A just and equitable housing policy

I was glad to see that The Sun’s editorial board supports Baltimore County’s HOME Act (“Poverty and housing in Baltimore County,” July 5).

The bill seeks to end discrimination against people who use government assistance to pay for rental housing.

Similar laws are already working well for renters and landlords elsewhere Maryland. Howard, Montgomery and Frederick counties, as well as the cities of Frederick and Annapolis, prohibit source-of-income discrimination.

Baltimore County should join them. And with or without the proposed law, Baltimore County landlords should give people with housing choice vouchers a chance by seeing the person behind the government assistance.

As your editorial mentioned, counseling is an important part of successful efforts to move people with housing vouchers to higher-opportunity neighborhoods — communities that are connected to good schools and jobs.

One significant fact left out of the editorial, however, was that part of the settlement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires the county to provide mobility counseling to 2,000 current housing choice voucher program participants.

The counseling program will help renters with vouchers find housing they can afford in areas providing greater opportunity.

It will also offer support services, including financial counseling, credit repair and referrals to training and job opportunities.

Other guidance will focus on education, child care, good neighborliness and renters knowing their rights and responsibilities.

The success of the mobility and counseling program depends in great part on the ability of people who use vouchers to move to areas of opportunity. To date such moves have been largely impossible because of landlords who discriminate against voucher holders.

The HOME Act is a strong first step toward a more equitable county. I encourage everyone in Baltimore County to support this legislation and, most importantly, to urge their County Council members to approve it Richard Brown-Whale, Perry Hall The writer is pastor of Camp Chapel United Methodist Church.

Little has changed since “The Wire”

After returning home from college in early May, I decided to pick up a new television series for the summer: “The Wire.” And, once I started watching, I really couldn’t stop.

I’ve never been so fully absorbed by a work of art in my life.

But such a big part of me feels terrible about that fact because “The Wire” really isn’t a work of art. It’s real life for a lot of my fellow Baltimoreans. I’m a white kid from Roland Park, and while my neighborhood is within city limits, it could not be more different from the world that exists just a short car ride down the Jones Falls Expressway.

Surely I’ve always known this but until recently, I’ve never fully acknowledged it.

It’s been especially difficult to avoid thinking about race, violence and policing of late. Our nation has been rocked to its core by the events in St. Paul, Baton Rouge and Dallas.

And if my Facebook newsfeed is any indication, the American public has never been farther — in my lifetime at least — from reconciling the fundamental differences among us (“A day for quiet reflection,” July 12). Yet lost in the slog of media coverage concerning these truly terrible events is the everyday violence that beats on in other great American cities, like Baltimore, day in and day out.

As Tim Prudente’s account, “Gunman opens fire on crowd at candlelight vigil in West Baltimore” (July 12), indicates, a total of 344 people were killed in Baltimore last year, 301 of them by gunfire. This year has seen more than 130 shooting deaths to the city.

These stats really jarred me, because truly nothing has changed about my city since “The Wire” ended its run on HBO in 2008. The same violence that David Simon brought to life back then rages on to this day.

And what have we done to stop it? Not a thing. And perhaps there’s a reason.

As veteran detective Lester Freamon (played by actor Clarke Peters) asks in one particularly poignant scene from the final season, “You think that if 300 white people were killed in this city every year, they wouldn’t send the 82nd Airborne? [Expletive], please.” Will Sherman, Baltimore