Customer service, customer service, customer service. That’s the conclusion of a paper published last month from a team of sociologists at Johns Hopkins University about the best way to help people using housing vouchers successfully move to neighborhoods with low poverty rates and access to good schools, jobs and other amenities.

From cultural and community festivals to food and music festivals, the D.C. region has a wide variety of events to look forward to in the fall and beyond. WTOP has rounded up some of the many upcoming festivals, fairs, parades, exhibits and more to anticipate this year across Maryland, Virginia and the District.

Standing at the lectern in the first-floor hearing room of Winchester Hall on Tuesday night, Adamstown resident Steve Black drew attention to a sign on the wall setting the maximum occupancy for the space at 204 people. “Imagine what this room would be like if there were 350 people in here — that’s what over capacity means,” he said.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation recently announced $8.9 million dollars in funding for conservation efforts in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The grants through the Chesapeake WILD Program will be funding over 30 projects, several of which are located on the Eastern Shore.

President Joe Biden is well positioned to finish his presidency having placed more judges on the federal bench than former President Donald Trump. But the Democrat will not be able to replicate Trump’s transformation of the appellate courts that hand down the most influential rulings. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee again this year, was especially successful in flipping seats previously occupied by liberal or moderate judges on appellate courts and the US Supreme Court to those held by hardline conservatives.

When I was 19 years old, I was arrested for breaking a window in Baltimore County. It was one of those ill-advised acts that only a teenager on the wrong track could rationalize. Shortly thereafter, I was taken to the police precinct where I was charged with destruction of property, fingerprinted and booked. I spent the rest of the night sleeping on the concrete floor, crammed in a large prison cell with a group of grown men who were waiting to be seen by the commissioner.

The Maryland Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a case that could allow Baltimore City voters to cut their property tax rate by nearly half in less than a decade. City lawyers argued Wednesday that Renew Baltimore’s proposed city charter amendment, which would reduce the city’s property tax rate from 2.248% to 1.2% over seven years, would usurp the power of elected officials and would be “catastrophic” for city finances.

As we seek to confront the overdose crisis, one area too often overlooked is the criminal justice system, which accounts for more than one-third of referrals to addiction treatment programs. Approximately half of individuals incarcerated in the U.S. meet criteria for substance use disorder (SUD). Incarcerated individuals are up to 40 times more likely to die of an overdose within two weeks of release, which is a leading cause of post-release fatality due to loss of tolerance to opioids during incarceration when medications for opioid use disorder (OUD) are not provided.

In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Angela Alsobrooks told some of her personal stories and had about eight minutes to shine in an eloquent speech. The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland had a giant platform on one of the political world’s biggest stages, where she hailed Kamala Harris for her public safety record and as a friend.

Community activists rallied around Baltimore’s Department of Public Works employees who went to work on Wednesday with the temperature approaching 100 degrees. Outside of the gates of the sanitation yard in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill neighborhood, the group demanded safer and healthier working conditions weeks after DPW worker Ronald Silver II died from a heat-related illness while on the job.