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Darul Uloom Maryland-Update 2: it's not a group home!
Recap: Darul Uloom, a Muslim school, wants to build a small dormitory on property the school recently purchased in Gwynn Oak/Woodlawn. Neighbors are dredging up all kinds of objections, the most inflammatory of which are that it will be another group home, that this area already has more than its share of group homes, and that group homes are per se, undesirable. At the same time, other do-gooders are proposing to close the Rosewood School and much of Spring Grove State Hospital, leaving group homes as the only remaining alternative for physically handicapped and developmentally disabled people who cannot be cared-for by their families.
Last week, I emailed Barry Barber, Captain of the Second Police Precinct, and asked what data the police department might have about disturbances at or service calls to group homes.
Captain Barber replied:
We don't arbitrarily track statistics at all group homes in the Precinct. When we start to notice an increase in calls for service, especially criminal calls, at a particular group home location, we then begin to track all calls there.
At the same time we start to target the location with increased enforcement. At the same time we contact the home administrator in a effort to relocate some of the problem residents and/or to close the facility all together.
For all other homes, if given an address, we can pull up calls for service over a given period. We will not do this unless specifically asked to do so.
As for the location on Dogwood Road, it is not a group home. The proposal is for this to be a dormitory for an Islamic School. There are no known problems connected to the school and there is no reason to believe that its presence would cause a problem within the community.
Aside from the specifics about the Darul Uloom operation, it is significant that the police department does not track calls to group homes. If, as so many aver, they are a source of trouble, the county ought to be compiling data that either backs up this assertion or disproves it. The don't ask/don't tell approach is unacceptable, especially since the county already uses an (expensive!) GIS mapping system to track crime by category. At the very least, this system could easily show crime rates at non-owner-occupied addresses, compared with owner-occupied ones. God knows, this might also provide a grasp on whether the problem is houses occupied by groups of "retards," Section 8 housing, multiple-unit properties, or some factor nobody has imagined.
Meanwhile, it's worth asking Councilman Ken Oliver when, if ever, he plans to make good on the promises he made shortly after being elected the first time. County Vibe* no longer appears to exist, and somehow it escaped being cached by Google, but it was for a time another of those local newsletters aimed solely at black residents. In February 2005, this web site published an interview with Oliver, who had been elected in 2002. I had the foresight to do a screen capture of the interview, written by one "C. Green." Here's the interesting part, where group homes are concerned. See my footnotes:
Another major concern in the district is the group home issue. We’ve heard that upwards of 70% of group homes in Maryland are located in NorthWest Baltimore County. What impact have they had on the community and what initiatives, if any, are in the works to address this issue?
Good question and I am glad you’ve asked it. Group homes have been in Baltimore County for over 20 years. They have been in this district for over 20 years, and the first councilmatic district for over 20 years. The first and fourth councilmatic district have over 80% of all group homes in the state of Maryland. So they didn’t happen and come in the year 2002 when I got elected. They were here prior to that. I didn’t hear one word about group homes prior to 2002. (1)Yes, I do have an initiative. The councilman from the first councilmatic district(S.G. Samuel Moxley) and I are sponsoring legislation to have a study done of the group homes so that they can take that information and pass it to our senators and delegates because everything that happens to group homes does not happen on a county level. It is a federal issue and than it becomes a state issue. The problem is that you have three agencies who are issuing licenses and they are not talking to one another. (2) What Senator Kelley has done is sponsor legislation where one agency will issue licenses for all group homes and no more will go in certain areas. They will have to go elsewhere because of the over saturation.
The group home issue is a hot button. Therefore, it is common for some residents to blame group homes for any number of issues in their community. Are some of the concerns and their impact overblown?
I think people are picking it to death and it is overblown.(3) They are not going anywhere. We didn’t pass the federal laws we just have to abide by them. No elected official wants to deal with it and that’s why I took the initiative to talk to my colleague in the first councilmatic district and we are sponsoring legislation to do something about it at least on the state level.
I can't help wondering about several statements attributed to Oliver here. In fairness, the article is quite badly written, and the Councilman may have been misquoted or quoted out of context. Nevertheless:
(1) Councilman Oliver's curriculum vitae includes nearly twenty years with the county's planning commission. How can anyone say they "didn't hear one word about group homes prior to 2002," given that experience?
(2) Even if three different agencies are empowered to license group homes, why has the county never managed to provide an accurate count of them, much less district-by-district? It seems to me that this information is knowable, although admitting that you know it poses several problems: (a) it could blow a hole in the assertion that X percentage of the county's group homes are in such-and-such an area; (b) it makes even more questionable the Police Department's policy of not tracking service calls to these homes; (c) shouldn't the number of these residences in a given area be an important factor in planning ambulance and hospital facilities?
Or is the truth that nobody has the slightest idea how many physically handicapped and developmentally disabled people live in any given part of the county? I realize, this seems difficult to believe, in an era when the US Census Bureau collects an inordinate amount of personal information, and when the Transportation Security Authority has been revealed to be keeping track of what reading material people carry on to airplanes. Obviously, someone, at some level of government is lying about the existence of this data.
(3) Has Mr. Oliver changed his view, that the group home matter is overblown and being nitpicked? If so, how would he explain his decision to intervene in an otherwise ordinary request for a zoning variance?
* If you try to pull up the domain CountyVibe.com on your web browser, you will find yourself redirected to "YourPrintCafe.com," which is a parking spot for semi-inactive domains. The WhoIs database reveals the following about CountyVibe.com:
Registrant:
ATTN: COUNTYVIBE.COM
c/o Network Solutions
, Yukon Territory Box 447
Zimbabwe
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: COUNTYVIBE.COM
Created on: 13-Mar-02
Expires on: 13-Mar-08
Last Updated on:
Administrative Contact:
Green, Clinton gu4ec74v9nw@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
YourPrintCafe.com ATTN: COUNTYVIBE.COM c/o Network Solutions P.O. Box 447 Herndon, VA 2017
It would not be a huge leap to assume that the administrative contact for the domain is the same guy whose name appears on the byline of the Oliver interview. But what's his connection, if he simply works for some outfit in Virginia? And obviously the registrant information is bogus: Yukon Territory in Zimbabwe?
It's not unusual to find domain registrants hiding their identity behind bogus names and addresses, or registration tracking services like GoDaddy. As revealed in a blog entry in 2006 George Soros, one of the major bag-men of the Democratic Party does this. By contrast, it is relatively easy to find at least some sensible registration info for domains owned by companies you might think are vulnerable to attack by the net, such as Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, eBay, etcetera.
Conclusion:
1. Someone should demand that the police track, and make public, data about group homes, whether or not it fits the convenient story that they are such a pestilence.
2. If there is a third alternative for housing people unable to care for themselves besides so-called institutions and so-called group homes, someone should propose it. By appearances there would be a boat-load of money to be made.
3. Someone needs to ask Councilman Oliver about the inconsistencies I've noted here. Since he no longer answers my emails or phone calls, someone else will need to try.
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