For just such an emergency, Captain Hubbard and his men had constructed a helipad, complete with 15 slanted holes about five yards apart in the shape of a T to hold tin cans that would, in turn, hold 15 flashlights to guide the pilots onto the base. This did the trick and the chopper landed safely.
Unfortunately, the chopper, with its flashing red lights, made a good target and the enemy soon started firing again. Through the chaos of shouts, screams of wounded men and enemy fire, Captain Hubbard and his men got the casualties loaded onto the chopper and out of harm’s way just as the last round landed near to their position. Extreme courage, preparation and inventiveness had saved the day. Captain Hubbard went on to receive the Silver Star for his service in Vietnam.
In 1973 Captain Hubbard was medically discharged by the Army due to a serious illness. Otherwise, he would have made the Army his career. The discipline and leadership skills he learned in the Army served him well over his long civilian career as a director and lobbyist for the American Legion, where he was a frequent presence testifying on Capitol Hill. One of his proudest moments at the Legion was assisting in the approval and dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
Not one to stop working, Captain Hubbard now serves as a volunteer at Monocacy National Battlefield giving tours and explaining what went on at this hallowed battlefield during the Civil War. “My time in the military taught me a lot about myself, about leadership, about buckling down and getting the job done, about decision-making. It was a really enjoyable part of my life, even though some of it was fraught with danger.”
James B. Hubbard, Jr. and his wife Judy live in Frederick and celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary in 2022. They have two daughters and four grandchildren. Daughter Deborah Nylec assisted in the development of his book. To read more about Captain Hubbard’s time in Vietnam, read his book, From Michigan to Mekong, Letters on Life, Learning, Love and War 1961-1968.
Name: James Hubbard Current Age: 79 Hometown: Ludington, MI Year Enlisted: 1966 Years of Service: 6.5 Branch: Army Rank when retired: Captain
Shawn Rearden never saw himself as a leader but concludes his military service brought that out in him. “A few years ago, I had an evaluation and my manager at the time said you know that you’re one of the people in the OR that’s really looked up to as a leader, and I was like ‘really, why?’ I didn’t understand it—I’d never seen myself as that type of person.”
Rearden knows he wouldn’t be where he is today without his time in the service. He is a Surgical First Assistant at Frederick Health, and he’s working towards his nursing degree, on schedule to achieve that in December 2023. Rearden has been married to his wife Jen for 15 years and has a 12-year-old daughter, Molly. The Reardens make their home in Adamstown near Point of Rocks.
He enlisted in the Navy at 18 after four years of Army ROTC in high school and served for seven and a half years. The Navy was a no-brainer for Rearden as both his father and grandfather served in that branch. It also didn’t hurt that the Navy offered some of the best medical training available. As with many young men, military service offered a career path, a way to pay for college through the Gi Bill and a way to get out of his small town.
Rearden misses the structure and camaraderie at times but doesn’t feel like he particularly needed the structure at 18. He understands, however, that many young people do. “It’s not for everyone. If you have a problem with authority, you’re not going to do well. But if you can suck up your pride and realize they are breaking you down to rebuild you in a way that will make you productive then they’ll bring out the best in you. They definitely brought out the best in me.”
Rearden’s seamless transition from military to civilian life serves as a guide for others about to leave the service. He says it is important to get training that you can translate to civilian life. “Make sure you get some kind of certification that you can use when you get out. For me, Naval Hospital Corps School was basically the first semester of nursing school.” In fact, the training is so good that employers take notice right away. For his first job after leaving the military, Rearden said the hiring manager quipped “Maybe I should interview you. No, I’m going to hire you anyway. What shift do you want to work?”
Name: Shawn Rearden Current Age: 40 Hometown: Sunbury, PA Years of Service: 7.5 Branch: Navy Rank when left service: Petty Officer 3rd Class (HM3)
