For Dan Elwood, a Butcher’s Hill resident for 35 years, it was not a difficult decision to move several blocks due north to CARE, a neighborhood in the process of revitalization in the eastern shadow of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
“It seems like there’s a sense of establishment there – some kind of new dynamic,” said the city-savvy nurse, an employee of Johns Hopkins University who happens to work at the medical campus in Southeast Baltimore.
Elwood likes the prospect of a lower property tax bill, a walking commute and the proximity of Northeast Market, where he already purchases fresh meats and produce.
“There’s quite a good seafood place there,” he said.
Thanks to $26,000 in home-buying grants through the CARE Housing Incentive Program (CHIP), Elwood may be sampling some of the more exotic options.
CHIP , part of the Live Near Your Work program, takes the existing $6,000 available to Johns Hopkins employees who buy homes in certain neighborhoods near the hospital and adds $20,000 for those who purchase in CARE, which is bordered, approximately, by McElderry and Fayette streets to the north and south and Washington St. and Patterson Park Ave. to the east and west.
“The CHIP grant will get Johns Hopkins employees to take a look at a neighborhood they might not otherwise have considered,” said Chris Ryer, president and executive director of the Southeast Community Development Corp., which secured the state money funding the grant.
He added that CHIP specifically targets CARE in order to help it become a mixed-income community as it continues its revitalization.
“The incentive allows CARE to compete with the incentives offered for Oliver and EBDI, both of which don’t have the amenities – such as Northeast Market – that CARE has, and just blocks from the hospital,” Ryer said.
The chess match of revitalization aside, Elwood, 58, is simply happy with his move.
“I don’t know; it suits me,” he said.
His daughter recently moved to the West Coast, and he was looking to downsize. The two-story, two-bedroom rowhome on the 1900 block of Jefferson St., with complete living quarters on the first floor, was a good fit.
“I don’t need the maintenance, I don’t need the upkeep, and I don’t need all those stairs,” Elwood said, adding that the bedroom and full bathroom on the second floor will be convenient for his daughter, who returns frequently from Los Angeles to visit.
With the house under contract, Elwood is looking forward to moving.
“I am indeed,” he said.