Homeless

4 area students semifinalists in talent search Four Baltimore-area students are among 300 teens nationwide selected this week as semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search competition, which is known as the "Junior Nobel Prize." The local winners are: Emma Call of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Afton Vechery of Glenelg High School, Danna Thomas of Broadneck Senior High School in Annapolis and Anna Cyganowski of Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson. The students were selected from 1,700 applicants.

The difficult matter of Howard Fry, victim of crime and quadruple amputee, remains so: He still lives on the edge of homelessness. He continues to stay with his disabled mother in a small rowhouse in the Brooklyn section of Baltimore, and while Betty Fry manages to care for her son, he's often more than she can handle. Not only does Howard Fry have physical disabilities, but he's intellectually limited and given to outbursts of anger. "Nothing new," Betty Fry said yesterday, her 58th birthday, when I asked if any of the city or state agencies assigned to help her son have been able to find him a home.

After today, Steven Johnson will be living on the streets again. The 54-year-old former construction worker says he has had Parkinson's disease for five years and has been unable to work or get federal disability income for the past few years. That is why he was one of more than 20 homeless people sleeping on slim mattresses amid their plastic bags and clothing on the floor of St. John Baptist Church in Columbia last week. But, like seasonal operations in other parts of the region, Howard County's annual winter shelter program is coming to an end. With the county's permanent Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center shelter full, more than a dozen religious congregations take turns hosting the nightly shelter for one or two weeks from November through late March.

Walk-in treatment is available for homeless addictsThe Sun's article "Candidates plot strategy for drug battle" (Aug. 15) provided incomplete information about drug treatment, stating that those seeking drug treatment must wait 11 days for outpatient treatment.While we are far from realizing the goal of treatment on demand, some treatment options are available on a walk-in basis.At Health Care for the Homeless (HCH), individuals seeking treatment may walk in and begin treatment on the same day -- or on the following day if they arrive after 1 p.m. The only qualification is that they be homeless.

ON SOUTH EDEN Street, which is not the same as North Eden Street, there is now a muddy hole in the ground where there used to be a grubby little stop for the poor and the homeless. In such an hour, we can curse the idiocy that brought us to such a condition, or we can do what we normally do, which is to wish the poor would go away.Or we can say thank you to the Lancers Boys Club, for prodding our collective conscience on such matters.The boys are putting together a Nov. 7 Walk for the Homeless, a heartfelt project they commenced even before this week's news of the latest fumble by the city's Housing Authority.

The urban landscape looked different yesterday because the homeless Sheila Brown pitched a tent on the concrete under the Interstate 83 overpass. There she lay and ate and slept in freezing temperatures in her blue-and-gray Winnebago tent from Sunny's -- The Affordable Outdoor Store.Harbored from the freezing rain, she was zipped up and wrapped up in blankets and coats with price tags still attached. Wanting her space, she talked only through her tent."I got a few dead friends back there in the dirt.

At the 20th anniversary reunion of the Washington Bullets' 1978 NBA title team, Joe Pace looked like a champion.The former Coppin State star arrived in a stretch limousine. He wore a blue, double-breasted suit with red pinstripes that seemed tailor-made for his 6-foot-11 frame. He came alone, but happily embraced his former teammates and complimented their wives and girlfriends.Still lean at 44, the 12th man on that title team appeared as if he could still hold his own on the court.The image, however, belied reality.

Many people -- church members, social workers, police, business owners -- offered to help this homeless man, and he always listened attentively.Ronald Phillip Parandes was an alcoholic, had been since at least the early 1980s. He held jobs occasionally, even got married in 1991. But as a voluminous court record shows, he couldn't give up drinking for long and got arrested repeatedly for alcohol-related offenses like disorderly conduct.Leaving jail, or a shelter where he'd spent the night, Parandes would return again and again to the stretch of U.S. 1 where Howard, Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties meet, to a bridge under which homeless men have lived for many years.

"THEY ARE so happy when they open their gifts. They give us the biggest hugs."Bobbi Coffman is not referring to children on Christmas morning in describing this scene. Rather, she is recalling the grateful reactions as homeless men and women opened donated gifts at Happy Helpers for the Homeless Christmas parties.The Happy Helpers youth organization provides food, entertainment and gifts each year to people who usually have little to celebrate. Their seventh gathering will take place Dec. 18 in Glen Burnie.

A man known as Joe Homeless,who spent more than a decade living on the streets of New York City and had his story published, died Tuesday of heart failure at 56.The man used Joe Homeless as a pen name and, according to friends, did not want his name known. He died at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, according to George McDonald, president of the Doe Fund Inc., a nonprofit organization that assists homeless people.Using a tape recorder he had fished from the trash, Joe Homeless dictated his story while living on the streets.

Social services should be applauded, not shunned I really appreciated the thoughtful article about the 'Beans and Bread' controversy in Fells Point. As an eight-year resident of the neighborhood I am aware of the tensions that exist between the various community demographics. (particularly the homeless community) I think we all want to live in a safe, healthy environment. Anything that threatens our sense of security is a concern to the community. However, I think you asked the core question in your article: "The homeless aren't about to go away.

Mayor Sheila Dixon ceremonially broke ground on Baltimore's first permanent 24-hour shelter yesterday, the centerpiece of her 10-year plan to end homelessness in a city where more than 3,400 have no place to live. Dixon called the building, a former city Department of Transportation brick warehouse at 620 Fallsway in downtown Baltimore, a "gateway to independence" that is not meant to "warehouse" homeless people but will serve as a one-stop resource center where they can receive counseling and other help.

It was quite the picture of domesticity: Shirts are hung in a tidy row as if fresh from the laundry, while someone fastidiously sweeps the floor, frequently stopping to empty the dustpan in the garbage. The only problem is that the shirts were hanging not in a closet but on the fence of a park, and the wielder of the broom was basically sweeping dirt from dirt - the "floor" being a patch of ground worn almost bare of grass just outside St. Vincent de Paul Church in downtown Baltimore. The sweeping seemed pointless - but then, not much makes sense to me about this homeless encampment that has managed to take up permanent residence at the foot of the Jones Falls Expressway at Fayette Street.

United Way's cuts will help homeless We applaud the United Way of Central Maryland for its decisive action to ensure that more financial resources go directly to those most in need ("United Way eases fees for designated gifts," April 19). At Health Care for the Homeless, demand for our services is up as more low-income Marylanders make impossible choices among health care, food, rent, transportation and other basic needs. Indeed, this year, we've witnessed a 15 percent increase over 2008 levels in the number of individuals seeking our services for the first time.

Kimberly Edmonds moved with her energetic 2-year-old son into a Baltimore County homeless shelter two months ago. "I was upset, and I cried a lot," the 41-year-old former Rosedale resident said. "My son and I should not be in this situation. I would not wish it on my worst enemy." Surrounded by trees and spacious lawns, the two-story brick building housing the Hannah More shelter on Reisterstown Road resembles a college dorm. The 75-bed shelter is clean and well-maintained. A nearby playground with brightly colored slides and swings helps occupy her son, Christian.

Homelessness is often equated with urban life, men living on top of steam grates or in alleys, lined up at an inner-city soup kitchen or mission. But the problem is confined neither to adult men nor to cities like Baltimore - as advocates for the poor in Baltimore County can attest. A one-day census conducted in January found the county's homeless population grew 62 percent from the year before to nearly 700 and probably many more than the county's 500 shelter beds could accommodate. That includes more families with children than ever before.

There will be a march from a Towson church to the Baltimore County Council chambers Monday night to shed light on the plight of the county's growing homeless population. About 150 marchers, including residents of the county's shelters, are expected to participate in the sixth annual Rally for the Homeless, organizers say. "The county needs permanent affordable housing and resources to assist the homeless and those who might become homeless," said Diane Chotikul, chairwoman of Baltimore County Communities for the Homeless.

ONNA, Italy - The calls from America kept coming, but Paolo Paolucci's answer stayed the same: "Gabriella is dead." A sigh, a gasp and, in the near distance, the sounds of hands and machines digging at the stone, mortar and splintered wood of broken homes and crumpled buildings scattered for miles in eerie heaps beneath mountains thick with snow. Paolucci's elderly mother and his sister, Gabriella, were two of the dead as the toll from Monday's magnitude 6.3 earthquake rose to 235. Fifteen people remained missing.

City has pledged to support shelter In the article "Residents support city's homeless shelter plans" (Feb. 2), reporter Annie Linskey answers her own question as to why the Mount Vernon neighborhood supported the city's new homeless shelter by suggesting that the community was bought off by promises from the city to improve parks, lighting and roads in the neighborhood. But while the improvements offered by the city are helpful in the effort to improve the community, Ms. Linskey omitted several other factors that led to our support of the plan.

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.