Quote:
Originally Posted by merrylander
Surely not Howard at least I have seen very little of it in the 33 years I have lived here. Even though Alan Kittleman our current county exec is a Republican he seems decent enough. During Florence's illness we had EMTs in and out of here several times and black or white they did their job.
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Did you see the link I posted in the Baltimore County thread? Having grown up in the Baltimore area and having lived in Columbia in the early 70s, I have a somewhat greater and longer frame of reference than you when it comes to Howard County.
Before Columbia, Howard County was an agricultural county and little Ellicott City was the principle city on the county. It was racist as hell. Then, in the mid-sixties, Jim Rouse came along and, through a group of clandestine intermediaries, bought up almost 20% of the entire county.
Rouse then informed the county of his plans to build a new city smack dab in the middle of the county complete with Section 8 housing and light industrial development. To a bunch of rednecks, still reeling from the effects of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, this was clearly a bridge too far and they fought to block the building of Columbia. But Rouse simply owned too much of the county to be stopped and Columbia was built.
Then, after Jim Rouse died, the Columbia Association went to court and broke the population-density covenants he had put in place. Now Columbia is home to about 20,000 more residents than it was ever meant to house, putting an immense strain on the county infrastructure and keeping the old resentments alive.