Scores of homeless people who depended on Baltimore County's two temporary winter shelters are looking for new places to sleep today -- the shelters closed for the season at 7 a.m.
In the past two years, the 80-bed shelters in Rosedale and Catonsville increasingly have become seasonal lodging of last resort for those unable to get one of the county's 230 semipermanent homeless shelter beds.
Now, with that safety valve closed until November, people such as Kelsey Teeter, a 35-year-old former security guard who says he has spent every night at the Rosedale shelter since his hospital discharge six weeks ago, might have nowhere to go.
"Just staying alive is the big concept right now," Teeter said Monday as he waited for a casserole dinner at the shelter with several dozen men and a few women. If left with no alternative, he'll likely spend his nights in an old car, he said.
Two new county programs, costing a combined $1.6 million, might help. They will send teams of workers to work with the most reclusive homeless and provide money for drug and alcohol treatment.
"You are not going to get every homeless person off the streets," said Terri M. Kingeter, the county's homeless service coordinator. "They are human beings. Why not reach those people we can reach?"
Although the total number of homeless in the county is uncertain, a 1995 survey found nearly 600 people living on the streets.
The county spends nearly $400,000 annually on shelter services, including the two $80,000-a-year cold weather shelters and nine other shelters.
The cold weather shelters, run by the private, nonprofit Community Assistance Network (CAN) on a contract from the county, aren't designed for semipermanent residence, but for the occasional hot meal and place to sleep.
But no one is turned away from the two 7 p.m-to-7 a.m. winter shelters if he or she is sober and well-behaved. This February, attendance at both winter shelters increased nearly 40 percent over the same month in 1996, despite this year's milder winter weather.
"They're outgrowing the space allotted to them," said Kingeter, noting that this year the shelters were open nightly between mid-November and mid-April, while in the past a decision was made daily about whether to open based on the weather.
Robert Gajdys, executive director of CAN, also worries that the shelters may be outgrowing the buildings in which they're located. In Catonsville, the increasing clientele at the shelter has alarmed residents of the nearby residential communities.
