The Edgewood community received a $200,000 grant Tuesday to help residents spruce up dilapidated housing and broken roads in 10 square blocks at the area?s heart.
The grant will be used to improve Judy Way and Eloise Lane, two loops off Brookside Drive, near Route 40. An oddity in property lines and rights-of-way meant that property owners along those two streets also owned the roads, sewers and water lines ? precluding county maintenance and allowing them to fall into disrepair, said District A County Council Member Dion Guthrie.
“The builders did all the surface stuff and didn?t do a job the county would call ?up to specs,? ” Guthrie said. “You?ve got to drive 2 miles per hour down the street because of the potholes.”
Because the streets are private property, they couldn?t be fixed with taxpayer funds, Guthrie said. Instead, the state will give Edgewood a Community Legacy grant, which can be matched with loans from banks to pay for improvements to the roads, pipes and houses.
“These grants are really important. ? They?re designed for blighted areas like the apartment complexes or the town houses that are falling apart,” said Community Council Member Chris Biggs, a candidate for Guthrie?s seat on the County Council.
“People see these small sections of Edgewood and stereotype the rest.”
The cost of fixing just one street might have been as high as $1.7 million ? a near-impossibility for the residents of the mostly low-income area, few of whom even knew the streets and sewers were their responsibility, Guthrie said.
But because the rest of the surrounding census block has a higher average income,the two roads were ineligible for other grants that have a low- to middle-income limit, said Karen Ashby, an assistant director in the state?s Department of Housing and Community Development.
Once the roads are brought up to county code, ownership of the rights-of-way could be turned over to the county so that they would receive regular county maintenance and snow clearing.
