Homeless Children

SOUTHAMPTON , N.Y. -- Middle-class year-rounders in the Hamptons come to accept the miles of millionaires inching Porsches through summertime traffic to the next tent party. But they did not expect this influx from the other extreme. The newest Long Island East Enders are homeless, 329 of them, crammed into Southampton motels for months on end as Suffolk County scrounges for space for a homeless population that has more than doubled since 1999. Suddenly year-round residents are wedged between the entitled rich and the entitlement programs of the poor.

Residency policy unfair to homeless children The Baltimore County public schools' new residency policy may prove to be an illegal barrier to the education of homeless students. In their rush to prove themselves hyper-sensitive to rumors of fraudulent enrollment, the county officials quoted in The Baltimore Sun's article "Proving they belong" (Aug. 25) failed to clarify that students who are homeless are entitled to immediate enrollment even if they lack documentation. However, recognizing the importance of keeping children in school, especially during times of personal crisis, the federal McKinney-Vento Act requires schools to focus on getting homeless children into school immediately, and then to work with the family to get any necessary paperwork done.

The year my son was 6, he had one thing on his Christmas list. One thing only. The Millennium Falcon.Remember Han Solo's space ship in the movie ''Star Wars?'' That's all my son wanted. He asked us about it every day. Did we think Santa Claus would bring him one? Were we sure Santa had gotten his letter?One thing really worried him. How would Santa know where to find us? We'd moved that fall. That Christmas was our first in our new home. How would Santa know where we were? Suppose Santa left our presents at the old house?

FORT WORTH, Texas -- At 6: 30 a.m., tiny voices begin to resonate inside the Presbyterian Night Shelter. Thirty-nine children have slept there overnight, and more than a dozen are getting ready for school.There is no smell of brewing coffee or sizzling bacon. Instead, the odor of sweat, stale cigarettes and dirty mop water lingers in the shelter hidden on a side street east of downtown Fort Worth.For reasons as varied as their appearance, more and more children and teen-agers are being raised in homeless shelters once occupied mostly by men on skid row. Educators in Fort Worth and nationwide are reaching into the shelters and pulling those children into classrooms.

Sometimes, says 31-year-old Sheila Woolford, "It's good to get the boot -- just to wake up and realize how detrimental life can be if you don't do anything with it."Next week, Ms. Woolford, a single mother of four, will check herself into a Baltimore detox center to exorcise her demon: a yearlong addiction to cocaine."I want to get clean," said Ms. Woolford. "That's the starting point. Then everything else will fall into place."A year ago, Ms. Woolford and her family fell into homelessness and ended up at a shelter at the YWCA in downtown Baltimore.

Do you want to dance? Dan and Brenda Miller do, and have 0) earned six titles out on the floorDan and Brenda Miller have all the right moves.On the dance floor, that is, where the Waltzing Millers have earned six amateur titles in the last year."

When it comes to helping the homeless, students at St. Louis School say you've got to put your money where your math is.Not only did students from the Clarksville parochial school trudge door to door in the January chill to collect pledges of support for Churches Concerned for the Homeless, but they worked on 100 math problems in exchange for the money.The sum of their "Math-a-thon" was $6,517.61. That's $80.731716 squared, plus one one-hundredth of a cent on an eight-digit calculator."I was just overwhelmed with the amount of money raised, especially with the way the economy is today," said Sister Mary Catherine, the school's principal.

While I agree with Michael D. Ullman's position that long-term solutions to homelessness should focus on permanent housing, prevention and rapid re-housing models ("Not a home, not a help," June 29), his suggestion that "doubling up" with friends and family is a solution to homelessness is completely off base. People and families who "double" or "triple up" with friends and family are not solving the problem of their own homelessness. They are still homeless, since they lack a home of their own to provide stability, privacy and security.

If Baltimore had a public boarding school for homeless teens, Iven Bailey might have been spared his nomadic existence. He might have even persuaded his best friend, Gary Sells, to join him there. Considering the rundown rowhouse in which Mr. Sells lived without mother or father, it wasn't long before he, too, was out on his own - all the while trying to stay in school and graduate. As The Sun's recent series "On Their Own," painfully documented, homeless students such as Mr. Sells and Mr. Bailey, who are trying to stay in school and fend for themselves, have very few options.

WE HAVEN'T heard much about the homeless since the Clinton administration took office nearly five years ago. Until then, homelessness was said to be the result of Republican insensitivity and the economic policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations.Vice President Al Gore thrust the homeless back into the spotlight just before Christmas when he rounded up a group of children from a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter and brought them to the Department of Housing and Urban Development where they served as props for an administration announcement to spend $865 million to help the homeless ''find homes and hope.