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O'Malley politicizes foreclosure problems
Baltimore homeowners who face foreclosure have a new ally, thanks to a coalition working in conjunction with government groups.
Mayor Martin O’Malley on Wednesday will announce a counseling support group that will help financially troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure.
“It’s not an unusual problem,” said Carol Gilbert, program officer with the Goldseker Foundation, a 30-year-old Baltimore foundation that supports nonprofit organizations helping communities and individuals in the Baltimore metro region.
The Goldseker Foundation funded a report by The Reinvestment Fund that shows the depth of foreclosures in the area. That report and the counseling support group will be made public at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday when O’Malley hosts a news conference in the Belair-Edison neighborhood at the corner of Parkside Drive and Kavon Avenue.
Joining O’Malley will be Paul T. Graziano, commissioner with Baltimore Housing; Marietta Rodriguez, director of NeighborWorks Center for Foreclosure Solutions in Washington; Colleen Hernandez, president of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation in Minneapolis; Mary Louise Preis, vice president for community relations with CitiFinancial in Baltimore; and Vincent P. Quayle, executive director of the St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center in Baltimore.
Gilbert said 3,600 filings for foreclosures were made in 2005, down from the 2000 level of 5,000.
“That’s still high,” she said, though a filing for foreclosure does not mean the mortgage holder foreclosed a property.
What convenient timing. The number of foreclosures is down, at least temporarily, but the general election is only six weeks away. Now, if Governor Ehrlich had done this, the Democrats would be screaming that he is "politicizing the plight of poor people," or some such twaddle.
Meanwhile, since both of Baltimore's dubious daily papers lack a sense of historical perspective, it is worth remembering that Morris Goldseker was without question the most egregious slumlord in the city's history, and almost single-handedly responsible for the blockbusting of Edmondson Village in the 1950s. It was only after his death that this particcular evil-doer's millions were put to charitable use.
But Baltimore's Democrats have a pathologically short memory when it comes to the devious doings of any of our local real estate moguls, as long as they are willing to throw around some cash for a concert hall, a theatre or a charitable foundation. I put more stock in the words of Shakespeare's Marc Antony, who observed that the evil men do lives on beyond their lifetimes.
Thus, Baltimore's retail districts and working port were ground beneath the mill wheel of James Rouse's ambitions.