Cathedral Housing Committee
by Jay Merwin

In 1988, a group of Cathedral parishioners serving on what was then called the Parish and Community Relations Committee saw homelessness and vacant houses in nearby neighborhoods and decided to do something about it. Susan Tippett conceived the idea of privately raising enough funds to purchase, rehab and sell one house, and an ad hoc committee agreed to begin this process. Each member of this committee pledged $500 of personal funds and agreed to seek an equal amount from their friends.

The following year, with the help and blessing of the Cathedral, they had raised enough money to purchase a derelict house in the blighted Pen Lucy neighborhood east of York Road and to begin work on its rehabilitation. Teaming up with St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, a local non-profit housing agency, the Cathedral group rehabbed and sold the house to a needy buyer at a price the buyer could afford. With the proceeds of the sale and with more donations prompted by its initial success, the group purchased another house and repeated the process: purchasing, rehabilitating and selling 10 houses in all through the end of 2000.

The Cathedral Housing Committee, as it became known, drew streams of volunteers and donated services. Most of the work was volunteered every Saturday morning, with materials contributed by various building companies connected in some way with the Cathedral. "We had a lot of people in the parish who had smarts on this," said Susan Tippett, who remained the magnet and ex officio leader of the group of volunteers who met monthly for planning and discussion in her Roland Park living room. "Once we got going with reports, a lot of people came to us. Over the 10 years, the fellowship in work and the joy of the new owners were a great source of satisfaction."

Norm Brubeck, a trained engineer with extensive construction experience, supervised a work crew of shifting Cathedral personnel, but numbering 10 to 20 each Saturday. Boy Scouts from the Cathedral’s Troop 1000 cleared away debris. One regular volunteer specialized in brushing and sanding radiators, another liked to vacuum up the dust and flakes being sanded and scraped from the walls, and another became an expert in punching holes in certain spots in the ceiling to drain the water that had collected from roof leaks above. A lawyer provided pro bono title work on the purchase of the houses. Fick Brothers Roofing donated a new roof for this first house and for each of the subsequent houses. Others donated kitchen cabinets and refrigerators.

In a report to the Cathedral Parish Council, the Housing Committee stated that $22,500 worth of renovations, $4,800 in donated professional labor and materials and 550 volunteer hours from 65 people went into completing the first house. All 10 of the completed houses were located in the 600 and 700 blocks of Cator Avenue in Pen Lucy. Although the Cathedral volunteers did the work, the St. Ambrose housing agency actually held title to each property until completion and sale.

Once the work on a house was completed, the volunteers held a celebratory open house and invited neighborhood people in order to stir up interest and help find a buyer. Each house sold for between $34,000 and $52,000. The Cathedral Housing Committee would find a low-interest affordable mortgage for the buyer and often offer additional help by granting the buyer a so-called "soft second mortgage" of around $5,000, which would be forgiven if the buyer remained in the house as owner for five years.

The Cathedral volunteers soon became a force in the neighborhood. Some worked with the Pen Lucy neighborhood association to lobby the Baltimore City Council to deal with a local drug den, which the city eventually did by tearing down the offending house and converting the lot to a small park. One of the most positively vocal neighborhood activists, the buyer of the first Cathedral-renovated house, paid a price for his success. Apparently upset by the more active police the effort had brought to the neighborhood, drug dealers responded by shooting out his windows. Cathedral volunteers returned to the house to replace them, Susan Tippet remembered. "He put a cross out on his lawn, saying, 'Father forgive them; they know not what they do.' It made quite an impression."

By 2002, the Cathedral Housing Committee had about $45,000 from donations and sale proceeds in its account but no more energy to take on another home rehabilitation. "This is a very labor intensive and time consuming project," the Housing Committee wrote in 2002 in a final report to the Cathedral Parish Council. "Most of our dedicated volunteers, including the steering committee, are now twelve years older and younger ones have growing family commitments. No new volunteers have come forward."

The Cathedral's work on Cator Avenue ceased, but the impact continued there and elsewhere. In 2002, the group won permission from the Cathedral to turn over its account to St. Ambrose to help low-income homeowners struggling against foreclosure. The $45,000 donation supported St. Ambrose in that effort for the next five years. In 2007, St. Ambrose reported to the Cathedral that they had applied the money toward loans to 106 low-income families facing foreclosure, helping 88 of them keep their homes. "Although your colleagues stopped the physical work of housing families," the St. Ambrose director wrote "the fruits of your labors carried on in that apostolate."