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-� .-, Three quarters of Sandtown-Winchester's housing units needed either rehabilitation or demolition, and 600 of them were boarded up. Only 20 per cent of the single-family homes were owner occupied. Nearly half of Sandtown-Winchester's residents were unemployed or underemployed half were living below the poverty line, and 45 per cent were receiving public assistance, and 40 per cent had no income at all (ibid.). As Live Baltimore Home Centre (2000) reports, by 1990, Sandtown had become a neighbourhood challenged by virtually every urban ill: poverty, unemployment, poor health, low student achievement, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and almost paralysing lack of hope. Similar conditions existed in the other two study neighbourhoods. For example, 65 per cent of Harlem Park's households earn less than $20,000 a year. In East Baltimore 32 per cent of the housing units were vacant and need rehabilitation in 2000. One of every six homeowners in East Baltimore has stopped paying property taxes, one of every three households makes less than $15,000 per year, half of all adults are high school dropouts, half of all households do not own a car, and 25 per cent of residents are addicted to drugs or alcohol (Cohen 2001). Sandtown-Winchester and East Baltimore are characterized also by up to 50 per cent male unemployment and epidemic crack cocaine use. Block after block is run down, with neglected lots and overwhelming blight. Similar processes were taking place in other neighbourhoods of the city. Located southeast of downtown Baltimore, Butchers Hill inner-city neighbourhood declined as job opportunities decreased and population and economic growth occurred in the outlying suburbs (Cohen 1998). In Butchers Hill, the large homes were divided into apartments and rooming houses (such partitioning of large homes into several smaller units has occurred in all cities), and housing conditions in the community deteriorated. In the 1970s-1980s Butchers Hill became a prime site for gentri�cation, mainly because of its convenient downtown location. Based on 1990 census data, Cohen indicates some of the Butchers Hill's challenges (ibid. pp.682-686): ■ 26.7 per cent of Butchers Hill's households consist of married couples, a much lower percentage than found in either the city (34.2 per cent) or the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) (52.2). Only 10 per cent of the neighbourhood's households consist of married families with children (13.4 per cent for the city and 23.3 per cent for the MSA). • 46.3 per cent of Butchers Hill's households are defined as "non-family", compared with 36.6 per cent for the city and 29.5 per cent for the MSA. The proportion of single-parent families is similar to that of the city. • The neighbourhood has a relatively large (35 per cent) proportion of adults who have not completed high school. • The neighbourhood's median household income of $17,341 is only 72.1 per cent of the city's median household income and only 47.4 per cent of the median income of the Baltimore MSA. ■ A higher proportion of Butchers Hill's children under 17 are living in poverty (36.3 per cent) than in the city (32.5 per cent) and in the MSA (14.0 per cent). �