1996 Pinnacle - Christie Brinkley Collection #12 Carlos Baerga (Trading Card Database)
It’s April 8, 1996, and it’s a day off for the O’s as they came back home following their Easter weekend series in Minnesota.
Tomorrow is going to be the first major test of the season, as defending American League champion Cleveland comes to town. They are stacked with stars like Carlos Baerga, Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Carlos Baerga, and a young Manny Ramirez. They also have defensive wiz Omar Vizquel and former Orioles legend Eddie Murray.
Cleveland has taken notice of Baltimore as a potential threat to their AL reign.
“I think the Orioles have a great team,” said Jack McDowell, tomorrow’s starting pitcher. “They’ve got great potential, but you have to play it out and see who stays healthy and who has their years.”
We’ll play it out tomorrow.
In other news, tests showed that O’s reliever Armando Benitez’s sore arm is just a strained muscle and the team has no plans yet to put him on the injured list. Well, that’s good, for now.
Tomorrow’s Game
Cleveland (2-3) at Baltimore (5-1), 7:35 p.m. ET
Starting Pitchers
CLE – Jack McDowell, 0-1, 2.84 ERA
BAL – David Wells, 1-0, 1.29 ERA
Front Page News
Today was a banner day in the history of privatizing Baltimore’s public housing. The city is getting “$300 million” in federal funds to “replace dilapidated public housing high rises with rowhouse communities.”
These funds are largely driven by HUD’s HOPE VI program, which was a nationwide pilot program to tear down housing project towers and replace them with a combination of fewer units for the public housing authority and Section 8 vouchers. (Note: Landlords were allowed to discriminate against Section 8 vouchers in Maryland until the HOME Act passed in 2020. And even after that, discrimination is still happening because landlords are gonna landlord.)
The city did ultimately tear down all four of its high rise projects within five years of 1996: Lafayette Courts, Lexington Terrace, Murphy Homes, and Flag House Courts. Nationally, and here in Baltimore especially, the legacy of the effort was the demolition of thousands of units, the eviction of thousands of people, and only half at best of the units replaced.
Because this Sun article uses the words “dilapidated” and “crime-ridden,” it’s probably best to have this counter from the National Low Income Housing Coalition:
Despite the consistent attempts to undermine public housing and media portrayals of dilapidated, crime-riddled tower buildings — the program remains popular among its residents. Alex F. Schwartz notes in his book, Housing Policy and The United States: “Public housing is unpopular with everybody except those who live in it and those who are waiting to get in.” Indeed, so many people want to live in public housing that the wait lists are almost always years-long.
Steady underfunding and austerity cuts under President Reagan in the 80s led to the declining quality of public housing. In 1989, Congress created the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing to survey the condition of the nation’s public housing. The Commission found only a small percentage, 6%, was “severely distressed.” Nevertheless Congress appropriated $600 million to the HOPE VI program, which was publicized as an “urban-renewal” effort to demolish distressed units and replace them with mixed-income housing.
The program resulted in an overcorrection for a program that really needed more funding and better management. Over 50,000 households were told they would be “temporarily” relocated, but fewer than half of them could return to their repaired homes and even fewer could afford the new mixed-income housing. Ultimately, HOPE VI left tens of thousands of public housing renters displaced and drastically decreased the public housing stock.
Fun in the Sun
Welcome to a recurring segment where I find fun things in today’s (in 1996) Baltimore Sun!
How would you do on the German driving test?
The Baltimore Sun, p. 16A, April 8, 1996