One year ago, Renee Cooper was evicted from her home, a high school dropout who walked the streets at night with her family until police officers let them sleep on the station floor.
Cooper, who returned to school and recently graduated from Annapolis High School, is looking for a job in child care. She has shown drive in her effort to turn around her life, say officials at Annapolis Area Ministries Inc., who have chosen her to be the first resident of Willow House, its new house for homeless women.
"I'm proud of myself," she said. "I want to do what I have to do [to] live a better life."
Willow House, a renovated five-bedroom home on Willow Street in Annapolis, celebrated its opening yesterday. It will provide permanent, affordable housing for four homeless women selected from the Light House, an emergency shelter, also run by AAMI. The house will be available to single women older than 18 years of age who remain drug- and alcohol-free, have stabilized mental health conditions and have jobs.
AAMI is looking for women "who are highly motivated to make necessary changes for themselves," said Harry Cole, executive director.
Willow House is different from transitional housing, which limits how long residents can stay, because the women can stay in the house as long as they meet the requirements.
A caretaker will live in the house to help the women learn how to keep it clean, plan their meals and deal with everyday tasks, and AAMI will bring in a therapist to help the women as well.
"We don't want to handicap them by doing everything for them," Cole said. But at the same time, "we're not assuming that any of the women have that level of responsibility" to take care of their everyday needs.
The women will pay 30 percent of their salaries to live in the house, and the rest is to be subsidized with vouchers from the Housing Commission of Anne Arundel County.
The need for housing and support for the homeless in Anne Arundel County is strong, said Mario Beninzoni, executive director of Arundel House of Hope in Glen Burnie, which runs several facilities and programs for the homeless.
"There needs to be more viable, permanent options" for housing, he said.
Marci Kennai, director of the county Department of Social Services, estimated that 467 single homeless people were living in Anne Arundel last year, and 216 of them were women. She also said that about 209 families in the county were homeless. Kennai stressed that those figures were low, because not all homeless people had formally sought services from the county.
