Baltimore wants to build a new homeless shelter on the edge of one of the city's most prestigious neighborhoods, and community association leaders are uniformly supportive.
The board of directors for the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association unanimously signed off on plans for a 275-bed shelter on the Fallsway, a boost to Mayor Sheila Dixon's pledge to end homelessness in the city.
The neighborhood association has not always been so accommodating. It has launched a fight against a 7-Eleven out of fears that it would attract a bad crowd. Members want to shut a soup kitchen in the heart of Mount Vernon and hope to close a hip-hop club that was the scene of a recent shooting.
Why accept the city's largest homeless shelter?
City officials have promised $30,000 a year toward improving a park in Mount Vernon, an additional mile per year of road paving for the next 10 years, $500,000 for streetlight repairs and the removal of rush-hour "no parking" signs on major arteries.
The city is also offering a new master plan for the neighborhood, increased police coverage, a 24-hour hot line for residents to report problems and a promise not to move more homeless people to the neighborhood.
"We joked that we wanted a community swimming pool," said R. Paul Warren, the association's vice president, referring to the requests that his group developed during negotiations with the city.
The association did not get everything it wanted, but it received a lot, rare in a year when Baltimore is slicing budgets.
Still, the community support came as a "pleasant surprise," said Diane Glauber, who is in charge of homeless services for the city.
Mount Vernon's attitude is also a marked difference from protests the city endured last year from Butchers Hill and Greenmount West neighborhoods when they placed temporary shelters in those areas.
"We had the luxury of time, which we did not have in the previous efforts," said First Deputy Mayor Andrew B. Frank. He noted that the other neighborhoods eventually developed good working relationships with the city.
Most of the commitments to Mount Vernon have little immediate relation to the homeless shelter.
"We are asking these neighborhoods to bear a disproportionate burden," Frank said. "So we want to make other investments in the community to strengthen it."
