SENIORS MAKE A PLEA FOR PEACE

Safety: Older Residents In The City's Public Housing Say An Influx Of
Disabled Tenants Has Made Their Homes More Dangerous

There was a time when the senior citizens who call Lakeview Towers home
lived comfortably.

They would adorn the hallways with Christmas lights and welcome mats, and
while away the evening hours with bingo games and courtyard gossip.

No more.

In recent years, the elderly occupants of one of the city's high-rise
public housing buildings complain, the dangers of the street have spilled
into their isolated enclave - a result, they say, of lax security and an
influx of younger, disabled residents, some of them recovering drug
addicts, into the once-tranquil and seniors-only complex.

Longtime Lakeview residents say that prostitutes, drug dealers and drug
users now have free rein in the building, a problem that some tenant
council presidents say is duplicated in many of the city's other 18
mixed-used buildings.

The atmosphere is so fraught with fear that seniors say they are afraid to
take out their trash in the hallway or get on the elevator at night. "It's
not safe for us at a certain time of night," said Cecelia Stepto, 85. "You
don't know who you're gonna meet in the hallways. When I walk the hall, I
just take my stick. It's terrible that you don't feel safe. I just want
peace and safety."

Advocates for the disabled say they are being unfairly blamed for the problems.

And police and housing officials say that crime is down in the mixed-use
developments and that the fears expressed by seniors are more perception
than reality.

But Lakeview tenants counter that building monitors sometimes sleep on the
job and that police presence has been minimal after the city disbanded its
public housing authority police force last year and created a housing unit
in the city's force.

"When I moved in here, it was all seniors," said Julia Brinson, 79,
president of the Tenant Council at Lakeview. "Now, oh my goodness. The
squatters and the drugs. I'm not letting them run me out, but I'm scared.
You can't sit up here in your cell all day looking at the walls."

Officials concede that mixing younger, disabled residents with older groups
has created a generational clash, but one that is dictated by federal
regulations.

"Of course they are scared," said Maj. Jesse Oden, commander of the
Baltimore Police Department's public housing unit, referring to the senior
tenants. He said his officers concentrate on family developments where
violence and arrests are more prevalent, and that they usually only go to
the senior and disabled complexes when there is a call for help.

Oden agreed that the complaints by seniors are legitimate, even if not
backed up statistically. "They don't know who these guys are," he said.
"They don't know what these guys are capable of. I've worked narcotics for
13 years, so I know what they're afraid of."

Baltimore housing officials began to remake senior housing units into mixed
developments in the late 1990s to provide more housing for low-income
people with disabilities.

That process became even more imperative last year when housing officials
were forced to take more measures to settle a long-standing federal
discrimination lawsuit. About 33 percent of the city's mixed-population
buildings now consists of nonsenior disabled residents. Advocates for the
disabled say that by law, the city was supposed to include disabled
residents in the complexes all along.

The perception that the disabled have caused a drug problem is a
misinformed stereotype, said Lauren Young, legal director of the Maryland
Disability Law Center.

"I understand people's perceptions and concerns," said Young, whose group
filed the federal lawsuit. "But people with disabilities don't want to be
unsafe. They don't want to have drug dealers there, either."

City officials are not pushing seniors out but rather filling vacant
apartments with eligible disabled residents, for whom the public housing
demand is the greatest.

Problems caused by mixing the two groups have been noted for years.

John P. Stewart, executive director of Baltimore's Commission on Aging and
Retirement Education, said he receives complaints about intimidation and is
working with the City Council on addressing the concerns. "There is a
younger disabled drug population residing in many of these units," said
Stewart. "We're looking at better security and more safety features for
seniors."

Housing officials say they are currently developing a program to enhance
communication between the two groups.

Jemine Bryon, deputy executive director of the city housing authority, said
the problems stem more from visitors than tenants. She said the housing
department has an active lease-enforcement unit that works to evict problem
tenants or tenants with visitors who create problems.

"All places are having problems with the mixed population," said Anna
Warren, 68, who is coordinator of the Resident Advisory Board for city
public housing buildings, and the tenant council president at Claremont
Homes. "It's just the idea that we're coming into a building where it
should be all seniors. It's supposed to be our golden years. Now there are
young people playing the radio and having parties. People are worried about
being robbed and stuff like that."

Lakeview Towers fronts Druid Park Lake Drive and consists of two attached,
high-rise buildings with about 150 units each. About half the population in
each building consists of disabled residents under the age of 62.

The buildings are well-maintained with the antiseptic feel of a hospital.
On a recent afternoon, a crowd of concerned residents, including some
disabled but mostly senior citizens, gathered to tick off their concerns.

They complained of mentally disturbed residents roaming the hallway without
adequate supervision, visitors coming in at all hours, a prostitute
knocking on doors and money stolen from an apartment.

The disabled shouldn't be blamed for all the problems, noted Wallace Craig,
42, who uses a wheelchair. "It's not everybody in the mixed population," he
said. "I'm one of the new people from the mixed population and I'm just as
scared. It's a security issue. This is a horrible place to live."

Elizabeth Holloman, 79, who is blind, has lived in Lakeview for more than
two decades. She recalled times when she could leave her apartment at any
time, unafraid.

"Now I don't come out of my apartment alone," she said. "It's not fair.
They are making prisoners out of us when we were here when they moved in."

Earlene Smooth, 77, and her husband moved into the 13th floor of Lakeview
in 1985. Her husband has since died.

"You don't feel safe outside," she said. "But to be afraid when you come in
your building? That's something else. When you get to a certain age you are
supposed to be able to live in peace, not worried about taking your trash out."

Smooth, like many others, said she resists efforts from her children to get
her to move. She said she wants her independence.

She wants to spend her last days in the place she and her husband lived
together, once happily. "I just feel close to him in here," she said.

Now she spends most of her days hobbling wearily on her cane and into her
13th-floor apartment, where she can close her door and lock it. Then, and
only then, she said, does she feel even a little bit safe.