Interesting look at the topic. Why has the County become a magnet for the poor in recent years? You would think that working poor would look for a location where the cost of liviing is much less, but County welfare programs here are very attractive. That is why our taxes are so high. No easy solutions. However, local charities do a lot to help people.

Hi JH, I don't think the county became a "magnet for poor people". Instead, I believe the country is living in a major recession and people are loosing their jobs which causes the numbers of "working poor people" to increase. I do not believe anybody plans to loose their job and move in to Howard County. Also, if you take a look on the numbers, many of those classified as working poor earn a college degree or a graduate degree. This is a moment in America we all should help each other and not put others down.

Because Howard County has more resources and more jobs { albeit service jobs} that probably is the major reason people are drawn to Howard County.

What's disturbing is that 26% of the working poor has a bachelor degree and 10% a graduate or professional degree. The two together equals 36% and you would expect a person with a college degree to have better job opportunities. So it's not like they're not trying to help themselves.

I'm more concerned about the section 8 element that drains the county resources.

With the development of Mass Transit, Howard County became a magnet for the poor of DC & Baltimore. To add to the problem HUD in 1996 decided to conduct an experiment titled the "Move to Opportunity". Residents of 6 inner cities were given vouchers & information on housing in wealthier areas, Columbia among them & families were bused in w/ Sec. 8 vouchers in hand to see what Howard County had to offer. Your tax dollars @ work ladies & gentlemen. And if you would like to see some of the consequences of this foolhardy & arrogant experiment you have only to visit the much-vaunted but overrated Mall in Columbia; it is becoming a ghetto!

Good observations. That would mean about 64% have no college educations ( and Social Services will tell you that many have not completed high school). The service sector does employee many of the working poor. So of these folks have moved into these jobs because they lost a higher paying job, but most have been in these jobs even prior to the recession. All high income areas of the country have similar issues.
Charities ( like those in Howard County) are a very good way to help and many generous people here do indeed help.

This opinion piece was in the WSJ recently and it seems to be relevant to the Section 8 discussions that have been going on recently. Here is an exerpt.

"In the 1990s, the feds were embarrassed by skyrocketing crime rates in public housing—up to 10 times the national average, according to HUD studies and many newspaper reports. The government’s response was to hand out vouchers to residents of the projects (authorized under Section 8 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974), dispersing them to safer and more upscale locales.
Section 8′s budget soared to $19 billion this year from $7 billion in 1994. HUD now picks up the rent for more than two million households nationwide; tenants pay 30% of their income toward rent and utilities while the feds pay the rest. Section 8 recipients receive monthly rental subsidies of up to $2,851 in the Stamford-Norwalk, Conn., area, $2,764 in Honolulu and $2,582 in Columbia, Md.
But the dispersal of public housing residents to quieter neighborhoods has failed to weed out the criminal element that made life miserable for most residents of the projects. “Homicide was simply moved to a new location, not eliminated,” concluded University of Louisville criminologist Geetha Suresh in a 2009 article in Homicide Studies. In Louisville, Memphis, and other cities, violent crime skyrocketed in neighborhoods where Section 8 recipients resettled."

Exactly, as everyone has said. This article points out the problems of Section 8; if you cannot afford to live without government assistance, then you should not be living somewhere with such a high cost of living.

We need to do what we can to end these programs within our boundaries. We may not legally be able to target Section 8, but we can certainly work with CPRA, HOA, and our Village leaders to bring our regulations down hard on absentee landlords and problem residents.

Should we "thank" our elected members of Congress for this crazy mess? Start with our Senators from Maryland and also our member of the House. They are the ones that allow this to happen to Columbia --- perhaps they were even advocates for such a move. The County Executive at the time could have prevented this program. Ask them all to explain why they agreed to this program.

I am proud to live and pay taxes in a community as ethnically and economically diverse as Columbia. By subsidizing housing and services for Maryland's poor without putting them in cages we provide opportunities for disadvantaged children to grow up in a clean, warm environment. Because Columbia is an very integrated community, children grow up seeing with their own eyes that the color of their skin does not predetermine their level of success in life, and that with hard work and good choices they can maximize their chances to live a better life than their parents.

Of course there will be crime when you give people the freedom to choose their own way in life. These are issues we all own, as members of this community. Rejecting groups of people based on their fortunes in life is inhumane, uncivilized, immature, selfish, and frankly speaks of a weak, fearful character.

I am proud to share my community with those less fortunate than me. I am neither afraid of nor disgusted by my fellow Columbians who live on public assistance as most of the commenters on these stories seem to be. I'd rather count the number of children who have the opportunity to walk to school every day in safety and get an education that prepares them for college than spend all day reading the police blotter in terror.

Parents are the key. Honest hard working mothers and fathers that value education, take responsibility for there own actions, and abide by our laws will help children thrive, be self supporting, and take advantage of all the opportunities that the nation has to offer. They too will see that we need not tolerate criminals and those that enable them. We need not accept unsafe streets and unlawful activity in our community. Stand up for law and order ----- and reject those that suggest in a diverse society we should accept serious crimes and just learn to live with it.

How about we not judge people based on the fact that they have similar skin tones and demographic backgrounds as the handful of individuals who commit the extremely small number of serious crimes in our community? I thought this was America. Perhaps we shouldn't treat a child as a presumed criminal because he or she comes from a broken home, while we are at it.