Baltimore officials are considering transforming a city building along the Fallsway into a permanent year-round shelter for homeless near the city's largest soup kitchen and jail.
The proposal - to be presented to residents of Mount Vernon tonight - comes as Baltimore officials are scrambling to come up a replacement for a city homeless shelter used temporarily this winter. Dozens of homeless men, women and children must be moved by the end of the month, when that shelter in Greenmount West is scheduled to close.
But an interim shelter would still be needed before the permanent site opens, and officials said they are eyeing three other buildings as potential locations. They declined to discuss the specific sites.
A spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon said yesterday that the permanent shelter - whether it's at Fallsway and Centre Street or someplace else - probably won't open until 2009. City officials want to create a shelter that will have room for social workers to help residents find jobs and stable housing. The city has a state grant for $1 million to set up such a shelter.
City officials' recent focus on homelessness represents a shift in policy away from temporary help to more permanent fixes. Dixon has made public statements about ending homelessness, and she visited Denver last year to attend a conference on the subject with other mayors who face similar challenges.
In years past, the city has closed its winter shelter once the weather improved, usually in March or April. This is the first time officials have publicly discussed the possibility of having a permanent, city-run shelter that residents could use in times of crisis. The city supports many shelters, but they are run by nonprofit organizations that compete for public funding.
"Everyone is hustling like crazy to find locations for everyone," said Dixon spokesman Sterling Clifford, referring to individuals who will have to move out of the winter shelter, which is in an old elementary school in the 1600 block of Guilford Ave., by April 1.
Advocates for the homeless have been sounding the alarm about the city's lack of shelter for months - long before dozens of homeless men and women began setting up tarp-and-cardboard encampments along the Jones Falls Expressway in downtown Baltimore. Those camps were cleared in December - city fire officials said they were fire hazards - and many of the residents were moved to the winter shelter or other locations.
