For the first time, Howard County officials believe they have a snapshot of the county's homeless.
Three out of five homeless people are either victims of domestic violence or once stayed with friends or relatives who could no longer provide housing for them, according to Manus O'Donnell, director of the county Department of Citizens Services.
Mr. O'Donnell found that 33 percent of the county's roughly 700 homeless people were forced to leave the home of a relative or friend, 26 percent were domestic violence victims, and 17 percent were formally evicted from their homes.
"The homeless issue is not just a government problem but a community problem as well," he said.
On Tuesday, Mr. O'Donnell plans to present these findings at the county's first summit on homelessness. At the request of shelter providers at the Domestic Violence Center, in Columbia County Executive Charles I. Ecker organized the summit as part of a plea for more government and community assistance to combat what the county has called a growing homelessness problem.
The statistics don't surprise Stephanie Sites, the center's executive director.
"Homeless is not just the man on the street corner," she said. "A battered woman is counted in the same category. [Battered women] are homeless because their home is not a safe place.
"We think of a man very bedraggled, on the street," she said. "It could be anyone."
But one community worker wonders how the county defines homelessness and whether people evicted by friends or family members should be included in those statistics.
"Howard County is unique in regards to what is perceived as homelessness," said Dorothy Moore, director of the Community Action Council, which provides eviction-prevention assistance. "That homelessness is not the traditional homelessness."
Shelter providers to speak
Tuesday's summit, which runs from 8:30 a.m. to noon at the Interfaith Center in the Village of Oakland Mills, will open with a presentation by local shelter providers. Organizers plan to divide the general meeting into small groups for discussion of ways the community and the government can resolve Howard's immediate and long-term homeless problems.
The discussion groups will report back to the general meeting the ideas they generated.
In preparation for the summit, Mr. O'Donnell analyzed forms submitted to the Howard County Department of Citizens Services, which primarily oversees county shelters. The agency began using a new tracking system in January.
