Homeless Families

A team of 90 volunteers painted and cleaned the playground at the Pratt House this week to prepare the site for an overhaul next month. College students, part of Students Today Leaders Forever, joined Volunteers of America Chesapeake to enhance the playground at the 35-unit apartment complex for formerly homeless families with two or more children. The recreational area will be rebuilt in April with new equipment for the children, who helped design their dream playground. The students from Minnesota and North Dakota are taking part in the Pay it Forward Tour, which offers an alternative spring break trip.

Although Howard County remains one of the most affluent counties in the nation and has the lowest unemployment rate in the state, the number of homeless people has increased over the past year, prompting a push to increase assistance through the county's plan to end homelessness. County Executive Ken Ulman included $366,500 in his $899 million budget to fight homelessness. If approved, this year would be the first in which the county has set aside money for the plan, which targets those who are chronically homeless — often because of a mental illness or substance-abuse problem — and others who are homeless because of job loss or other unforeseen circumstances.

Charles L. Halter walked out in the midst of a discussion last week of county government plans to open apartments for families making the transition from homeless shelters to their own apartments or houses."

A 10-year-old homeless shelter in Lansdowne, which doubles as a classroom for poor families seeking basic life skills, is struggling to raise funding to remain open this spring -- even though local politicians have offered last-minute help.Brenda Pendergrass, executive director of Hearth House on Laverne Avenue, said she needs to raise at least $5,000 in private donations or the shelter may close until the next fiscal year begins July 1 and it receives new funding.Some relief came recently from First District County Councilman Stephen G. Sam Moxley, a Catonsville Democrat, who pledged to help obtain a $10,000 federal Community Development Block Grant for the shelter for homeless women and children.

Dionne Love knew the drill at the homeless shelter: Check in by 4:30 p.m. Leave by 6 a.m. and "blow time" until shelter doors reopened. So when the mother of two learned about Pratt House, a former West Baltimore school gymnasium converted into a $5.6 million, 35-unit apartment complex for homeless families with two or more children, she moved on it. Yesterday, Love, 28, watched as officials with Volunteers of America Chesapeake and other project partners...

Although they face problems most children don't even know about, homeless children are remarkably robust and resilient, a Stanford University study has found.Reasonably healthy and surprisingly well-adjusted, they not only attend school fairly regularly but act like "little adults," helping their parents figure out how to pay bills and find food and places to sleep.But there are limits to this resilience. Even after short bouts of homelessness, children are damaged psychologically and physically -- in ways that often do not show up until after their families find housing.

NEW YORK - At an hour when most people in the city are snug in their beds asleep, an army of exhausted little children and their mothers are loading into yellow school buses on a desolate corner in the Bronx, clutching pillows, plastic bags and one another as they shuttle in the dark to a city shelter for the night. Shielding an infant and 2-year-old under her sweat shirt as a hard rain fell outside the city's Emergency Assistance Unit, Shantay Jones wept. "Please, I need help, I have nothing," the 21-year old mother said.

A decade ago, when homelessness -- especially among women -- was still a relatively new phenomenon in cities across the country, Associated Catholic Charities opened My Sister's Place on Mulberry Street. It was designed not as a traditional overnight shelter, but rather as a safe haven for women during the daytime hours -- a place to sit undisturbed in a comfortable chair, to take a shower, wash their clothes and feel like worthwhile people for a few hours. Today, the need for a service like My Sister's Place is more acute than ever.

Opponents of an Annapolis homeless shelter have abandoned their legal challenge, clearing the way for the shelter to open.Wayne T. Kosmerl, attorney for The Inner West Street Association, Presidents Hill Association and residents Joan and David Simison, said his clients have decided not to appeal a Circuit Court judge's ruling allowing the Light House shelter to open."

Westminster officials are seeking a $382,870 grant to rebuild a dilapidated section of a shelter for homeless families. The grant also would be used to expand its capacity.The 12-year-old shelter serves intact families -- usually both parents and their children, said Karen K. Blandford, the city's housing and community development administrator.But the building at 23 W. Green St. is not so intact, she said."The entire rear of the building is structurally unsound," Blandford told the Westminster Common Council Monday night.