Dispatches: Historic Hilltop, A Community No More

Fifty-six houses sit empty on Mount Ida Drive--just north of the Historic District in Ellicott City--as Howard County prepares to redevelop a neighborhood whose history is deeply entwined in the African-American story.

The $15 million, 204-unit mixed-income neighborhood with subsidized and market-rate apartments and townhomes will replace 94 residences at Hilltop Housing, a fully subsidized complex that sits halfway up Ellicott Mills Drive on the east side of the street. 

Residents were relocated to other county-owned properties or to vacant units at the southernmost end of the development in preparation for the first of three phases of construction, expected to begin in early December, according to Deputy Housing Director Tom Carbo.

Once the first phase of construction is complete, in about 14 months, residents can return to new one- two- and three-bedroom apartments for the same subsidized rents.

But not everyone plans on returning. 

“There will never be another neighborhood like this,” said one Hilltop resident who did not want to be named. "... The original neighborhood, everybody was connected because they fought for that neighborhood, they moved from the same slum. You can’t connect with people these days."

She said she would not go back.

'World's smallest ghetto'

The Hilltop Housing Complex is a county-owned development made up of 94 Section 8 apartments and townhouses. Residents' rents are determined as a percentage of income. The development was built by Howard County in 1969, two years after deplorable conditions across the street, at a neighborhood along Fels Lane, received national attention.

A 1967 article in Jet magazine referred to the county-owned apartments on Fels Lane as “perhaps the world’s smallest ghetto."

None of the 22 crumbling century-old structures in the Fels Lane area has a bathtub or shower; very few have toilets. The old outhouses rotted and were torn down; residents now dump their wastes in the Tiber, a small tributary of the Patapsco which runs behind their houses. A few houses have running water from a public pump.

In 1969, many of the residents of Fels Lane--nearly 50 of whom were one or two generations removed from their slave families at nearby Doregan Manor--moved across the street to Hilltop.

Raymond Johnson is one of them. He led the Fels Lane Neighborhood Association, and later, was president of the tenants' association at Hilltop.

Only a few families who have remained at Hilltop since its construction have roots on Fels Lane. Johnson said more might have stayed but a verbal promise from the county that residents would have an opportunity to buy their homes was never kept.

"When we went to the county commission [in 1969], all the conversation was verbal, nothing was signed," he said. "These folks need to get something in writing, because I don’t trust the county."

Over the years, families' incomes increased and they no longer qualified for subsidized housing, so, without the purchase option, they had to move. It was particularly upsetting because as children moved up in the workforce, they left their aging parents behind at Hilltop, said Elsie Ham, who lives on Fels Lane and is close to families who moved to the development.

"It was a mixed [income] community," she said, sitting in her living room surrounded by former Fels Lane residents. "But when you made enough money, you had to go."

Many left Howard County, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, altogether. “I would never buy a house here,” said one resident, because of high home prices that remain high even in a down economy.

Johnson, too, left Ellicott City because it was too expensive, he said. He now lives in Catonsville in Baltimore County. 

But other concerns aside, most residents say they are glad the 40-year-old community is getting a facelift.

“It’s about time,” said Mansfield Fuller, 85. Fuller grew up on Fels Lane, returned in 1943 and then moved to Hilltop. Fuller was the first black firefighter on the Ellicott City Volunteer Fire Department, where he served for more than 40 years.

During construction, Fuller moved to a county-owned property in Jessup; he hasn’t yet decided if he’ll return to Hilltop. 

No families displaced

At a meeting with the Department of Housing, the development company and Howard County residents, Carbo told the standing-room-only audience that there would be zero displacement as a result of the redevelopment of Hilltop. 

He said residents would be able to return to new homes and pay the same rent.

"Can we get that in writing?" Ham asked.

Suspicion of the county lingers, according to several Hilltop residents and former residents who gathered at Ham's house to discuss the history and future of the community. 

The federal Uniform Relocation Act requires subsidies for any tenant who is moved off-site for a year or more. Carbo said that everyone, even those who will be back at Hilltop in less than a year, is receiving a relocation subsidy. The money is coming from federal and county sources. 

In a recent interview with Patch, Carbo reiterated that everyone who qualified for a subsidy will retain it for five years.

“After five years, we’ll evaluate each tenant,” he said.

Ninety-one units in the new development will be earmarked for federal subsidies through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC); after five years, tenants who make less than 60 percent of the area's median income will pay one of three set, below-market rent prices, also based on income. Currently each tenant’s rent is individually tailored based on his or her income through the HUD program.

Tenants currently receiving HUD assistance will “likely qualify” for the tax credit program, Carbo said.

But the subsidies are not the point, said the resident who did not want to be identified. The redevelopment is the end of an historical community that has, like many others, been dismantled.

“I was talking to one of the people from the management company," she said, "just talking about how the neighborhood use to be, and she said, ‘Oh, it’ll be that way again. You’ll have a neighborhood like that again,’ and I said, ‘I doubt it,’ because nobody will be connected, you know what I mean?"

Patch will be exploring the history of the Fels Lane community in subsequent articles. Read about the 1966 rent strike, and see pictures of the old neighborhood in Jet magazine.

You can find more articles from this ongoing series, “Dispatches: The Changing American Dream” from across the country at The Huffington Post.