Row houses in many Baltimore, MD neighborhoods are affordable to moderate-income families. When subsidized financing is available to buy these modest-priced units or when they are discounted below their market value, they become affordable to lower-income families. These two facts, coupled with an extraordinary amount of effort to qualify home buyers for financing, explain the high success that Baltimore has achieved in its public housing homeownership demonstration. Although the PHA has fallen two short of meeting its goal of selling 30 scattered-site, singlefamily units, it appears that the 28 families who have closed on their loans are achieving their dream of homeownership. By pricing the units using a 25 percent housing cost to income ratio and excluding temporary income and the income of minors from consideration, Baltimore's program planners have done their best to ensure that families would not be assuming an unmanageable financial burden soon after they took title to their homes.

This report is part of the collection of scanned historical documents available to the public.